This is terrific Keith.
REH
----- Original Message -----
From: "Keith Hudson" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 10:32 AM
Subject: Practical Intelligence
> I've been arguing recently that the typical sort of school curriculum in
> western countries of the last century has been increasingly biased towards
> the sort of articulateness of the middle class and this militates against
> working class and deprived children almost from the earliest years at
school.
>
> This has two unfortunate effects. Firstly, the school experience labels a
> substantial proportion of children as failures by the time they're about
16
> -- that is, when they're beginning to think seriously about their status
> and role in life and the sort of job they'd be capable of doing. (I would
> put this failed proportion at about 30-40% in England.) Secondly, the same
> sort of school experience deprives them of the sort of practical skills
> that would stand them in good stead in later life, particularly if they
> find themselves out of work in an economic recession and have to try new
> employment niches.
>
> Accordingly, I was much encouraged to read of the research of Prof Robert
> Sternberg of Yale U. The following is a precis of an article by Dr Raj
> Persaud of the Maudsley Hospital, London, in today's Financial Times.
> (Persaud is as eminent a psychologist in England as Sternberg is in the
US.
> Sternberg's original paper is "Analytical, creative and practical
> intelligence as predictors of adaptive functioning", Intelligence 2001,
Vol
> XXIX, pp57-73.)
>
> <<<<
> PRACTICAL INTELLIGENCE
>
> Employers still complain that young people still lack the basic skills to
> succeed at work. The answer could lie in a study by Prof Robert Sternberg,
> one of the world's leading experts on intelligence. His research reveals
> the existence of a totally new variety: practical intelligence.
>
> Prof Sternberg's astonishing finding is that practical intelligence (PQ),
> which predicts success in real life, has an inverse relationship with
> academic intelligence. The more practically intelligent you are the less
> likely you are to succeed at school or university. Similarly, the more
> paper qualifications you hold, and the higher your grades, the less able
> you are to cope with problems of everyday life and the lower your score in
> practical intelligence.
>
> IQ as a concept is more than 100 years old and was supposed to eplain why
> some people excelled at a variety of intellectual tasks. But IQ ran into
> trouble when it became apparent that some high scorers failed to achieve
in
> real life what was predicted by their test results.
>
> Emotional intelligence (EQ), which emerged as a fashionable topic a decade
> ago was supposed to explain this defecit. EQ includes the abilities to
> motivate yourself and persist in the face of frustration; to control
> impulses; and to understand and empathise with others. It suggested that
to
> succeed in real lie, people needed these sorts of emotional skills as well
> as intellectual skills.
>
> However, both EQ and IQ scores are poor predictors of success in real
life.
> Only up to 25% of high achievers turn out to be good job performers.
>
> Accordingly Prof Sternberg's research group at Yale began from a different
> starting position. Instead of grading intelligence and investigating
> whether it correlated with success, his team first assessed the
> intelligence (IQ, EQ and PQ) of those who were already thriving.
>
> PQ questions are usually open-ended, such as "If you were travelling by
car
> and got stranded on a motorway during a blizzard, what would you do?"
> Therefore, some of these questions have many answers, and depended on
> practical knowledge that the testees had picked up during life -- often
> without consciousness awareness or actual practice. This sort of
experience
> is ficciult, and often impossible to articulate, and this is why it has
> been so hard to identify and become researchable.
>
> The notion that people acquire knowledge without awareness of what is
being
> learned is reflected in what is colloquially called "learning by doing"
> [KH: in England, this is also called "sitting next to Nellie"] or, by the
> academics, as "tacit learning".
>
> The important point about tacit learning is that no-one teaches it in a
> formal way, in spite of its importance to good performance. Usually, you
> have to learn it for yourself. In contrast to IQ, the essential quality
of
> PQ is about knowing "how", not necessarily about knowing facts.
>
> PQ also resolves a previously unexplained paradox in that IQ usually
> declines when formal education ends, and yet ability to solve practical
> problems increases (at least as reported by those subjects whom Prof
> Sternberg investigated).
>
> The key implication for organisations and companies with many different
> problems to solve is that personnel with paper qualifications and high
IQs
> are by no means the total answer. They also need to recruit people with
> high PQ scores.
> >>>>
>
> Of course, in writing such the article for the FT, Persaud confined
himself
> to the benefits for companies. From Futurework List's point of view, I
> think that Sternberg's new concept of PQ needs to be considered when
> thinking about the preparation (or lack of it) that children receive at
> school for th world of work. What's good for General Motors is also good
> for the individual.
>
> Keith Hudson
>
>
>
> ___________________________________________________________________
>
> Keith Hudson, General Editor, Calus <http://www.calus.org>
> 6 Upper Camden Place, Bath BA1 5HX, England
> Tel: +44 1225 312622; Fax: +44 1225 447727;
> mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> ________________________________________________________________________
