In this issue:
  1. Update from the Program Chair, Branton Shearer, Program Chair
  2. Announcing Special MI Issue of Teachers College Record
  3. News on the Fund Raising Raffle
  4. MI SIG Membership Update, Ken Martin, Membership Chair
  5. AERA MI SIG Program Schedule
  6. MI SIG Business Meeting, Jackie Chen
  7. Special Announcement: A Tribute to Patricia Bolanos
MI SIG members are encouraged to volunteer to support this year's AERA sessions. If you are interested in lending a hand, please contact Branton Shearer at: sbranton@kent.edu.

Update from the Program Chair

Branton Shearer

I am happy to report that we have a good set of presentations scheduled for the AERA conference in San Diego April 12−16. We have a featured Fireside Chat with Howard Gardner, a panel discussion, and strong set of papers and discussion papers ranging across a wide variety of topics. I think these sessions will be of interest to all of our MI-SIG members and will be a worthy follow-up to last year's symposium. The quality of submissions seems to be improving every year, which is a good sign for the field of multiple intelligences research. I'd like to think that our MI-SIG is playing at least a small role in this evolution.

We are still in need of volunteers to assist with session logistics so if you would like to help please contact me.

See you in sunny San Diego!

Branton Shearer

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Announcing the Special MI Issue of Teachers College Record

Branton Shearer

I am particularly pleased to announce the publication of an entire issue of Teachers College Record (Columbia University) devoted to multiple intelligences. This is the icing on the cake for last year's 20th Anniversary MI Symposium and a real accomplishment for the MI-SIG. Most of the articles in this volume were part of the symposium. Howard Gardner also wrote closing comments in this edition, reflecting upon the future of MI theory. The areas that he outlines in this article are worthy of discussion among members of our SIG.

I want to thank everyone in the SIG and especially Vicki Schirduan for their assistance as I edited this selection of papers.

The next challenge is to see if we can get the MI TCR Issue reviewed by interested people in the fields of education, psychology, teaching / learning and neuroscience. If you are interested in writing a review and submitting it to a worthy journal or you know someone who may be, we encourage all reviews! To have all this material in a publication is good, but to get it read and reviewed is even better.

You may order single (or more) copies of the MI issue of TCR by contacting:

Teacher's College Record , Blackwell Publishing Inc.
Subscriptions Department
350 Main St, Malden MA 02148
Phone: 781.388.8200 or 800.835.6770 Fax: 781.388.8232
E-mail: subscrip@blackwellpub.com
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News on the Fund Raising Raffle

This year marked the inauguration of a Fund Raising Raffle to assist the MI-SIG in fulfilling its mission. As I'm sure you appreciate it is not easy to keep an all-volunteer group functioning. It takes a lot of time and effort to move our projects forward and communicate regularly with all of our members. The funds from the raffle will help with this. We can discuss at the Business Meeting if we want to conduct the raffle again next year and if we should designate a purpose for the funds donated (one idea is to apply the money to our web site maintenance or establish a Pat Balanos Graduate Student Travel Award)

This year's winners were: Ji-Mei Chang (First Prize) and Rima Faber (Second Prize).

Ji-Mei Chang is a Professor in the College of Education at San Jose State University; she is also the researcher and consultant at the National Center for Research on Education, Diversity and Excellence (CREDE) at University of California, Santa Cruz. To promote language and literacy development among English learners and those with learning disabilities, she integrated CREDE's sociocultural pedagogies with Howard Gardner's three approaches to use MI for understanding as a school-based professional development model. Such a model has been validated in participating schools in both Northern California and Taiwan. She also collaborates with teachers, credential candidates, and families to transfer classroom knowledge for home literacy practices through building the circle of supporters within and beyond schools.

MI-SIG at AERA provides a national and international network, or the circle of supporters, for researchers and educators to meet annually in search of better ways to advance MI research that will address diverse needs of learners. To support this circle, she has donated her First Prize back to MI-SIG.  For more information, you may visit her homepage:  http://sweeneyhall.sjsu.edu/chang/

Rima Faber is the founding President and Executive Director of the National Dance Education Organization where she currently serves as Program Director. She is Research Director in NDEO's research initiative Research in Dance Education, and co-editor for Priorities for Research in Dance Education: A Report to the Nation.

She writes: ``MI-SIG fills a great national need for excellence in educational research by fostering the development of inquiry, providing a podium for its dissemination, and creating a community network for researchers to share their work through active discourse and discussion. In this rich environment, dance education research, research on teaching and learning experientially in and through the art of dance, can find a voice that will be heard by the arts, education, and research communities.''
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MI SIG Membership Update

Ken Martin

As of Mid-March, MI-SIG had 97 active members (with the membership of 6 of them expiring before the Annual Meeting).  Members are basically well distributed throughout the U.S.  Two other countries, Taiwan and Canada, each have 4 members, South Korea has 2 members, and Australia, Chile, Iceland, and Sweden each have 1 member.

All members: please keep your membership renewed!

http://www.aera.net/member/member.htm is the place to sign up for AERA membership and also for SIG membership.  Do them together!

Publications by MI-SIG Members

Keeping up with the evolving field of multiple intelligences is a real challenge. We'd like your assistance. Please share with us news about your recent MI-related publications: books, chapters or articles. We'd like to post your information with a brief summary on our website. Send your information to Jane Shore at jshore@ets.org

New and Noted

Multiple Intelligences, Howard Gardner and New Methods in College Teaching . Edited by Clyde Coreil, New Jersey City University. www.njcu.edu/cill/gardnerbook

Multiple Intelligences: Best Ideas from Theory and Practice . Kornhaber, M.L., Fierros, E., & Veenema, S. Allyn and Bacon Publishers.

Making Good: How Young People Cope with Moral Dilemmas at Work.
Howard Gardner Wendy Fischman, Becca Solomon Deborah Greenspan, Harvard Univ. Press.

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AERA MI SIG Program Schedule

The following is a summary of the MI SIG program as of March 14, 2004. For the online program and session details, please go to the MI SIG program on the AERA website.

The program below is presented in chronological order.

1 .Multiple Intelligences: Selected Dynamics

Monday, 4/12/2004 from 2:15 p.m. - 3:45 p.m. in Hyatt - Betsy A, Second Level.

Ken E. Martin - University of Cincinnati (Chair)

Steve Stemler - Yale University (Discussant)

Participants:

2. Multiple Intelligences Around the World: Paper Discussions

Scheduled on Monday, 4/12/2004 from 4:05 p.m. - 4:45 p.m. in Hyatt - Elizabeth Ballroom D, Second Level.

Participants:

3. Multiple Intelligences SIG Business Meeting

Monday, 4/12/2004 from 6:15 p.m. - 7:45 p.m. in Hyatt - Gregory A, Second Level.

Jie-Qi Chen - Erikson Institute (Chair)

A tentative agenda will be sent out to SIG members prior to the AERA conference. Nominations for new members to the Board will be requested at this meeting.

4. Fireside Chat with Howard Gardner

Wednesday, 4/14/2004 from 12:25 p.m. - 1:55 p.m. in Hyatt - Manchester Ballroom G, Second Level.

Participants:

Howard Gardner will give a brief presentation and then respond to questions from the general audience.

5. Panel Presentations

Enhancing the Visibility of MI-Based Research: Language, Learning, and Assessment

Thursday, 4/15/2004 from 8:05 a.m. - 10:15 a.m. in Hyatt - Edward D, Second Level.

Gillian D. McNamee - Erikson Institute (Chair)
Mindy L. Kornhaber - Pennsylvania State University (Discussant)

Presenters:

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Special Announcement: Tribute to Patricia Bala?s

Branton Shearer

Last year at the MI Symposium we had the pleasure of hearing Pat Bala?s describe how her school, the Key Renaissance Learning Community, evolved over the years in its implementation of MI theory. I noticed that she appeared to be a little shaky on her feet and she was a bit hesitant when I proposed that someone from the MI-SIG come to the Key to interview her and other staff. I received the sad news not long after the conference that Pat had passed away from a brain tumor that she had been battling.

We will pay Pat a special tribute at our Business Meeting and discuss ways to establish a lasting memorial in her honor. She was an inspired leader of an internationally recognized school that brings MI to life for every child every day.
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