TWO Theoretical Foundations
Intelligence is a respectable psychological construct that can be described more clearly and
measured more reliably than many other constructs, such as motivation, personality or learning
style. It is also a construct that has, at times, been misinterpreted. A small group of
psychologists have described it as a fixed attribute, and one that is mostly inherited: as a result,
intelligence has sometimes had a bad press. For this reason, some educators have become
reluctant to accept the concept and are wary of even using the word. It is quite right that this
view of intelligence should have fallen into disrepute, but to throw out the whole idea just
because it has been misused by a few is counterproductive. This chapter begins by describing
some of the key features of intelligence; it then goes on to describe the development of
children’s thinking, and how this can be maximised.