Five Minds For The Future

Howard Gardner's newest book (2007), Five Minds for the Future, outlines the specific cognitive abilities that will be sought and cultivated by business leaders in the years ahead.

The five types of mind that Gardner believes will be most needed in the future are:

The Disciplinary Mind: the mastery of major schools of thought, including science, mathematics, and history, and of at least one professional craft.

The Synthesizing Mind: the ability to integrate ideas from different disciplines or spheres into a coherent whole and to communicate that integration to others.

The Creating Mind: the capacity to uncover and clarify new problems, questions and phenomena.

The Respectful Mind: awareness of and appreciation for differences among human beings and human groups.

The Ethical Mind: fulfillment of one's responsibilities as a worker and as a citizen.

In the sub-category of each of these minds, Gardner outlines the skills and intellectual approaches that adults will need to tap in order to function successfully in the 21st century. Unlike Tony Wagner, who enters the 21st century skills conversation with a defined list of the skills schools need to add to their programming, Gardner describes the end-product of education in these minds, suggesting that one specialize in a particular mindset.

How are we creating these types of minds in our students?

Video Intro of Gardner

This is a good video about the impact of the theory of multiple intelligence in context of the other thinkers in the field of measuring IQ.

Five Minds Excerpts

Howard Gardner is suggesting that the Five Minds that he describes increase one's likelihood of success in fulfillment in a hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world where information overload is almost a permanent state of being for many. His newest books is an extension, or is at least congruent, with his theory of Multiple Intelligences in that no one person is realistically expected to be competent at all aptitudes.

Below are mini-descriptions of each mind or aptitude in Gardner's own words:

"The disciplined mind has mastered at least one way of thinking. Without at least one discipline...the individual is destined to march to someone else's tune." Key to understanding this mindset is to understand the difference between learning a discipline versus learning subject matter. Learning a discipline means that you learn to think in a trained way like every other person working in that discipline. Scientists are a good example. Scientists observe the world, develop hypotheses and theories, design experiments etc. There are a myriad of subject areas in science. Subject matter would be the facts, formulas, and historical figures etc. within a certain subject ares. A disciplined mind is a developed and fluid critical thinking framework that is developed.

"The synthesizing mind takes information from disparate sources and puts it together in ways that make sense to the synthesizer and also other people. The capacity to synthesize becomes ever more crucial as information continues to mount at dizzying rates."

"The creating mind breaks new ground. It puts forth new ideas, poses unfamiliar questions, conjures up fresh ways of thinking, arrives at unexpected answers. In doing so, the creating minds seeks to remain at least one step ahead of computers."

"The respectful mind notes and welcomes differences among human individuals and between human groups [cultures]...In a world where we are all interlinked, in-tolerance or disrespect is no longer a viable option."

"The ethical mind conceptualizes how workers can serve purposes beyond self-interest. The ethical minds acts on the basis of analysis [ethical literacy]." Cultural and religious values would play an important part in developing the ethical mind, as well as domains such as philosophy and theology.

Podcast - Five Minds

Here is the link to Harvard Business Review Ideacast with Howard Gardner"

HBR Ideacast #37: Five Minds for the Future (13:48)

Five Minds for the Future: This week, IdeaCast Producer Steve Singer talks with Howard Gardner, author of the new Harvard Business School Press book Five Minds for the Future. We live in a time of vast changes, and those changes, says Gardner, call for entirely new ways of learning and thinking. In our HBR IdeaCast interview, Gardner defines the cognitive abilities that will command a premium in the years ahead, and helps us understand how we can cultivate them.

Another Gardner Podcast

Here is another podcast option:

Austalian Institute of Company Directors Five Minds For The Future (29:49)

This interview focuses on the synthesizing brain as it relates to the work that a board member is called to do.

How Children Learn

This interview talk specifically about The Disciplined Mind.

Howard Gardner: How Children Learn on CNBC

Howard Gardner and Multiple Intelligences

Howard Gardner is an American psychologist who is based at Harvard University and is best known for his theory of multiple intelligences. The categories of intelligence that Gardner has quantified are: 1) bodily-kinesthetic 2) interpersonal 3) verbal-linguistic 4) logical-mathematical 5) naturalistic 6) intrapersonal 7) visual-spatial 8) musical. His theory was laid out in the 1983 book, Frames of Mind: The Theory of Multiple Intelligences.

The theory of multiple intelligences was proposed by Gardner in 1983. His motivation was to more accurately define the concept of intelligence. His theory argues that intelligence, as it is traditionally defined, does not sufficiently encompass the wide variety of abilities humans display. In his conception, a child who masters multiplication easily is not necessarily more intelligent overall than a child who struggles to do so. The second child may be stronger in another kind of intelligence, and therefore may best learn the given material through a different approach, may excel in a field outside of mathematics. The theory suggests that, rather than relying on a uniform or one-size-fits-all curriculum, schools should offer "individual-centered education" with curriculum tailored to the needs of each child.

Theory of Multiple Intelligence wiki

Howard Garner's homepage