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EDUCATIONAL PSYCHOLOGIST, 55(2/3), 65-72Copyright 1998, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Principles of Teaching for Successful IntelligenceRobert J. Sternberg

Yale University

Attempts to apply psychological theories to education can falter on the translation of the theoryinto educational practice. Often, this translation is not clear. Therefore, when a program doesnot succeed, it is not clear whether the lack of success was due to the inadequacy of the theoryor the inadequacy of the implementation of the theory. A set of basic principles for translatinga theory into practice can help clarify just what an educational implementation should (andshould not) look like. This article presents 12 principles for translating a triarchic theory ofsuccessful intelligence into educational practice.It has sometimes been said that "there is nothing so practicalas a good theory," but how practical a theory is depends onhow the theory is used. Acad emics and educators alike knowthat there is often a large gap between theory and practice andthat the ways in w hich theories are put into practice sometimesleave much to be desired (Sternberg & Spear-Swerling, 1996).To the extent tha t there is a field of educational psycho logy,though, it should serve to bridge the gap between psychologi-cal theory and educa tional practice. One way of bridging thisgap is to be clear on how psychological theory should betranslated into educational practice.

One potential solution to the problem of inadequate trans-lations of theory into practice is the provision of a set ofprinciples for translating theoretical ideas into practice. Thisarticle attempts to provide a set of 12 such principles for onetheory of intelligen ce, the triarchic theory of successful inte l-ligence (Sternberg, 1997b). The term successful intelligenceis used to avoid debates about what intelligence "really is."Here, successful intelligence is defined as that set of mentalabilities used to achieve on e's goals in life, given a sociocul-tural context, through adaptation to, selection of, and shapingof environments. This theory is based on a notion of humanabilities (Sternberg, 1985), according to which successfulintelligence involves three aspects that are interrelated butlargely d istinct: analytical, creative, and practical thinking.

RATIONALE FOR A SET OF PRINCIPLESThe av oidance of "translation errors" is one reason for havinga set of principles, but there are at least three others of equal

Requests for reprints should be sent to Robert J. Sternberg, Departmentof Psychology, Yale University, Box 208205, New Haven, CT 06520-8 205.

importance. A second reason is to help teachers have concreteguidelines by which they can evaluate themselves in terms ofwhether they are following the theory. A third reason is toallow teachers maximum fiexibility within that set of princi-ples. Programs based on theories often do not fit into theregular curriculum of the school, and their implementationmay require time-consuming and expensive training. A set ofprinciples allows teachers to apply their skills to the maximumwithin a set of guidelines that may help the teachers im provetheir teaching as well as their assessment of students' pro-gress. A fourth reason is that, if a program following a set ofexplicit principles is successful above and beyond conven-tional instruction, the program can be credited; if it is notincrementally successful, a set of principles can be helpful inpinning down the blame for the prog ram 's lack of success. Itis always tempting for a theorist to blame teachers for theirinadequate "translation" of the theory into practice. How ever,if the theorist provides a set of principles and the teachersapply them, then the inference to be drawn from a lack ofsuccess is that it is the theory, not the implementation, thatdeserves to be blamed. In contrast, if the principles are notadequately implemented, then one can blame the implemen-tation rather than the theorist.

These principles take into account what the theory ofsuccessful intelligence encompasses as universal aspects ofcognition as well as sources of group and individual differ-ences. For example, higher order executive processes, ormetacomponents, such as defining the nature of a problem,are important in any society. However, what constitutes avalid definition of a problem can differ from one society orculture to another (Greenfield, 1997), as Cole, Ga y, Glick,and Sharp (1971) discovered when the Kpelle legitimatelydefined as a functional-sorting problem what Western adultswould have defined as a categorical-sorting pro blem. Mo re-

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over, within both the Kpelle and W estern cultures, individualsdiffer in how w ell they define problem s as well as in how wellthey solve them, whether it concerns sorting problems orproblems of any other kind.

TWELVE PRINCIPLES OFIMPLEMENTATIONConsider now the 12 principles. Many of these principles mayhave been specified by other theorists in other contexts,although the conjunction of them is perhaps unique:

1. The goal of instruction is the creation of expertisethrough a well and flexibly organized, easily retrievable,knowledge base. Experts differ from novices largely in theirpossession of a large, flexibly organized, and easily retriev-able knowledge base (Chi, Glaser, & Farr, 1988; Ericsson,1996; Ericsson & S mith, 1991). An expert student, like anyother kind of expert, has such a knowledge base available(Sternberg & Williams, in press). Indeed, such expert studentsare likely to be those viewed and labeled as high in abilities(Sternberg, 1998a).

This princ iple im plies that the main goal of instruction forsuccessful intelligence really is largely the same as the maingoal of traditional instruction. Programs of instruction inpsychology or anything else, for example, emphasize first andforemost that one cannot think analytically, creatively, prac-tically, or any other way if one does not have a knowledgebase with which to think (Sternberg, 1996, 1997a, 1998b). Ifthere is a difference in the current point of view, it is in theinsistence that knowledge not only be acquired but that it bewell and flexibly organized so that it may be easily retrievedand processed in different w ays (e.g., analytically, creatively,and practically, as discussed later). The risk of traditionalinstruction is that, even if students do acquire knowledge, itwill end up inert: The students will be unable to retrieve theknowledge when they need it. The techniques described laterhelp ensure that the know ledge w ill, in fact, be accessible.

2. Instruction should involve teaching for analytical, crea-tive, and practical thinking, as well as for mem ory learning.Teaching for analytical, creative, and practical thinking canbe done with any su bject ma tter at any grade level (Sternberg,1997c). Wh at does teaching in each of these ways look like?

Teaching for analytical thinking means encouraging stu-dents to (a) analyze (e.g., a literary plot, a theory in thesciences, a mathematical problem ); (b) compare and contrast(e.g., two characters in a novel, two systems of go vernment);(c) evaluate (e.g., a poem, a social custom, a strategy intennis); or (d) explain (e.g., the use of gramm ar in a sentence,an opinion regarding a short story, the solution to a mathe-matical or scientific problem ).Teaching for creative thinking means encouraging stu-dents to (a) create (e.g., a poem, a scientific investigation, asystem of governm ent for the classroom); (b) design (e.g., anew means of transportation, a new game, a comfortable

home); (c) imagine (what life would be like in another coun-try, how bacteria come to infect us , what it would be like tobe president of a country); or (d) suppose (e.g., worldwidetemperatures increased 5 on average, people were paid toinform on neighbors w ho do not su pport the political party inpower, the ozone layer was completely depleted).Teaching for practical thinking m eans encouraging studentsto (a) use (e.g., a lesson that a literary character learned in his oher life, a mathematical lesson in a supermarket, a lesson learnedon the playing field in everyday life); (b) apply (e.g., whastudents learned in a foreign language classroom to an i nteractiowith a foreigner, a lesson from history in the presen t, a scientificprinciple to everyday life); (c) implement (e.g., a plan for startina business, an idea for fund-raising, a scheme for increasingstudent participation in school go vernment).Consider, for example, a program designed for teachingcollege-level psychology, a prepublication version of Sternberg(1998b; and described in Sternberg & Clinkenbeard, 1995;Sternberg, Ferrari, Clinkenbeard, & Grigorenko, 1996). Supposone w ere teaching about alternative theories of depression. Asan analytical task, we asked students to compare and contrasttwo theories, such as the psychoanalytic and cogn itive theoriesof depression. As a creative task, we asked students to generatetheir own theory of depression, building on but going beyondpast theories. In addition, as a practical task, we asked studentshow they m ight use the theories of depression they had studiedin order to help a classmate who is depressed.Teaching for memory involves purposefully and explicitlycomm itting facts to memory. Som etimes students need to do

so . However, students are as likely to learn through implicilearning, in which they process the facts analytically, crea-tively, practically, or by all, rather than purposefully trying tocommit facts to mem ory. By encoding the material in mu ltipleways, they are more likely to find that material later to beflexibly organized and easily accessible for retrieval.3. Assessment should also involve analytical, creative, anpractical as well as memory components. When one adoptsthe theory of successful intelligence, instruction and assess-ment are of one piece. The kinds of activities used in assess-ments are very similar to the kinds of activities used ininstruction. Assessments need to be balanced in terms of theneed for analytical, creative, and practical components and interms of forms of items used. The question of whether con-ventional forms of assessment, such as multiple-choice orshort-answer ones, are better than more modern forms ofassessment, such as performance and portfolio ones, createsa false dichotomy. Assessment outcomes are optimized w hena variety of kinds of assessments are used that enable studentsto show what they know in a variety of ways.For example, in a science course, an analytical assessm entmight ask students to analyze a theory or an experiment; acreative assessment, to construct their own theory or experi-ment; and a practical assessment, to show how a theory orexperimental result could be applied in the everyday world(Sternberg et al., 1996). In a literature course, an analytical

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assessment might ask students to analyze the ending of astory; a creative assessment, to end the story in a differentway, taking into account modern mores; and a practicalassessment, to apply the message of the ending of the story tothe students' everyday lives (Sternberg, 1997c). In a socialstudies course, an analytical assessment might ask students tocompare and contrast two systems of government; a creativeassessment, to suggest and defend their own proposed originalform of government; and a practical assessment, to show how aproposed system of government could be made to work in thestudents' ow n country (Sternberg, Torff, & G rigorenko, 1998).In mathematics, an analytical assessment m ight ask students tosolve a set of mathematical word problems; a creative assess-ment, to construct their own set of mathematical w ord problems;anda practical assessment, to apply wh at they have learned fromsolving a set of m athematical w ord problems to a problem theymight encounter in their daily lives.

4. Instruction and assessment should enable students toidentify and capitalize on their strengths. Instruction thatemphasizes memorization skills benefits students whosestrength is in memorization. However, many students haveother strengths that are not brought to bear in such a learningsituation. Optimal instruction allows students to capitalize ontheir strengths. Indeed, our research has shown that whenstudents are allowed to do so, their academic performanceimproves significantly and substantially (Sternberg, 1997b;Sternberg et al., 1996; Sternberg, Grigorenko, Ferrari, &Clinkenbeard, in press).

In our study, high-school students were tested for theiranalytical, creative, and practical abilities in the verbal, quan-titative, and figural domains using mu ltiple-choice questions,and were also tested in these three domains using essayquestions (Sternberg, 1993). Of the 326 students tested, asubset was identified in terms of being high (a) especially inanalytical abilities; (b) especially in creative abilities; (c)especially in practical abilities; (d) in analytical, creativ e, andpractical abilities; or (e) in none of analytical, creative, andpractical abilities. A total of 199 of these students came totake a summ er program in college-level introductory psychol-ogy at Yale. T he students were placed in instructional sectionsthat either matched or mismatched their patterns of abilities.For exam ple, an analytical student m ight be placed in a groupthat emphasized primarily analytical instruction (match) or ina group that em phasized primarily creative instruction (mis-match). All students were assessed for memory, analytical,creative, and practical achievement. We found that studentswho were matched in instruction to their pattern of abilitygenerally outperformed those who were mismatched. Thus,analytical students especially benefit from a dose of analyti-cally oriented instruction, creative students from a dose ofcreatively oriented instruction, and practical students from adose of practically oriented instruction (Sternberg et al.,1996).

Teaching to students' strengths not only allows the stu-dents to improve their academic performance but also allows

them to increase their self-efficacy: They see that they canaccomplish w ork that before they may not have believed theycould accomplish. It may also show students that they havethe ability to p ursue a career that they otherwise thought theydid not have the ability to pursue. For example, a creativelearner might do poorly in an introductory course in a topicbut be quite successful in the job that emanates from havingstudied that topic. Thus , the best teachers are not necessarilythose who received grades of A in their introductory cou rsesin Foundations of Education.

5. Instruction and assessment should enable students toidentify, correct, and, as necessary, compensate for weak-nesses. The w orld does not and cannot always give us oppor-tunities to learn in our preferred way of learning. We need tolearn to accommodate. For this reason, it is important tocorrect, if possible, or otherwise to compensate for weak-nesses. Students, thus, need to learn some of the time in a waythat does not ideally suit them so they can develop learningand thinking skills that are in need of d evelopment.The implication of this fact is that, on the whole, instruc-tion should probably not be individualized. Rather, all stu-dents should be given opportunities to learn analytically,creatively, and practically, as well as via m emory. In this way,they have some opportunities to capitalize on strengths butalso other opportunities to correct or compensate for weak-nesses. When taught in all of these different ways, studentshave been shown to perform better than when they are taughtonly for memo ry or even than when they are taught for criticalthinking as well as for m emory.

In our study, third graders in two schools in a lowersocioeconomic status area of Raleigh, North Carolina,were taught an existing social studies unit on com munitiesin one of three ways (Sternberg, Torff, et al., in press).Either they were taught in a way that emphasized memoryinstruction only (the existing unit), in a way that empha-sized critical (analytical thinking) as well, or in a way thatemphasized analytical, creative, and practical thinking aswell as memo ry. In another condition, rising eighth gradersin Fresno, California, and in Baltimore, Maryland, weretaught an existing psychology course via the same threedifferent ways of teaching. The achievement of all studentswas assessed through multiple-choice memory items aswell as analytical, creative, and practical performance-as-sessment items. As expected, we found that students whowere taught for successful intelligence (analytically, crea-tively, and practically) generally outperformed other stu-dents on the performance assessments. More interesting,perhaps, students in the successful-intelligence conditionalso generally outperformed students in the other instruc-tional conditions on the multiple-choice memory items(Sternberg, Torff, et al., 1998).

Thus, teachers do not have to individualize instruction tostudents. Simply by teaching in all three ways (analytically,creatively, and practically) to all students, teachers enablestudents to capitalize on their strengths and to correct or

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6 8 STERNBERGcompensate for their weaknesses and, thereby, enable thestudents to learn better. Teachers who h ave reservations aboutthis method of teaching because their students would h ave totake memory-based tests should be reassured by the fact thatthe students wh o were taught for successful intelligence per-formed better even on memory-based multiple-choiceachievement-test items.6. Instruction and assessment should involve utiliza-tion, at various times, of all of seven metacomponen ts ofthe problem-solving cycle, including (a) problem identi-fication, (b) problem definition, (c) formulation of prob-lem-solving strategies, (d) formulation of mental andexternal representations and organizations of problemsand their associated information, (e) allocation of re-sources, (f) monitoring of problem solving, and (g)evaluation of problem solving. Problem solving occursin a cycle rather than a straight line (Sternberg, 1996):The solut ions to today's problems form the bases oftomorrow's problems. Metacomponents of problemsolving are executive processes used to plan, monitor,and control problem solving.

Many psycho logists and educators believe that identify-ing and defining problems are at least as important assolving the problems (e.g., Arlin, 1975; Bransford & Stein,1993; Sternberg, 1986). Students should not always begiven problems but rather should have opportunities tofigure out for themselves w hat are important problem s thatare worth solving in the first place. Having determinedwhat these problems are, the students should be givenopportunities to solve them.

The problem-solving cycle can be applied in almost anyschool-related task. When it is applied, the steps are notnecessarily executed in the order given previously, and theymay be repeated any number of times. Most likely, applicationof the steps will be interrupted by num erous other tasks thata student (or teacher) needs to get done. Thus, the cycle shouldbe flexibly and interactively implemented, rather than rigidlyimplemented in any one prescribed manner.

An example of the potential use of these principles wou ldbe in collecting information for writing a paper (for anycourse). Identification of a problem is involved in the selec-tion of a topic for the paper, say, how the institution ofPerestroika during the reign of Gorbachev resulted in thecrumbling of the Soviet Empire. However, almost any prob-lem, once identified, needs to be further defmed and specified.Exactly what were the features of Perestroika, and in whatdomainssuch as cultural, social economic, and politi-caldid it have what effects that might have led to thecrumbling of an empire? Having defined one's problem, oneneeds to formulate a strategy for acquiring and integratinginformation, such as selecting particular books from the li-brary, reviewing media of the times, collecting Internet re-sources, and so on. Th e sheer vastness of the database leadsone to need both external representations and organizationsof the information. How can one put together information

from a diverse set of resources so that, in the context of apaper, it makes sense? One need s further to decide how m uchtime and energy to devote to such a project because one couldimagine spending months or even years collecting all of theinformation that might be potentially relevant to the topic. Asone seeks information, one needs to mon itor the information-collection p rocess. Is there too little information, suggestinga broader topic or even a new topic is needed? Is there toomuch information, suggesting the topic needs to be focusedmore narrowly? Is the information reliable? Finally, after theinformation is collected, one needs to evaluate whether onehas sufficient information to form a thesis and then to beginwriting the p aper.

These metacomponents either can be taught as part of aseparate course (as in Sternberg, 1986) or taught infused intosubject-matter instruction (as in Sternberg, 1998b). Eitherway, students who learn how to use the metacomponentseffectively think to learn as they learn to think. For exam ple,we have found that better reasoners and b etter readers tend tospend relatively more time on global strategy planning thando poorer reasoners and readers (Sternberg, 1981; Wagner &Sternberg, 1987 ). We can help students reason and read betterby teaching the students how to plan their strategies moreeffectively.

7. Instruction should involve utilization, at various times,of at least six performance components, including (a) encod-ing of information, (b) inference, (c) mapping, (d) applica-tion, (e) comparing of alternatives, and (f) response. Manyacademic and other tasks involve various kinds of inductivereasoning, which typically involves reasoning in which thereis no one deductively (logically) correct answer. For example,consider the task of judging whether the decision of theClinton administration to maintain troops in Bosnia after aself-imposed deadline passed is analogous to the decision ofthe Johnson administration to maintain troops in Vietnamafter various deadlines had p assed for getting out. The judg-ment turns out to a comp lex one. Performance com ponents inreasoning, problem solving, and judgment are lower orderprocesses that are activated by metacomponents and that, inturn, provide feedback to the metacomponents as to howproblem solving is progressing.

First, a student needs to encode information about bothinvolvements, making sure the information is reasonablycomp lete and accurate. Second, a student needs to infer whatthat information mean s. For exam ple, the student learns thatBosnia and V ietnam are in very different parts of the world,but is this information useful for judg ing the relative sim ilari-ties (and differences) in the two involvements? Third, astudent needs to map information from the Vietnam situationto the Bosnia situation. In both cases, there were w ars, and inboth cases, troops were allegedly called in to keep the pe ace,but is this characterization more realistic in Bosnia than inVietnam, or is the use of the term peacekeeping a ruse in eachcase? Fourth, can we apply anything we learned in Vietnamto Bosnia, or are the situations just too different to apply w hat

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was learned in the earlier war? Finally, what kind of responseshould the student give as his or her judgm ent?We have shown in our research that teaching childrenstrategies using the various performance components canimprove the children's performance in inductive-reasoningtasks, such as reasoning by analogy (Sternberg & Ketron,1982; Sternberg, Ketron, & Pow ell, 1982). An important partof such teaching is not only how to use the various compo-nents but when to use them (a metacomponential decision).Thus, use of performance components ideally should betaught in conjunction with use of metacompo nents.

8. Instruction should involve utilization, at various times,of at least three knowledge-acquisition components, includ-ing (a) selective encoding, (b) selective comparison, and (c)selective combination. Mo st knowledge is learned from co n-text (Sternberg, 1987). We do not specifically m emorize it butrather pick it up implicitly in the context of a large stream ofinformation. We pick up much of this information throughthree processes of knowledge acquisition, or knowledge-ac-quisition com ponents. Selective encoding involves determin-ing what information in a large stream of information isrelevant for one's purposes. Selective comparison involvesrelating this or other new ly acquired information to old infor-mation already stored in memory. Selective combinationinvolves interrelating assorted new pieces of information sothat they fit together.

In two series of studies, we showed that students'learning and thinking could be improved by teaching thestudents how effectively to use knowledge-acquisit ioncomponents. In one study (Sternberg, 1987), studentswere taught how to use the three components in thecontext of learning meanings of words from context.College students in the experimental condition wereinstructed in how to use these components to figure outmeanings of unknown words in readings passages. Thestudents' learning was evaluated in terms of the differ-ence between their pretest and posttest scores with re-spect to instruction. Students' performance in the in-structed group was compared to students' performancein a practice-only g roup (practice in de contextualizationbut no componential instruction) and to students' per-formance in a testing-only control group. On average,the componentially instructed students outperformedstudents in both control groups.

In the second study, fourth-grade students (roughly 9 to10 years of age) were pretested and posttested for their skillin solving mathematical insight problems (Davidson &Sternberg, 1984). An example of such a problem would bethe following: "There are blue socks and brown socks in adrawer, mixed in a ratio of 4:5. How many socks wouldyou have to take out of the drawer to be assured of havinga pair of the same color?" One half of the students wereinstructed in the use of the knowledge-acquisition comp o-nents for solving insight problems and one half were notso instructed. We found that instructed students showed

significantly greater gains from pretest to posttest than diduninstructed students.9. Instruction and assessment should take into account

individual differences in preferred mental representations,including verbal, quantitative, and igural, as well as modali-ties for input (visual, auditory) and output (written, oral). Inour research, we have found that content effects on cognitive-task performance can be as large as or larger than processeffects (Sternberg & Gardner, 1983). In other words, indi-viduals may differ as much o r more in their ability to representdifferent kinds of information as in their processing of infor-mation (see Carroll, 1993). To the extent possible, therefore,good instruction and assessment allow students to use pre-ferred as well as nonpreferred representations of information.Good textbooks combine verbal text, tables, and figures.Teachers should do the same in all their instruction. Forexample, in statistics, some students may learn best fromverbal descriptions, others from formulaic descriptions, andothers from charts and figures.In one study (Sternberg & W eil, 1980), we instructed som estuden ts in one of three strategies for solving linear-syllogismproble ms , such as the following: "John is taller than Bill. Billis taller than Pete. Who is tallest?" One strategy emphasizedverbal representation of information, a second emphasizedspatial representation, and a third was mixed. Other studentswere uninstructed. We found, to our surprise, that the instruc-tion was not really helpful and did not result in significantgains in performance relative to controls. We then discoveredwhy. W e did not take into account students' preferred mentalrepresentations. When we instructed students in a way thatdid not match their preferred m ental representation , they usedthe strategy that w as easiest for them rather than the one wetaught. In other words, instruction should take into accountpreferred representations.

I have found the same in my actual classroom teaching.From time to time, I have taught a m ultivariate data analy-sis course. I tended to teach the techniques algebraically,the way I prefer to think about them. One year I supple-mented my algebraic instruction with spatial repre-sentational instruction. I immediately found some studentswho had not been doing well now took to the new form ofinstruction, whereas other students who had been doingwell did not take to the new form of instruction. I realizedthat I would maximize learning for all students only if Itaught in ways that took into accoun t their preferred formsof mental representation.

10. Optimal instruction is in the zones of (a) relativenovelty and of(b) a utomatization or the individual. A numberof theorists have pointed out that effective learning occurs ina zone of relative novelty (e.g., Piaget, 1972; Raaheim, 1974;Sternberg, 1985). In other words, students are challenged butnot too much. Learning from instruction in a zone of relativenovelty not only increases knowledge base but also can helpstudents develop thinking skills. If there is too little novelty,students are not challenged to learn. If there is too much

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novelty, students cannot make sense out of what they aresupposed to learn.At the same time, students need to automatize their infor-mation processing, as effective use of some skills, such asreading, depends in part on automatization (LaBerge & Sa-muels, 1974; Sternberg & W agner, 1982), which is teachable,but not easily so (Spear-Swerling & Sternberg, 1996; Stern-berg, 1985 ,1986). S ituations that may initially require a highlevel of execu tive processing b ecause of their familiarity mayeventually require processing that is largely subconsciousbecause they have become automatized.

11 . Instruction should help students (a) adapt to, (b) shape,and (c) select environments. Students do not only adapt toteacher behavior, but they also shape it. For exam ple, whenstudents show puzzled looks, a teacher may repeat materialor try to explain it in another way. If, instead, students seembored, the teacher may speed up the pace of his or herinstruction. Students may have an even m ore dramatic effect,as when they convince a teacher to drop a requirement or tochange the way he or she teaches to that class.

In life, intelligence serves purposes of adaptation to , shap-ing of, and selection of environments (Sternberg, 1985). Forexample, people both adapt to their jobs as teachers and tryto shape the environment in which they work to make it morecondu cive to their accomplishing their goals. If a teacher findsan environment totally or even largely inhospitable for his orher style of thinking, the teacher may decide to resign andselect another teaching job, or the teacher may be fired andhave: to select ano ther job. Whatever the process, intelligencemust balance these three functions in the everyday world.Therefore, it is important for students to learn how to do so.Programs for teaching thinking need to take into account thecontexts in which students actually live (Okagaki & Stern-berg, 1990).

For the most part, students are expected to adapt to theirenvironment. However, they are also allowed to shape it tosome extent, as when they choose activities, paper topics,projects, and items for portfolios. They even typically have achance to select environments within the context of theschool, as when they choose courses at the secondary leveland even a major subject at the tertiary level. At all levels,students select clubs and other extracurricular activities. Giv-ing students opportunities to shape and select as well as adaptto environments is important for the development of thestudents' practical intellectual skills.

We have devised a program that teaches middle-schoolstudents adaptive skills, and to a lesser extent, shaping andselection skills, in the context of a school environm ent (Ga rd-ner, Krechevsky, Sternberg, & Okagaki, 1994; Sternberg,Okagaki, & Jackson, 1990; Williams et al., 1996). The pro-gram, on practical intelligence for school, teaches students thetacit knowledge necessary for four tasks of great importancein school: doing homew ork, taking tests, reading, and w riting.In a series of evaluation s in urban, suburban, and rural schoolsin Connecticut and Massachusetts, we have found that stu-

dents who have been in our program showed better pretest toposttest gains on a variety of kinds of measures of academicand study skills. In other words, practical intelligence forschool can be taught, at least in its adaptive aspects.12 . Good instruction and assessment integrate rather

than separate all of the elements of intelligence. Althoughthis article has focused on individual skills at differentlevels, good instruction and assessment integrate ratherthan separate the various skills. Thus, the three kinds ofinformation-processing components work together. Meta-components activate performance and knowledge-acquisi-tion com ponents, which in turn provide feedback to meta-compo nents. For examp le, one may decide to start learningin one way (such as memorizing English-French wordpairs) only to discover that another way of learning is moreeffective for the material at hand (examining how theFrench words are used in context).

These components in turn are applied to relatively noveltasks and situations and eventually come to be automatized.Finally, the components are applied through experience toadaptation to, shaping of, and selection of environments.Because the skills are used together in the environment, theyshould be used together in instruction and assessment so thatstudents can develop not only their use but their coordinationand a sense of when and where to use them.

CONCLUSIONThe principles described here con stitute a prototype for goodinstruction. In other words, good instruction will not neces-sarily apply every single principle every single time. Rather,it will apply as many p rinciples as possible, where app licableto enhance teaching and learning. Realistically, few if anylessons will take into account every single principle d escribedpreviously, and it would not be feasible to do s o.

However, the research on instructional practice describedin the article shows that it is possible to apply these principlesto a wide variety of subject matter in a wide variety of settingsat a wide variety of ages.There is always some "process loss" when a theory isapplied in a school setting. No theory could possibly be

applied in all its details. For this reason, it is useful fortheorists to specify a minimal set of principles that, if imple-mented, constitute a construct-valid educational implementa-tion of a psychological theory. This article has attempted tospecify such a set of principle s. To the extent that instructionand assessment implement these principles and succeed betterthan does instruction that does not implement the principlesthen the success of this instruction reasonably can be attrib-uted to the use of the triarchic theory. However, if the instruc-tion and assessment do all these things and do not lead toincremental performance on the part of the students, then thefailure should equally be blamed on the theory. Thus, theprinciples provide a basis for judging in a more direct way

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than would otherwise be possible whether the theory worksin practice.Such a set of explicit princ iples m ight be useful for othertheories. For example, there have been many attempts toapply Howard Gardner's (1983, 1993) theory of multipleintelligences in the classroom, although some of these

applications have seemed dubious. A set of principleswould make clear whether they were, in fact, dubious, andwhy. The same might be said for Bloom's taxonomy(Bloom, Enge lhart, Frost, Hill, & Krathw ohl, 1 956), Guil-ford's (1967) structure-of-intellect model, or any othertheory that has seen classroom use.Brown (1995,199 7; Brown & C ampione, 1994,1996) hasprovided a set of principles based on her own ideas abouttransforming schools into communities of thinking and learn-ing. Her principles are related to, and overlapping with, butnot identical to , those proposed here. They include (a) agency,whereby fostering a community of learners emphasizes the

active strategic nature of learning; (b) reflection, wherebyeffective learners operate best when they understand theirown strengths and weaknesses and how to utilize them; (c)collaboration, whereby students learn to work with eachother; (d) culture, whereby a culture of learning is developedand students learn to legitimize differences for a commongood; (e) deep disciplinary content, whereby students learnto reason at the upper bounds of their capabilities supportedby a strong know ledge base; and (f) developmental corridors,whereby a developmental trajectory is followed that helpsstudents maximize their learning in a domain. There almostcertainly is no one right set of principles. Rathe r, different se tsof principles may follow from different theoretical backdropswith somewhat different goals. The principles proposed inthis article are complementary to B row n's, but obviously notidentical. They do overlap, however. For example, agency andreflection certainly fit into the principles proposed here.

This article has presented a set of principles that may helpteachers enhance their teaching and their students' learning.Through an explicit set of translation principles, we can helpteachers take psychological ideas and apply them in theclassroom the way they were intended to be applied. At thesame time, the principles should leave room where appropri-ate for teachers to be flexible in the way they make theprinciples work for the students they teach. There is no exactright number of times per week or per term to apply theprinciples. Rather, expertise in teaching requires teachers todevelop strategies for taking any set of principles and makethe principles work in the classroom (Sternberg & Horvath,1995). Hopefully, the principles set down here will helpteachers achieve and reflectively apply such expertise.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTSPreparation of this article was supported under the Javits Actprogram (Grant R206 R500 01), as administered by the Office

of Educational Research and Improvem ent, U.S. Departmentof Education. The findings and opinions expressed in thisarticle do not necessarily refiect the positions or policies ofthe Office of Educational Research and Improvem ent or theU.S. Department of Education.

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