Sternberg's Theory Of Intelligence Essay

Sternberg’s lifelong love-hate affair with intelligence testing is certainly an entertaining, if not eye-opening, read. His grappling with test anxiety and subsequent development of a standardised intelligence test before he was even in his teens had me thinking on the use of Intelligence Quotient (IQ) as a predictor of intelligence. Sternberg’s early struggles as an undergraduate before becoming an authority in psychology leaves me to wonder if what I teach my students in class is really preparing them for the real world.

IQ vs Intelligence

Just like many people around the world, we find it difficult here in Singapore to truly understand what intelligence is. We have come to accept that intelligent people are those who are book smart and do well enough in tests to enable them to

Sternberg remarked that the “demands of the field bear little or no resemblance to the demands or the training that is needed in order to enter the field”. I fear that we may be extinguishing our students passion for certain fields by having unrealistic expectations (some of which are beyond our control) of our students in teaching some subjects.

While I applaud the shift of focus of the science syllabus from rote learning and memory work towards a more analytical and practical approach (which is the essence of science, isn’t it?), I wonder how many science teachers have actually fully utilised the freedom of the white space allowed to getting students to be engaged in creative work that really matters? I often hear of teachers’ complaints about there being no room for creative work in the science curriculum as, at the end of the day, students (and to a certain extent, teachers too!) would be judged on their performance on one-off, pen-and-paper high stakes