The role of intrapersonal intelligence in self directed learning

Supporting students to be self-directed learners in classrooms is currently more important than it has ever been in the past. The rapidly changing nature of society, the demands of the 'new economy' and the contemporary understanding of life long learning have combined to highlight the need for students to be increasingly independent learners. This study investigated eight and nine year old children's capabilities to develop skills in the intrapersonal intelligence domain as defined by Howard Gardner. A group of twenty-seven students identified as low achievers in English were introduced to a program specifically designed to foster their self-knowledge as learners and establish how this self-knowledge may be used to improve their self-management skills in the English learning environment. The results obtained evidenced a considerable improvement in the students' self knowledge and attested to how this impacted on their perceptions of themselves as learners and their behaviours in the learning context. The students grew increasingly aware of their own relative strengths and used this information to negotiate their learning environment, to identify strategies that worked for them and to take increasingly more responsibility for their own learnings.