“Instead of studying a person’s possession of a capacity or an idea, the focus is on the active changes involved in an unfolding event or activity in which people participate." -Barbara Rogoff     

First Things First: What is Dynamic Intelligence?

We use the term dynamic intelligence to represent a collection of specific cognitive, self, interpersonal and communication abilities. This is in contrast to the abilities we refer to as static intelligence—skills measured by standard I.Q. tests. Dynamic intelligence is a gift that evolves throughout our lifetime allowing us to adapt to an increasingly complex, continually changing world. Uniquely, it provides the tools to successfully solve complicated problems, prioritize multiple demands, carry on meaningful relationships and achieve long-term goals. Jobs, friendships, marriages and most aspects of daily life are primarily dynamic in nature.

Descriptions of how we employ dynamic intelligence in our daily lives are quite easy to generate. We worry about how we will have enough money for our children’s college. We try to estimate the resources we will need to complete a work project to a client’s satisfaction. We make multiple contingency plans, knowing that we can never really predict what will happen in the future. We evaluate whether we are making sufficient progress in our weight loss plan, or whether it is time to try something else. We struggle to prioritize among scores of demands and desires that pull on our limited time and money. We read a book containing important information and, on a sentence-by-sentence basis, determine if our level of understanding is sufficient, or whether we should stop to re-read particular passages. We find ways to collaborate with people, even though they have significantly different areas of expertise and unique ways of thinking and perceiving the world. In doing so we enrich ourselves by gaining multiple perspectives and integrate our contributions to create something that is more than just the sum of each of our minds. One of our most amazing, but unappreciated mental feats, is our ability to effortlessly relate to a single object, person or problem from any number of multiple, completely different perspectives in an amazingly short span of time. Dynamic intelligence frees us from the tyranny of being locked into any single stimulus-response chain.  

We conduct this amazing mental symphony throughout our waking and, most probably, our sleeping lives. We do it with little thought or reflection. Yet, we have not always been so proficient. Somehow we learned to function in this amazing manner. We just don’t remember how we learned to do it. Respected scientists like Jerome Bruner, Barbara Rogoff, Alan Fogel and Alan Sroufe, believe that the neural and cognitive foundations for dynamic intelligence are typically constructed through thousands of special types of experiences choreographed through the guidance of parents and close family members. 

By the end of the first year of life, infants are able look at things from multiple levels and multiple perspectives, improvise and put things into context. Dynamic intelligence comes from our ability to retain and store certain types of memories, in a very specific way, creating an intricate by-product of growing neurological pathways. While typically developing children store proud memories of experiences where they have met challenges and overcome obstacles, developmentally disabled children are more likely to retain memories in an isolated fashion, small pieces of information that do not provide tools or building blocks for future self-learning.

Development of functional dynamic collaboration impacts how the world fits together for the individual and addresses such relevant real world issues as:

Inferential Thinking

Hypothetical Thinking

Reflection

Planning

Preparation

Social Coordination 

Friendship

What is the Dynamic Education Program?