An investigation into the relationship between EFL teachers’ and students’ multiple intelligences and teaching styles
Subject Areas : All areas of language and translation
Yoones Taase
1
,
Adnan Satariyan
2
,
Bronwyn Reynolds
3
,
Hamid Salimi
4
,
Ahmad Mohseni
5
1 - 1Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Tehran, Iran
2 - Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Australia
3 - Faculty of Education, University of Tasmania, Australia
4 - Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literature, University of Tehran, Alborz, Iran
5 - 5Faculty of Persian Literature and Foreign Languages, Islamic Azad university, South Tehran Branch, Iran
Keywords: The theory of multiple intelligences, teaching styles, cognitive psychology, English as for-eign language (EFL) teachers and learners, cognitive development,
Abstract :
Abstract The present study investigates the relationship between multiple intelligences and teaching styles of Eng-lish as Foreign Language (EFL) learners and teachers. The participants of the study included 106 EFL teachers and 400 EFL learners. Teachers were invited to complete a Multiple Intelligences Inventory for EFL Teachers, developed by Christison (1998) and a Thinking Styles Inventory in Teaching, developed by Grigorenko and Sternberg (1993). The students were also asked to complete Student-Generated Inven-tory for Secondary Level and Young Adult Learners, which was developed by Christison (1996; 1998). The results of the descriptive statistics showed that EFL teachers and students preferred the interaction of different kinds of multiple intelligences and teaching styles in the classroom. Pearson correlation, three-way ANOVA and Multivariate ANOVA further illustrated that there was a significant relationship be-tween EFL teachers’ multiple intelligences and the styles of teaching. Factors such as age, field of study and gender, however, did not have any significant effect on multiple intelligences and teaching styles of EFL teachers.