This new edition includes updated information and resources throughout the text to help educators at all levels apply multiple intelligences theory to curriculum development, lesson planning, assessment, special education, cognitive skills, educational technology, career development, and educational policy. In this interview, Thomas Armstrong shares some of his ideas from Multiple Intelligences in the Classroom, which educators can immediately use to help students achieve their fullest potential.

In this interview, he discusses strategies educators can take to counteract myths to give students a more optimistic, empowered, and dynamic view of learning.

This interview was conducted by Educational Leadership senior editor Deborah Perkins-Gough.

Educators, politicians, parents, and even students are consumed with speaking the language of academic achievement. Yet something is missing in the current focus on accountability, standardized testing, and adequate yearly progress. If schools continue to focus the conversation on rigor and accountability and ignore more human elements of education, many students may miss out on opportunities to discover the richness of individual exploration that schools can foster.

In The Best Schools, Armstrong urges educators to leave narrow definitions of learning behind and return to the great thinkers of the past 100 years—Montessori, Piaget, Freud, Steiner, Erikson, Dewey, Elkind, Gardner—and to the language of human development and the whole child.

This interview was conducted by Director of ASCD Publishing Nancy Modrak.