What is ‘Intelligence’ and how should we relate it to 'Learning'

My views on intelligence correlate closely with more recent research and theories positing that the application of learned facts to the world around us is what matters (e.g. Sternberg’s three-part theory, 1985). Having been taught traditional skills at school and tested only along these lines, I learned to associate ‘intelligence’ with test results, i.e. by associating a percentage score to relative intelligence. Scoring well in these tests meant that I was considered very intelligent and afforded me great opportunities for further learning, however I must now recognise that this also limited the avenues for further learning which I evaluated for myself – I believed that only ‘classical’ routes would be relevant for me and my ‘type of intelligence’. This meant that I was only encouraged to explore ‘logical-mathematical’ (c.f. Gardner) forms of later education, ignoring linguistic, spatial, kinaesthetic, interpersonal and intrapersonal learning… in hindsight, I have spent a majority of the past decade focusing on some of the above missed opportunities, especially the linguistic form of learning, which has given me the most pleasure!

I do consider myself a ‘learner’ due to my insatiable desire to accumulate further knowledge and interpret the deeper meaning from it, before adding it to the internal dialogue of all knowledge which I have gained on my life journey. Indeed, I consider myself a ‘learner’ due to this desire, rather than due to the outcomes of the desire; although I have always tested well in school (traditional testing, psychometric, mathematics, logistical, memory testing, etc), I truly consider myself a learner as I am always naturally interested in asking further questions. As I do not believe that we can ever truly finish ‘learning’ a subject, I believe that the results of testing are not what defines a learner, rather it is the natural enthusiasm and desire to continue learning!