Personal Intelligence By Sandeep Gautam “Intelligence is the dynamic interplay of engagement and abilities in pursuit of personal goals” so quips Scott Barry Kaufman as he ends his tour-de-force round of intelligence research in his book ‘’Ungifted: intelligence redefined” and finally unveils his definition of ‘personal intelligence’; and though I love the (re)definition and will elaborate how it nicely fits with the conceptual models I have been developing, I must say that reading the book itself is enough to radically change one’s views about intelligence and you will, one way or the other, come away with a redefined view of intelligence if you took time to start reading the book (if you got started you will be hooked to the end). Scott begins his book with the discussion of the construct of IQ and how that single score is much abused (see my parallel views on the same here and here) and wields enormous power leading to labelling of children with labels like ‘learning disabled’ or ‘gifted’ – both type of classifications having their challenges as well as utilities (see my views on labelling here). While a label like ‘gifted’ intuitively seems good and beneficial, research of Dweck, as highlighted by Scott, hints that this may lead to ‘fixed’ or entity mindset where people may think that intelligence is not malleable - on the other hand other labels like ‘high achievers’ may focus too much on (past) achievement (possibly on a test) and less on (future) possibility and potential. If the issue of labelling is tricky, how to conceptualise and integrate the success factors required for eminent achievement is trickier. Historically, IQ, as a proxy for cognitive part of intelligence, has been used to predict academic and life outcomes, and with some pretty good success. However, as studies of geniuses as well as experts has shown eminence is comprised of equal parts affective, cognitive and conative(volitional) factors. That is what Scott concludes – I add to the mix behavioural factor
Posted on: Sun, 11 Aug 2013 16:18:40 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015