Increasing Intelligence

Raymond S. Nickerson wrote the chapter about Developing Intelligence in the Cambridge Handbook of Intelligence.  He believes that at least half of IQ is attributable to environment.  He discusses this issue, and programs developed to provide children with the opportunity to improve their "ability to learn, to reason well, to solve novel problems, and to deal effectively with the challenges - often unpredictable- that confront one in daily life."  Some of these are Head Start, The Carolina Abecedarian Project, and Project Intelligence.  He reviews the evidence for brain plasticity and other factors supporting improved functioning due to experience.  Some of the things that he thinks are helpful are: teaching domain specific knowledge, providing experience with at least informal (if not formal) logic, training in probability and statistics,  supporting executive functioning skills, modeling heuristics and other strategies to solve problems, teaching metacognitive skills (self-management), helping students to develop good habits, and managing students' beliefs about learning.  These all seem to be helpful skills, no matter what relationship that the have to measured IQ.