THE RELEVANCE OF MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES AND THE LEARNING OF GEOSCIENCES: A CONTENT ANALYSIS OF PRE-SERVICE TEACHERS‘ REFLECTIONS

The concern with teaching centred on the characteristics and students’ needs is one of the reasons why the Multiple Intelligence (MI) theory is emerging and has become a trend in educational settings at the elementary, secondary, and higher education levels. Especial literature considers that intelligence is no longer restricted to cognitive talents but rather the capacity for abstraction, logic, understanding, self-awareness, learning, emotional knowledge, reasoning, planning, creativity, critical thinking, and problem-solving. These characteristics are based on eight types of intelligence Musical, Linguistic, Logical-Mathematical, Spatial, Bodily-Kinesthetic, Interpersonal, Intrapersonal and Naturalist intelligence. Exploring students' learning styles through their MI type allows teachers to identify their strengths and weaknesses and explore these styles in teaching methodologies. Additionally, teachers must understand students’ learning styles and MI to define activities that fit the different bits of intelligence by promoting better educational environment processes. In a pedagogical intervention program implemented in classes of the curricular unit of Didactics of Geology II (that integrates the curriculum of a master to train students to become biology and geology teachers), activities were carried out to teach and consolidate knowledge about Rock Cycle. After the intervention program, students presented the Rock Cycle in accordance with their style of learning. A content analysis was done on twenty-one “snapshot reports” done by the pre-service teachers. As in several studies that refer to the success of using the MI in the teaching process, our study gathered evidence of students' increased motivation to learn and a more active engagement.