What was that test Josiah (in the introductory chapter vignette) took, and what does intelligence really mean? What makes for good teaching and superior schools? Before looking at these school-related topics, let’s step back and, once again, explore the impact of that basic marker, poverty, on young children’s cognitive skills.

In Chapter 4, you learned that living in poverty for the first years of life has damaging effects on cognition. Figure 7.4 reveals that devastation directly by offering sobering statistics with regard to a turn of the century entering U.S. kindergarten class (Lee & Burkam, 2002). Notice that children from low-income families, on average, do markedly worse than their upper-middle-class counterparts on tests of reading readiness and math. When we compare poverty-level Latino and African American children to the wealthiest European Americans, the test-score gap becomes a chasm. The most disadvantaged U.S. children enter school academically several years behind their most affluent counterparts.

You would think that when children start a race miles behind, they should be given every chance to catch up. The reality is the reverse. From class size, to the quality of teacher training, to the attractiveness of the physical building—U.S. kindergartens serving poor children rank at the bottom of the educational heap. As one group of researchers put it:

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The consistency of these findings . . . is . . . troubling. The least advantaged of America’s children, who also begin their formal schooling at a substantial cognitive disadvantage, are systematically mapped into our nation’s worst schools.

(Lee & Burkam, 2002, p. 77)

Now, let’s keep these inequalities in mind as we explore the controversial topic of intelligence tests.

What does it mean to be intelligent? Ask classmates the question, and they will probably mention both academic and “real life” skills (Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Kidd, 2005). Conceptions of what it means to “be intelligent” differ from society to society, and among different ethnic groups. Latino parents, for instance, focus more on social competence (getting along with people), while our mainstream culture views intelligence in terms of cognitive traits (Sternberg, 2007).

Traditional intelligence tests reflect the mainstream view. They measure only cognitive abilities. Intelligence tests, however, differ from achievement tests—the yearly evaluations children take to measure knowledge in various subjects. The intelligence test is designed to predict a person’s general academic potential, or ability to master any school-related task. Do the tests measure mainly genetic capacities? Do they have any relevance beyond school? To approach these hot-button issues, let’s examine the intelligence test that children typically take today: the WISC.

Examining the WISC

The WISC (Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children), now in repeated revisions, was devised by David Wechsler and is the current standard intelligence test. As you can see in Table 7.3, the WISC samples a child’s performance in a variety of areas. However, as it is divided into main sections—each testing a basic ability—testers can give a child a separate IQ score for each part.

Achievement tests are administered to groups. The WISC is given individually to a child by a trained psychologist, a process that often includes several hours of testing and concludes with a written report. If the child scores at the 50th percentile for his age group, his IQ is defined as 100. If that child’s IQ is 130, he ranks at roughly the 98th percentile, or in the top 2 percent of children his age. If a child’s score is 70, he is at the opposite end of the distribution, performing in the lowest 2 percent of children that age. Put on a graph, this score distribution, as you can see in Figure 7.5, looks like a bell-shaped curve.

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When do children take this test? The answer, most often, is during elementary school when there is a question about a given child’s classroom performance. School personnel then use the IQ score as one component of a multifaceted assessment, which includes achievement test scores, teachers’ ratings, and parents’ input, to determine whether a boy or girl needs special help (Sattler, 2001). If a child’s low score (under 70) and other behaviors warrant this designation, she may be classified as intellectually disabled. If a child’s IQ is far higher than would be expected, compared to her performance on achievement tests, she is classified as having a specific learning disorder, an umbrella term for any impairment in language or difficulties related to listening (such as ADHD), thinking, speaking, reading, spelling, or math.

Although children with learning disabilities often score in the average range on IQ tests, they have trouble with schoolwork. Many times, they have a debilitating impairment called dyslexia that undercuts every academic skill. Dyslexia, a catchall term referring to any reading disorder, may have multiple causes (Nicolson & Fawcett, 2011; Zoccolotti and Friedmann, 2010). What’s important is that, despite having good instruction and doing well on tests of intelligence, a dyslexic child is still struggling to read (Shaywitz, Morris, & Shaywitz, 2008).

My son, for instance, has dyslexia, and our experience shows just how important having a measure of general intelligence can be. Because Thomas was falling behind in the third grade, my husband and I arranged to have our son tested. Thomas was defined as having a learning disability because his IQ score was above average but his achievement scores were well below the norm for his grade. Although we were aware of our son’s reading problems, the testing was vital in easing our anxieties. Thomas—just as we thought—was capable intellectually. Now we just had to get our son through school with his sense of self-efficacy intact!

Often, teachers and parents urge testing for a happier reason: They want to confirm that a child is intellectually advanced. If the child’s IQ exceeds a certain number, typically 130, or in the top 2 percent (see Figure 7.4), she is labeled gifted and is eligible for special programs. In U.S. public schools, the law mandates intelligence testing before children can be assigned to a gifted program or remedial class (Canter, 1997; Sattler, 2001).

Table 7.4 offers a fact sheet about dyslexia. The Experiencing the Lifespan box provides a firsthand view of what it is like to triumph over this debilitating condition. Now that we have explored the measure and when it is used, let’s turn to what the scores mean.

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Decoding the Meaning of the IQ Test

The first question we need to grapple with in looking at the meaning of the test relates to a measurement criterion called reliability. When people take a test thought to measure a basic trait, such as IQ, more than one time, their results should not vary. Imagine that your IQ score randomly shifted from gifted to average, year by year. Clearly, this test score would not tell us anything about a stable attribute called intelligence.

The good news is that, in elementary school, IQ test performance does typically remain stable (Ryan, Glass, & Bartels, 2010). In one amazing study, people’s scores remained fairly similar when they first took the test in childhood and then were retested more than a half-century later (see Deary and others, 2000). Still, among individual children, the IQ can change. Scores are most likely to shift when children have undergone life stresses.

This research tells us that we should never evaluate a child’s IQ during a family crisis such as divorce. But being reliable is only the first requirement. The test must be valid. This means it must predict what it is supposed to be measuring. Is the WISC a valid test?

If our predictor is academic performance, the answer is yes. A child who gets an IQ score of 130 will tend to perform well in the gifted class. A child whose IQ is 80 will probably need remedial help. But now we turn to the controversial question: Does the test measure genetic learning potential or biological smarts?

ARE THE TESTS A GOOD MEASURE OF GENETIC GIFTS? When we are evaluating children living in poverty (or boys and girls growing up in non-English-speaking families), logic tells us that the answer should be no. Look back at the items on the WISC verbal comprehension scale (Table 7.3 on p. 213), and you will immediately see that if parents stimulate a child’s vocabulary, she will be at a test-taking advantage. If a family cannot buy books and learning toys, their children will be handicapped on this part of the test.

An excellent argument that the environment weighs heavily in IQ comes from that remarkable century-long increase in intelligence test scores described in Chapter 1. This worldwide rise in IQ scores, called the Flynn effect (named for its discoverer James Flynn) is dramatic. More years of education, plus the modern media, have made twenty-first-century children and adults far better “thinkers” than their parents and grandparents were at the same age. Incredibly, Flynn (2007) calculates that the average-scoring child taking the WISC in 1900 would rank as “mentally retarded” using today’s IQ norms!

We also have newer research confirming that a poor life situation artificially limits IQ. For low-income children, the IQ score mainly reflects environmental forces. For upper-middle-class children, the test score is more reflective of genetic gifts (Turkheimer and others, 2003). So if an elementary schooler comes from a poverty-level family and attends a low-quality school, yes, his IQ may predict his current school performance. But we should not assume that score reflects true intellectual potential unless a child has been exposed to the incredible learning advantages upper-middle-class life provides.

Now, imagine that you are an upper-middle-class child. You were regularly read to, taken to museums, and attended the best schools. Your IQ score is only 95 or 100. Is your intellectual potential limited for life?

DO IQ SCORES PREDICT REAL-WORLD PERFORMANCE? When a student comes up after this class lecture and proudly admits that his IQ is 130 or 140, he is not thinking of school learning. He assumes that his score measures a basic “smartness” that carries over to every life activity. In measurement terminology, this student would agree with Charles Spearman. Spearman believed that IQ test scores reflect a general underlying, all-encompassing intelligence factor called “g.”

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Psychologists debate the existence of “g.” Many strongly believe that the IQ test generally predicts intellectual capacities. They argue that we can use the IQ as a summary measure of a person’s cognitive potential for all life tasks (Herrnstein & Murray, 1994; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). Others believe that people have unique intellectual talents. There is no one-dimensional quality called “g” (Eisner, 2004; Schlinger, 2003; Sternberg, 2007). These critics believe it inappropriate to rank people on a continuum from highly intelligent to not very smart (Gould, 1981; Sternberg, Grigorenko & Kidd, 2005).

Tantalizing evidence for “g” lies in the fact that people differ in the speed with which they process information (Brody, 2006; Rushton & Jensen, 2005). Intelligence test scores also correlate with various indicators of life success, such as occupational status. However, the problem is that the gateway to high-status professions, such as law and medicine, is school performance, which is what the tests predict (Sternberg, 1997; Sternberg, Grigorenko, & Bundy, 2001).

One problem with believing that IQ tests offer a total X-ray into intellectual capacities is that people may carry around their test-score ranking as an inner wound. A psychologist supervisor once confessed to me that he was really not that intelligent because his IQ was only 105. He devalued the criterion the scores were supposed to predict—his years of real-life success—by accepting what, in his case, was an invalid score!

A high test score can produce its own problems. Suppose the student who told me his IQ was 140 decided he was so intelligent he didn’t have to open a book in my class. He might be in for a nasty surprise when he found out that what really matters is your ability to work. Or that person might worry: “I’d better not try in Dr. Belsky’s class because, if I do put forth effort and don’t get an A, I will discover that my astronomical IQ score was wrong.” (Recall the research in Chapter 6 that showed how telling elementary schoolers “you are smart” made them afraid to tackle challenging academic tasks.)

Even the firmest advocate of “g” would admit that some of us are marvelous mechanically and miserable at math, wonderful at writing but hopeless at reading maps.

Toward a Broader View of Intelligence

But if intelligence involves different abilities, such as Josiah’s mechanical talents (recall the introductory vignette), perhaps we should go beyond the IQ test to measure those skills in a broader way. Psychologists Robert Sternberg and Howard Gardner have devoted their careers to providing this broader view of what it means to be smart.

STERNBERG’S SUCCESSFUL INTELLIGENCE. Robert Sternberg (1984, 1996, 1997) has been a man on a mission. In hundreds of publications, this psychologist transformed the way we think about intelligence. Sternberg’s passion comes from the heart. He began school with a problem:

As an elementary school student, I failed miserably on the IQ tests. . . . Just the sight of the school psychologist coming into the classroom to give . . . an IQ test sent me into a wild panic attack. . . . You don’t need to be a genius to figure out what happens next. My teachers in the elementary school grades certainly didn’t expect much from me. . . . So I gave them what they expected. . . . Were the teachers disappointed? Not on your life. They were happy that I was giving them what they expected.

(Sternberg, 1997, pp. 17–18)

Sternberg actually believes that traditional intelligence tests do damage in the school environment. As I implied earlier, the relationship between IQ scores and schooling is somewhat bidirectional. Children who attend inferior schools, or who miss months of classroom work due to illness, perform more poorly on intelligence tests (Sternberg, 1997). Worse yet, Sternberg argues, when schools assign children to lower-track, less demanding classes on the basis of their low test scores, their IQs gradually decline year by year.

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Most importantly, Sternberg (1984) believes that conventional intelligence tests are too limited. Although they do measure one type of intelligence, they do not cover the total terrain.

IQ tests, according to Sternberg, measure analytic intelligence. They test how well people can solve academic-type problems. They do not measure creative intelligence, the ability to “think outside the box,” or to formulate problems in new ways. Nor do they measure a third type of intelligence called practical intelligence, common sense, or “street smarts.”

Brazilian street children who make their living selling flowers show impressive levels of practical intelligence. They understand how to handle money in the real world. However, they do poorly on measures of traditional IQ (Sternberg, 1984, 1997). Others, such as Winston Churchill, can be terrible scholars but flower after they leave their academic careers. Then, there are people who excel at IQ test taking and traditional schooling but fail abysmally once in the real world. Sternberg argues that to be successfully intelligent in life requires a balance of all three “intelligences.” (As a postscript, Sternberg recently added a fourth type of intellectual gift—that rare attribute called wisdom. See Sternberg, 2010.)

GARDNER’S MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES. Howard Gardner (1998) did not have Sternberg’s problem with intelligence tests:

As a child I was a good student and a good test taker . . . but . . . music . . . and the arts were important parts of my life. Therefore when I asked myself what optimal human development is, I became more convinced that [we] had to . . . broaden the definition of intelligence to include these activities, too.

(Gardner, 1998, p. 3)

Gardner is not passionately opposed to standard intelligence tests. Still, he believes that using the single IQ score is less informative than measuring children’s unique talents and gifts. (Gardner’s motto is: “Ask not how intelligent you are, but how are you intelligent?”) According to Gardner’s (2004, 2006) multiple intelligences theory, human abilities come in eight, and possibly nine, distinctive forms.

In addition to the verbal and mathematical skills measured by traditional IQ tests, people may be gifted in interpersonal intelligence, or understanding other people. Their talents may lie in intrapersonal intelligence, the skill of understanding oneself. They may be gifted in spatial intelligence, grasping where objects are arranged in space. (You might rely on a friend who is gifted in spatial intelligence to beautifully arrange the furniture in your house.) Some people have high levels of musical intelligence, or kinesthetic intelligence (the ability to use the body well), or naturalist intelligence (the gift for dealing with animals or plants and trees). There may even be an existential (spiritual) intelligence, too.

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EVALUATING THE THEORIES. These perspectives on intelligence are exciting. Some of you may be thinking, “I’m gifted in practical or musical intelligence. I always knew there was more to being smart than school success!” But let’s use our practical intelligence to critique these approaches. Why did Gardner select these particular eight abilities and not others (Barnett, Ceci, & Williams, 2006; White, 2006)? Yes, parents may marvel at a 6-year-old’s creative or kinesthetic intelligence; but, it is analytic intelligence that will get this child into the school gifted program, not his artistic productions or how well his body moves (Eisner, 2004).

We can also criticize Sternberg’s ideas. Is there such a thing as creative or practical intelligence apart from a particular field? Adopting the idea that there is a single “creative” intelligence might lead to the conclusion that Michelangelo would be a talented musician or that Mozart could beautifully paint the Sistine Chapel.

The bottom line is that neither Gardner nor Sternberg has developed replacements for our current IQ test. But this does not matter. Their mission is to transform the way schools teach (Gardner & Moran, 2006; Sternberg, 2010).

The diversity of intelligences, cultures, and educational experiences at home is matched by the diversity of American schools. There are small rural schools and large urban schools, public schools and private schools, highly traditional schools where students wear uniforms and schools that teach to Gardner’s intelligences. There are single-sex schools, charter schools, religious schools, magnet schools that cater to gifted students, and alternative schools for children with behavior problems or learning disabilities.

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Can students thrive in every school? The answer is yes, provided schools have an intense commitment to student learning and teachers can excite students to learn. The rest of this chapter focuses on these challenges.

Examining Successful Schools

What qualities make a school successful? Insights come from surveying elementary schools that are beating the odds. These schools, while serving high fractions of economically disadvantaged children, have students who are thriving.

In the Vista School, located on a Native American reservation, for instance, virtually all the children are eligible for a free lunch. However, Vista consistently boasts dramatic improvements on statewide reading and math tests. According to Ms. Thompson, the principal, “Our job is not to make excuses for students, but just to give them every possible opportunity. At Vista, teachers refuse to dumb down the curriculum. We offer tons of high-level conceptual work” (quoted in Borko and others, 2003, p. 177).

At Beacon Elementary School, two out of every three students exceed state-mandated writing standards despite coming from impoverished backgrounds. Here, Susie Murphy, the principal, comments: “You can . . . say, these kids are poor. You just need to love them. Or you can come to a school like this where the philosophy is that the best way to love them is to give them an education so they can make choices in their life” (quoted in Borko and others, 2003, p. 186). Beacon teachers, she continues, “are here . . . by choice. They are committed to proving that kids who live in poverty can learn every bit as well as other kids” (p. 192). At Beacon, the teachers’ goal is to challenge all their students. The school builds in opportunities for teachers to share ideas: “We have mini-workshops in geometry, or problem solving. Our whole staff talks about the general focus and where math is going” (p. 194).

Committed teachers, professional collaboration, and a mission to “deliver for all our kids” explains why a rural Florida elementary school, serving mainly low-income children, dramatically boosted the test scores of its most struggling students in a single year. Rather than isolating boys and girls with “learning differences,” this school took the unusual step of embedding every child into its academic life. Before instituting their focus on inclusiveness, only one in three at-risk child ranked proficient in math and language arts. At the year’s end, these rates shot upward—to roughly two in three.

As Ms. Richards, the principal, explained: “We’ve got to improve to meet all kids needs. . . . That’s how we started and it didn’t turn into. . . a fix for one group, but how to make . . . everyone successful.” A special education teacher named Ms. Wood probably summed up this school’s teaching strategy best when she said, “We have ongoing conversations about challenging students . . . at our school . . . the meat of the curriculum is presented to everyone” (adapted from McLeskey, Waldron, & Redd, 2014, p. 63).

To summarize, successful schools set high standards. Teachers believe that every child can benefit from challenging, conceptual work. These schools offer an excess of nurture—both to students, and to one another. In Baumrind’s parenting-styles framework, these schools are authoritative in their approach.

Now that we have the outlines for what is effective, let’s tackle the challenge every teacher faces: getting students eager to learn.

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Producing Eager Learners

But to go to school in a summer morn,

O! it drives all joy away;

Under a cruel eye outworn,

The little ones spend the day

In sighing and dismay.

—William Blake, from “The Schoolboy” (1794)

Jean Piaget believed that the hunger to learn is more important than food or drink. Why then do children over the centuries lament, “I hate school”? The reason is that learning loses its joy when it becomes a requirement instead of an activity we choose to engage in for ourselves.

THE PROBLEM: AN EROSION OF INTRINSIC MOTIVATION. Developmentalists divide motivation into two categories. Intrinsic motivation refers to self-generated actions, those we take from our inner desires. When Piaget described our hunger to learn, he was referring to intrinsic motivations. Extrinsic motivation refers to activities that we undertake in order to get external reinforcers, such as praise or pay, or a good grade.

Unfortunately, the learning activity you are currently engaged in falls into the extrinsic category. You know you will be tested on what you are reading. Worse yet, if you decided to pick up this book for an intrinsic reason—because you wanted to learn about human development—the very fact that you might be graded would make your basic interest fall off.

Numerous studies show that when adults give external reinforcers for activities that are intrinsically motivating, children are less likely to want to perform those activities for themselves (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008; Stipek, 1996). In one classic example, researchers selected preschoolers who were intrinsically interested in art. When they gave a “good player” award (an outside reinforcer) for the art projects, the children later showed a dramatic decline in their interest in doing art for fun (Lepper, Greene, & Nisbett, 1973). This research makes sense of the question you may have wondered about: “Why, after taking that literature class, am I less interested in reading on my own?”

Young children enter kindergarten brimming with intrinsic motivation. When does this love affair with school turn sour? Think back to your childhood, and you will realize that enchantment wanes during early elementary school, when teachers provide those external reinforcers—grades (Stipek, 1997). Moreover, during first or second grade, classroom learning often becomes abstract and removed from life. Rote activities, like filling in worksheets and memorizing multiplication tables, have replaced the creative hands-on projects of kindergarten. So ironically school may be the very setting where Piaget’s little-scientist activities are least likely to occur.

Then, as children enter concrete operations—at around age 8—they begin comparing their performance to that of their peers. This competitive orientation erodes intrinsic motivation (Dweck, 1986; Self-Brown & Mathews, 2003). The focus shifts from “I want to improve for myself” to “I want to do better than my friends.”

In sum, several forces explain why many children dislike school: School involves extrinsic reinforcers (grades). School learning, because it often involves rote memorization, is not intrinsically interesting. In school, children are not free to set their own learning goals. Their performance is judged by how they measure up to the rest of the class.

It is no wonder, therefore, that studies in Western nations document an alarming decline in intrinsic motivation as children travel through school (Katz, Kaplan, & Gueta, 2010; Spinath & Steinmayr, 2008). Susan Harter (1981) asked children to choose between two statements: “Some kids work really hard to get good grades” (referring to extrinsic motivation) or “Some kids work really hard because they like to learn new things” (measuring intrinsic motives). When she gave her measure to hundreds of California public school children, intrinsic motivation scores fell off from third to ninth grade.

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Still, external reinforcers can be vital hooks that get us intrinsically involved. Have you ever reluctantly read a book for a class and found yourself captivated by the subject? Perhaps you enrolled in this course because it was required for graduation but are now so interested in the material that you want to make some aspect of developmental science your career. Given that extrinsically motivating activities are basic to school and life, how can we make them work best?

THE SOLUTION: MAKING EXTRINSIC LEARNING PART OF US. To answer this question, Edward Deci and Richard Ryan (1985, 2000) make the point that we engage in some types of extrinsic learning unwillingly: “I have to take that terrible anatomy course because it is a requirement for graduation.” We enthusiastically embrace other extrinsic tasks, which may not be inherently interesting, because we identify with their larger goal: “I want to memorize every bone of the body because that information is vital to my nursing career.” In the first situation, the learning activity is irrelevant. In the second, the task has become intrinsic because it is connected to our inner self. Therefore, the key to transforming school learning from a chore into a pleasure is to make extrinsic learning relate to children’s goals and desires.

The most boring tasks take on an intrinsic aura when they speak to children’s passions. Imagine, for instance, how a first grader’s motivation to sound out words might change if a teacher, knowing that student was captivated by dinosaurs, gave that boy the job of sounding out dinosaur names. Deci and Ryan believe that learning becomes intrinsic when it satisfies our basic need for relatedness (attachment). Think back to the discussion of schools that beat the odds. Imagine how motivated those children might be to learn to read when they understood that their success would make their beloved school proud. Finally, extrinsic tasks take on an intrinsic feeling when they foster autonomy, or offer choices of how to do our work (Patall, Cooper, & Robinson, 2008; Ryan and others, 2006).

Studies around the globe suggest that when teachers and parents take away children’s autonomy—by controlling, criticizing, or micromanaging learning tasks—they erode intrinsic motivation (see Jang, Reeve, & Deci, 2010; Soenens & Vansteenkiste, 2010). We can see this principle in our own lives. By continually denigrating our work, or hovering over every move, a controlling supervisor has the uncanny ability to turn us off to the most intrinsically interesting job.

Our need for autonomy explains why, as I suggested in the section on successful schools, assigning high-level conceptual learning tasks can be effective with every child. Conversely, the poisonous effects of taking away autonomy suggests why the U.S. practice of grading teachers (an extrinsic motivator) based on students’ performance on standardized exams erodes satisfaction in this field (“I can’t teach the way I want. I have to teach to the test or I’ll get fired”). Plus, because curriculum changes are typically dictated from on “high” (and so take away autonomy), it makes sense that teachers can be unmotivated to implement new reading and math directives even when those changes might work.

But, in a national experiment, when certain school districts gave staff the chance to choose between several new programs and provided clear data about their effectiveness, teachers modified their behavior—and, after 4 years, students made impressive gains on standard reading tests (Slavin and others, 2013). Therefore, providing autonomy (giving choices) and fostering relevance (pointing out the importance of an activity to that person’s goals) benefits both students and teachers!

Table 7.5 summarizes these messages for teachers: Focus on relevance, enhance relatedness, and provide autonomy. The table also pulls together other teaching tips based on Gardner’s and Sternberg’s perspectives on intelligence and our look at what makes schools successful. Now, let’s conclude by touching briefly on that sea change in the U.S. public school landscape—the Common Core State Standards.

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The Common Core State Standards embody the equity and inclusiveness that we hope for when children arrive on the planet in this enlightened day and age. I hope this chapter has alerted you to generally think about development in a more enlightened, inclusive way. Child-rearing priorities are shaped by our particular society. Poverty-level children need a more level academic playing field. We need to provide an environment that allows parents to effectively parent and schools to teach in a way that permits every child to succeed.

Question 7.7

1. Both children will perform equally well on school readiness tests, but Adam will fall behind because he is likely to go to a poor-quality kindergarten.

2. Devin will outperform Adam on school readiness tests, and the gap will probably widen because Adam will go to a poor-quality kindergarten.

b

Question 7.8

Malik has a learning disability.

Question 7.9

1. The tests are not reliable; children’s scores typically change a lot during the elementary school years.

2. The tests are not valid predictors of school performance.

3. As people have different abilities, a single IQ score may not tell us much about a child’s unique gifts.

4. As poor children are at a disadvantage in taking the test, you should not use the IQ scores as an index of “genetic school-related talents” for low-income children.

c and d

Question 7.10

Analytic intelligence . . . creative intelligence and practical intelligence . . . multiple intelligences . . . Josh’s strengths are in musical, kinesthetic, and interpersonal intelligence.

Question 7.11

You should advise giving these children high-level creative work and embed them in the life of the school.

Question 7.12

(a) Intrinsic motivation is self-generated—we work at something simply because it gives us joy. Extrinsic motivation refers to activities propelled by external reinforcers like grades. (b) Ask yourself: Am I doing this because I love it or only because this activity results in an external reward? (c) 1. Make disliked, extrinsic tasks relevant to a larger personal goal. (“Cleaning the house will help me become a more organized person. Plus, it’s great exercise, so I’ll become healthier.”) 2. Increase your sense of autonomy or feeling of having choices around this activity. (“I’ll do my housecleaning at the time of day that feels least burdensome while I listen to my favorite CD.”) 3. Enhance attachments (“If my significant other comes home to a clean house, she’ll feel wonderful!”)