Invisible Intelligence

Reviews and Interviews

University Book Shop Otago Top Five – 4 August 2025
#1 Unity Books Auckland Bestseller List – 1 August 2025 Read
#2 Unity Books Wellington Bestseller List – 1 August 2025 Read
#1 Unity Books Auckland Bestseller List – 8 August 2025 Read
#1 Unity Books Auckland Bestseller List – 22 August 2025 Read
NielsenIQ BookScan bestseller chart of NZ books – 8 August 2025 Read
NielsenIQ BookScan bestseller chart of NZ books – 15 August 2025 Read

‘Educator Welby Ings is concerned that our overemphasis on ‘measurability’ and the ‘correct’ recall of facts has resulted in too narrow a view of Intelligence, effectively sidelining a significant portion of the population whose minds work in different but no less gifted ways. Too often, children are ‘written off’ both by schools and by their parents even though they are naturally curious and engaged (good markers of intelligence), resulting in poor life outcomes and behaviour problems. Ings’s insightful and helpful book helps us to broaden our idea of intelligence and to support young people to flourish at school and in their wider lives. A broader and more inclusive approach to education will have benefits for us all.’
Book of the Week – 1 August 2025, VOLUME Read

One thing we learn as dumb kids is that being ‘quietly occupied’ is an acceptable substitute for incompetence.
Welby Ings speaks to Michele Hewitson for the NZ Listener (Issue July 26-August 1 2025) Read

As a learner, the milestones on the conventional road didn’t mark my progress. So I came to know myself as a failure ... There are many kinds of intelligence, like embodied intelligence, non-linear intelligence, creative problem solving – all these things don’t sit inside this box that essentially comes from a culture that believes that scientific thought is the pinnacle of cultural revolution. Testing systems that we’ve used have come from a very narrow construct, and so, when they look at intelligence, they are often only talking about verbal comprehension or visual problem-solving, rational reasoning, working memory and sometimes, really dangerously, conflating intelligence with the ability to work quickly. So, it just didn’t make sense and it made less and less sense the more I became involved in learning and teaching.
Welby Ings speaks to Kathryn Ryan on Nine to Noon RNZ Listen

Welby Ings’ Invisible Intelligence is a compassionate, incisive, and quietly revolutionary book that challenges the dominant narratives around intelligence and learning in modern education ... This book will resonate deeply with educators who have felt the tension between the demands of standardised testing and the needs of their students. It will also comfort parents and learners who have struggled to find their place in a system that was never designed for them. More than anything, Invisible Intelligence reminds us that intelligence is not always loud, visible, or easily measurable but it is always there, waiting to be recognised.
Chris Reed for NZ Booklovers Read

I found this a very inspiring book. It’s full of ideas and anecdotes, many of which are very moving ... In this book we’re looking at the purpose of education, so how learning rather than competition helps people to become the best version of themselves. I found these stories to be like gifts. I’ve underlined so many beautiful succinctly expressed ideas, so I can just go back and flick through the book and pick out some gems of wisdom. It’s an excellent text for teachers of course, but I think also for parents and caregivers and anyone who is interested in diverse ways of thinking and the opportunities that paying attention to a person’s thinking presents, so workplaces, friendships and partnerships too. It seeks to give children who are labelled as ‘slow’ or ‘odd’ or ‘naughty’ their social dignity back by asking the grown-ups in charge to exercise compassion.I just found there was so much to think about.
Louise Ward for Nine to Noon, RNZ Listen

‘I’m still in the education system because I believe in it. I absolutely believe in it and I don’t believe it’s monolithic. I understand it’s flawed and I’m flawed. And I even believe that it’s the mark of a good thinker to be able to work within one system and enrich it with the visions of others ... And I believe that one of the ways we can do that is by empowering differences inside of it and enabling differences to co-exist ... I believe deeply that every individual is capable of affecting change, and I think that cynicism is the death of hope and the death of agency. And without agency, nothing improves.’
Welby Ings speaks to Jack Tame on Q+A with Jack Tame, TVNZ 1 Watch

‘After 50 years of teaching – the last 25 working with doctorate students, who are ‘magnificently uneven’ – he hopes his book will wrap an arm around those whose intelligence may not be recognised within the existing narrow measurements; who are fuelled by anxiety from feeling the necessity to work towards set arbitrary milestones.’
Welby Ings speaks to Hanna McCallum for The Post, Stuff NZ Read

‘The point of Ings’ book is not to suggest that what our children are taught in school is wrong, but that much of value is not taught at all, and that, as a result, the system is failing too many people. Intelligence is diverse, he says, and we need to be careful about labelling things as problems when they are just signs of difference.’
Greg Bruce for the NZ Herald Read

‘Conversely, mātauranga Māori understands knowledge and learning as holistic and dynamic. It encompasses wisdom, understanding, spirituality, cultural practices, and values. These two traditions are not binaries. They are taonga. We are blessed as a people to have the agency of both. What is born from their synergy warrants respect. By the time a child leaves compulsory education in Aotearoa at 16, they have spent two-thirds of their life inside formal education. We must be sure that they leave the school gates with their dignity and complexity intact.’
Welby Ings for E-Tangata Read