PDT Issue 18.1 Full version SV (1)

PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TODAY

Special EditionIssue: 18.1

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Unlocking Learning Potential - Feuerstein’s LegacyIn this special issue leading experts from around the world explore the work of Reuven Feuerstein and its transforming benefits for children, teachers, and families

In association with Creative Teaching & Leaning and School Leadership Today Magazine

W: www.teachingtimes.com E: [email protected]

ì“We are encouraging our schools to use the i-WIGT as it is a natural progression from the WIGT, which has been used for many years in West Berkshire schools. The i-WIGT provides an excellent and highly efficient system to observe and evaluate the quality of teaching and learning linked to performance management and, through the links with the Imaginative Minds Best Practice Library, offers immediate access to a range of articles to support professional development.”

Elaine Ricks-Neal, Jt. Principal Adviser for School Improvement, West Berkshire Council

i-WIGT (What Is Good Teaching?)

The i-WIGT is a collaborative teacher mentoring and appraisal App that is both a diagnostic and intervention tool to secure better teaching.

Find out more at:www.i-wigt.com

ìì

This iPad-based App is transforming the whole teacher appraisal/mentoring process in schools. It has two unique features – an assessment matrix which unpicks the skills of good and outstanding teaching, and a link to thousands of best practice articles so that emerging problems and development areas can be resourced directly from the App.

It also has a self-evaluation module so that teachers can review their own practice and use our Best Practice Library from our Professional Learning Community to pursue their own developmental strategy.

Easy to use, confidential and secure, the i-WIGT will help your school to provide:

■ Objective and fair teacher performance observations in real time

■ Accurate, consistent and useable feedback for your teachers

■ Clear paths for teachers towards outstanding, creative teaching

■ A transparent performance-related pay practice

■ Trackable data for each teacher as well as by subject, year group and more

■ Teacher self-assessment to encourage reflective practice

■ Areas for teachers to evidence their work by uploading images and videos

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Encountering Feuerstein ■■■■■

Special Issue

Feuerstein is both highly acclaimed and under-appreciated. For many people he was one of our era’s greatest educational thinkers who has had an influence on developments in a wide range of fields, not least in teaching and learning and transforming aspirations for children. Certainly for this publishing house his influence has been pivotal, providing the inspiration behind the launch of the original magazines in the Imaginative Minds stable. Nevertheless it is also the case that Feuerstein remains undiscovered by many teachers and does

not figure prominently in the outlook of some influential educationalists. This special issue of Professional Development Today aims to go some way to redressing this. In it Judy Silver and Graham Handscomb have assembled contributions from around the world to illustrate the richness of Feuerstein’s work, its wide range of application and the profound difference he has made to children.

The following reflection is very much a personal one and is intended to give a flavor of how Feuerstein’s contribution has made such a difference to my outlook and also to that of many others. I had the great privilege to meet Feuerstein and to see him at work over an extended period of time. My first encounter was on a journalistic expedition to Israel in 1984. I had been intrigued by his work being recommended as enormously important by the psychologist Andrew Sutton. Sutton was an authority on Vygotsky and the Russian school of Psychology and he pointed out the links between Vygotsky’s Zone of Proximal Development and the central concept of Dynamic Potential in Feuerstein’s work. I wanted to know more.

Feuerstein was wonderful to observe in action. He would introduce you to a child in his study and show you a psychologist’s report saying the child was either totally or virtually ‘uneducable’ – a term in common use in those days.

‘Utter nonsense’ he would contemptuously exclaim. He would put the child at ease and then diagnose the child with his Learning Potential Assessment Device – conducted in a test –teach- test routine. In the teaching part he would show the child, what strategies they might use to solve problems and with a little instruction and practice the child would be able to give the sort of intellectual performance that the psychologist’s report on the desk had judged not to be possible. It was really quite shocking.

Preface – Encountering Feuerstein

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Encountering Feuerstein ■■■■■

Special IssueFeuerstein’s pioneering work disrupted and challenged much conventional thinking and has left its mark on many

educational developments with which teachers will be familiar. So, for instance, he was, along with the founder of Philosophy For Children, Mathew Lipman, the main driving force behind a dramatic re-orientation in the practice and purpose of teaching. Most teachers today would know it as Thinking Skills Movement and would have been touched by it in some way.

Feuerstein had been in the forefront, from the 1950’s onwards, of disputing the nature of intelligence as being a fixed genetic endowment, measurable by the dismal science of psychometrics. By the 1970’s this static notion of children’s ability and potential had been challenged enough in the UK to question the 11 plus examination and to auger in the era of Comprehensivisation. Feuerstein’s theories not only promoted the big idea that children had potential unrecognized by the fixed endowment notions of intelligence but, more importantly, showed practical ways in which this could be demonstrated and altered.

As the articles that follow show Feuerstein theories made a seminal contribution to our understanding, in very concrete ways, of the process by which deprivation and its consequences, in terms of cultural impoverishment, could adversely affect parents’ ability to transmit cultural knowledge – i.e. how to learn to live successfully within your environment, from one generation to another. His work in this field had fundamental implications for our wider understanding of community and society, and the educational process within this context. So in gaining an understanding in detail of how learning skills were passed on you could analyse what skills are missing and then can diagnose and instrumentally remediate them. Effective cultural transmission of knowledge and skills to the next generation could be observed in the way successful parents brought up their children – and these processes could be copied, systematized and honed to create an effective clinical and classroom practice.

This was liberating stuff! The theory of cultural transmission of learning skills (Feuerstein’s Mediation) explains so much. It shows why poverty affects some cultures so much more than others and, more controversially, suggests that some cultures are more successful in resisting adversity and more effective in passing learning skills on than others.

Equally inspiring and challenging has been the way in which Feuerstein transformed expectations of what children with special needs can achieve. With a trained instructor the children would be able to move quite easily form one of the Instrumental Enrichment tasks in his programme and bridge to the most high level conceptual and philosophical discussion.

Any cognitive or sensory or affective barriers to learning were, as far Feuerstein was concerned, to be attacked ruthlessly and unsentimentally. However, he always ensured that he explained his diagnosis of a child’s learning problems , if not their cause, to the child themselves, in order to enlist them in often very hard, very prolonged work he would expect of them. In the case of children with Down’s syndrome, Feuerstein would delight in removing them from the disabling and stifling control of their caring professionals and would place them in classes with tough regimes that would make them work and think for hours on end. He achieved some remarkable results and parents would send their children from all over the world to his clinic. The real issue was not to accept the children for what they were but to challenge them to change – with help from professionals. One of his most popular books is titled: If you love me, don’t accept me as I am.

At a time when educational psychologists are in short supply teachers could use Feuerstein’s diagnostic tools to understand and help children with learning blocks. They could also advise parents of strategies that could help their children develop the skills they need to successfully cope with school and prosper in life. Perhaps most importantly, they could use his theories of mediation, cognitive modifiability and cultural deprivation to become better teachers. Feuerstein explains what it is that teachers do that has an effect, and why? It theorizes the process of teaching at a deeper level than anything else, because it also theorizes under what circumstances children will learn and links the two together in the role of mediator.

Hopefully, this special edition will help sustain Feuerstein’s ideas for the teaching and therapeutic professions and, even more importantly, for the children they are there to serve.

Howard SharronManaging DirectorImaginative Minds Ltd

Contents ■■■■■

Pedagogy of Confidence – applying

Feuerstein’s Theory to dispel the colour

achievement gap myth 55

Yvette Jackson

Learning how to learn 64

Anne-Theresa Lawrie

Closing the achievement gap in Ulster 72

Kate O’ Hanlon

A Mediational Approach to Family-Centered

Care 82

Abraham Salinas-Miranda, Shawna Green and

Martha Coulter

Learning to Look and Looking to Learn 90

Cynthia Pelman

No natural limits! - Enhancing language

development in children with Down

Syndrome 100

Sari Alony and Alex Kozulin

Liberating all children to gain a deeper

understanding of the world 108

Roman Gouzman and Judy Silver

Notes on Contributors 5

Comment Unlocking learning potential – The

Feuerstein Legacy 8

Judy Silver and Graham Handscomb

Special Issue Feuerstein’s Legacy - the relevance of

Feuerstein to practitioners today 15

Judy Silver

Creative learning, assessment and

connecting with Feuerstein 24

Anne-Theresa Lawrie

Dynamic Assessment! 35

Maria Dolores Calero

Thinking Journeys in the Classroom – the

Power of Uncertainty and Mediation 44

Yaron Schur

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Issue 18.1

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EditorGraham HandscombHonorary Professor, University College

London.

Professor of Education and Dean of The

College of Teachers.

Graham Handscomb Management Services;

[email protected]

Editorial BoardDr Christopher ChapmanProfessor of Education Glasgow University.

Paul ClarkeProfessor of Education, St Mary’s University College, Strawberry Hill, London.Managing Director, Improving the Quality of Education for All, IQEA Limited.

Peter EarleyProfessor of Education Leadership and Management, Institute of Education, University of London.

Sue KellyAssistant Headteacher, Millais School, Horsham, Surrey.

Sue LawDirector of Academic Practice, Higher Education Academy, University ofNottingham

Gill TricoglusCCDU Training and Consultancy, Leeds Metropolitan University.

Krishan SoodSenior Lecturer in Education. MA Programme Leader at Nottingham Trent University, Nottingham.

Editorial OfficeProfessional Development Today is published by

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© Professional Development Today, 2015

ISSN 1460-8340

No part of this publication may be reproduced,

copied or transmitted in any form or by any means.

Professional Development Today is an

independent magazine. The views expressed in

signed articles do not necessarily represent those

of the magazine.

The magazine cannot accept any responsibility for

products and services advertised within it.

Cover Photograph:

Michael Feuerstein

www.feuerstein-pbh.com

mailto:[email protected]

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Notes on Contributors

Unlocking learning potential –

Feuerstein’s Legacy

Feuerstein Commemorative Issue

■■■ Sari AlonyDr. Sari Alony was a senior member of the Feuerstein Institute (since 1994), and was Head of the Paradigmatic Clinic for Early Childhood and Head of ICELP’s Institute for Parental Guidance. She specialized in dynamic assessment, conducted many clinical workshops for young children carers, supervising local clinical staff and demonstrating LPAD assessments of children with special needs. Dr. Alony has conducted projects in Israel and abroad aimed to enhance the learning potential of children and young adults, both directly and through guiding parents and professionals. During the 1994-2013 period she lectured and conducted studies in Developmental Psychology at the School of Nutritional Sciences of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and is currently working as a psychologist at the Gastro Clinic for young children at the Wolfson Hospital in Israel, and in her own private Clinic.

■■■ Maria Dolores CaleroMaria Dolores Calero is Professor of Psychological Assessment at the Faculty of Psychology in University of Granada (Spain). Coordinator of the Research Group “Behavioral Analysis” conducts research at the Center for Research CIMCYC: Mente, Cerebro y Comportamiento (Mind, Brain and Behavior) at the university. Since 1980 research on Learning Potential Assessment, Dynamic Assessment and Modifiability of Intelligence Programmes (Cognitive Education) applied to different groups such as the elderly, children with Down Syndrome, children with Asperger Syndrome, gifted children. On these topics she has published several books and numerous articles in international journals and presented papers at many conferences. She teaches postgraduate training on these issues in different Spanish universities.

■■■ Martha CoulterDr. Coulter is Professor of Public Health in the Department of Community and Family Health, where she is Coordinator of the Maternal and Child Health concentration and Director of the Harrell Center for the Study of Family Violence. Dr. Coulter obtained her MSW degree at Tulane University and her DrPH at the University of North Carolina. Dr. Coulter’s various community relationships combined with her national and international academic and professional accomplishments provide strong leadership for The Harrell Center. She is a certified family and dependency mediator and is considered an expert in family violence and its impact on children and families. She has an extensive publication record in the area of family violence, and has taught various courses at the graduate level on violence and maternal and child health at the College of Public Health.

■■■ Roman GouzmanRoman Gouzman is the Head of Tactile Instrumental Enrichment at the Feuerstein Institute. Professor Gouzman possesses a unique combination of expertise in Cognitive Psychology, Physics, Mathematics, Electrical Engineering and Mass Media Education, and holds degrees in Cognitive Psychology (PhD), Physics and Electrical Engineering (MSc) and Science Education (MA). An expert in the Multi-Sensory approach for ADHD and blind learners, Professor Gouzman is the creator of the Tactile Mediated Learning and Tactile Instrumental Enrichment tools. He has also developed new methods to improve focusing and developing of adequate mental imaging in ADHD learners. Professor Gouzman is a member of a number of scientific organizations and a creative inventor. He has been awarded the European IST first prize for VirTouch, a computer screen-mouse for the sight-impaired. Professor Gouzman holds three patents in the United States and Europe and has written numerous academic papers.

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■■■ Shawna GreenShawna Green is currently a third year PhD student in Public Health at the University of South Florida, Department of Community and Family Health. She worked as the Clinic Administrator of a free clinic in Gaithersburg, Maryland that offered both primary and specialty care to those without insurance options. Previously she worked for two years in the Memphis, Tennessee, writing grants and raising funds for a residential alcohol and drug treatment facility. Shawna gained a Masters of Social Work and a Master’s in Public Policy and Management at Ohio State University. Her research interests lie in comorbid mental and physical illness, co-occurring disorders, specifically substance abuse and mental health issues, within the Latino population.

■■■ Graham HandscombGraham Handscomb is Honorary Professor at University College London, Professor and Dean of The College of Teachers, and Fellow of numerous universities and organisations. He has an extensive career of senior leadership of local authorities and schools. He was a member of UK Government strategy groups on Thinking Skills, and Professional Development, and is currently a member of DfE Faith Schools Group. He has made a considerable contribution to the development of school-based practitioner enquiry and pioneered the concept of the Research Engaged School. He is External Examiner for the Education and Leadership Masters programmes at the University of Wales; he wrote the criteria for the new NFER national Research Mark Award and created on-line leadership programmes for the University of Nottingham, and for the Welsh government. Graham facilitates Teaching School Alliances and Research Learning Communities throughout the UK. He is a professional development and leadership consultant and has a range of international experience, including establishing extensive teacher training and leadership development in China. Graham has published widely and is editor of a number of journals, including Professional Development Today. He is on the editorial board of Teaching Thinking and Creativity and the Journal Contemporary English Teaching and Learning in Non-English-Speaking Countries.

■■■ Yvette JacksonYvette Jackson is internationally recognized for her work in assessing the learning potential of disenfranchised urban students. Her research is in cognitive development and the impact of neurobiology and culture on intellectual development, learning, and achievement. She was a mentee of Feuerstein upon whose work her book, Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools

(2011) is based. She is also co-author of Aim High, Achieve More: How to Transform Urban Schools Through Fearless Leadership (2012) with Veronica McDemott. Dr. Jackson currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education, adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University, visiting scholar at the Panasonic Foundation, visiting lecturer at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education and Stanford University, and former member of ASCD’s Differentiated Instruction Cadre. She has been a visiting presenter for many universities and organisations in the USA and Europe. She works with school districts to customize and deliver systemic approaches to reversing underachievement through high operational practices that incorporate a strength-based approach to engage and accelerate student learning to elicit high intellectual performances and self-determination.

■■■ Alex KozulinProfessor Alex Kozulin Ph.D. is Head of M.Ed. program in Special Education at Achva Academic College and the Director of International Research and Training at the Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem. He is one of the major specialists in Vygotsky’s sociocultural theory and theory of mediated learning. His publications include the following books: Vygotsky’s Psychology: A Biography of Ideas (Harvard University Press, 1990); Psychological Tools: A Sociocultural Approach to Education (Harvard University Press, 1998); Experience of Mediated Learning: An Impact of Feuerstein’s Theory in Education and Psychology (Pergamon Press, 2000); Vygotsky’s Educational Theory in Cultural Context (Cambridge University Press, 2003), Rigorous Mathematical Thinking (Cambridge University Press, 2008).

■■■ Anne-Theresa LawrieAnne-Theresa Lawrie started her teaching career as a Biology teacher in Scottish Borders (SB) and then moved to Dundee as a Principal Teacher of Biology and then back to the Scottish Borders as assistant head teacher, and deputy head teacher in Kelso High School. During this time she obtained studied an MSc in Education at Edinburgh University with a focus on educational leadership and the Scottish Qualification for Headship. She was seconded to lead a Creative Learning initiative, working with all primary and secondary schools on emotional intelligence in the classroom, mediated learning experience, thinking skills and co-operative learning. She has worked with all SB schools on Curriculum for Excellence implementation and led a future teaching and learning project introducing Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment Programme to motivate students who were underachieving. Her current post is senior education

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officer in Scottish Borders Council. She continues to offer training in Feuerstein methodologies for educators from all sectors of education. She is an international Feuerstein trainer working in Europe and New Zealand, and is involved with a range of voluntary work with a school in the Philippines.

■■■ Kate O’HanlonKate O’Hanlon lives in Newry, Co Down, N Ireland. For twenty years she taught in schools in Nigeria, Kent and N Ireland, but for the last number of years she has been Adviser for English/Literacy in the Southern Education and Library Board area in N. Ireland. She has an interest in a wide range of programmes and approaches which support and develop thinking. She has taught IE and is a qualified IE trainer, having attended conferences and training opportunities in the UK, Europe and in Israel.

■■■ Cynthia PelmanCynthia Pelman is a speech and language therapist who has been working for over 25 years with children who have communication difficulties such as dyspraxia, selective mutism and speech and language delay. She has specialised in working with children in school settings. She provides training to teachers and parents, enabling them to gain a deeper understanding of how communication difficulties can affect a child’s ability to learn and to socialise, and empowering teachers and parents with strategies to help these children overcome their difficulties. She is trained in the Feuerstein educational approach and has applied Feuerstein’s theories to her work as a speech and language therapist and this combination of approaches has increased the effectiveness of the speech and language therapy she provides. She has written three books which are fictionalised accounts of children with communication difficulties. Her aim in presenting these case studies as fiction is to raise general public awareness of these issues through easy-to-read narratives, and to act as advocate for children who have not yet found their own voice. Her books are available on Amazon and Amazon Kindle. Cynthia has worked in Israel, South Africa and the U.K.

■■■ Abraham A. Salinas-MirandaDr. Salinas-Miranda has both clinical and public health background. He holds an MD degree from Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua, Managua, Nicaragua, a Master of Public Health with Maternal and Child Health Concentration from the University of South Florida (Fulbright Scholar 2005-2007) a Ph.D. in Community and Family Health, from the University of South Florida. His dissertation tested a structural equation model of social determinants of perinatal health in the context of two county-wide Healthy Start programs. Dr. Salinas is a Certified

Infant Toddler Developmental Specialist (ITDS) and a Graduate Certificate in Epidemiology. In 2014, he became an inducted member to the Delta Omega Honorary Society in Public Health, and a Fully Elected Member of the American College of Epidemiologists (credential-based distinction). His publications have focused on multiple aspects of maternal-child health areas including community health, pre-conceptual care, care of the newborn, families, and the training of health providers.

■■■ Yaron SchurProfessor Yaron Schur is the head of the Master’s program for Teaching and Learning at David Yellin Academic College in Jerusalem, Israel. Yaron Schur worked for 10 years at the ICELP as the head of the Institute of Instrumental Enrichment. In 2009 he was sent to Rwanda by the Feuerstein Institute to be the educational consultant and teach the teaching staff of a school for orphans, ASYV. Yaron Schur was a teacher and the director of the Danziger comprehensive high-school in Kiryat Shemona, Israel. In recent years he worked at the Science Teaching Departments of Weizmann Institute for Science and wrote 15 teaching books and programs in science used in the Israeli educational system. For 12 years he worked at the Science Teaching Department of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and developed a teaching method, called “Thinking Journey”. The idea was studied in several researches in a variety of populations of students, and gave very good results. He published many articles on the ideas of the “Thinking Journey” and its implementations. Recently he finished writing a book “The Art of Teaching”.

■■■ Judy SilverJudy Silver is a specialist teacher and trainer in Feuerstein’s methods of cognitive education, with a wealth of experience in both classroom and clinical practice. Born and educated in London, she was awarded an MSc in Educational Research in 2005 and a PhD in Education in 2009 at the University of Exeter UK, where she is currently an Honorary Fellow in the Cognitive Education Development Unit (CEDU) in the Graduate School of Education, a post held since 2009. In this capacity, she is supervisor and mentor, and evaluator of schools around the world seeking accreditation to become Thinking Schools. Judy studied with Professor Reuven Feuerstein and his team in both Jerusalem and London, and associated with colleagues at the Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem for many years. She is passionate about the human capacity for growth, and dedicated to helping all individuals reach their full potential. Judy and her husband relocated to Tel Aviv Israel in 2013, where she is associated with a number of educational and therapeutics projects.

Unlocking learning potential – The Feuerstein Legacy ■■■■■

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Special Issue

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Unlocking learning potential – The Feuerstein LegacyJudy Silver and Graham Handscomb introduce this commemorative issue focussed on

the work of Feuerstein and reflect on the continuing influence of his thinking and practice.

Professor Reuven Feuerstein, clinical, developmental and cognitive psychologist, and

founder and chairman of the Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem, died last year in Jerusalem,

aged ninety-three. This special issue of Professional Development Today is to honour the

memory and work of the man and his dedicated team of collaborators, colleagues and

students around the world.

■■■ The reach of Feuerstein’s thinking

It is difficult to overstate the importance and influence of Reuven Feuerstein’s work to psychology, teaching and parenting. The maxim, ‘There is nothing so practical as a good theory’ (Lewin, 1951) is never more true than when describing Feuerstein’s ideas, for to Reuven Feuerstein, theory and practice are two sides of the same coin, where theory guides every step of our actions in the important work of preparing the younger generation to take their rightful place in society. A key aspect of Feuerstein’s multifaceted approach is that it is constructed in such a way that it can be made instrumental and relevant to the development of all individuals. No matter their strengths and frailties, no matter their ability or disability, their age, their learning environment, life experiences or knowledge, there is something in what Feuerstein’s thinking offers for all learners, as the range of articles included in this commemorative issue aim to illustrate. Indeed, it is a sobering thought that Feuerstein would suggest that we are all ‘retarded performers’ with our own special needs

for if we accept that the brain is malleable, and can adapt and grow throughout our lifetime, then we must also accept that it is impossible for any of us to know the true limitation of our own potential! In this context and in many other respects Feuerstein was ahead of his time. Indeed, whilst Feuerstein’s powerful theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability (1979) acknowledges the capacity of the human brain to grow, adapt and change throughout our life-time, it was decades before neuroscience was able to prove it.

■■■ Feuerstein – the sleeping giant

Feuerstein’s ideas have generated thousands of applications of his work in a wide range of educational, psychological and therapeutic settings. They have been used in an extensive range of contexts - in different ability groups, age groups, learning environments, countries and cultures, all of which vary enormously in terms of complexity, their challenges and their political agendas, from individual case-studies, to school, district or national policy.


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There is a huge body of empirical research conducted over the past forty years which illuminate the successes and challenges of implementing these methods, so that now our own generation can benefit from these past experiences to continue this valuable work to explore new and exciting applications. What is becoming clear to theorists and practitioners in the field is that the potential for the applications of Feuerstein’s unique methods seems limitless, and it is only now becoming evident how much we still need to understand about Feuerstein’s legacy to us all. As Bob Burden wrote in his essay paying homage to Feuerstein and his ideas,’ in some areas of Feuerstein’s work, ‘‘the sleeping giant’ is only just beginning to stir’, (Burden, 2000).

■■■ The relevance of Feuerstein to

classroom practice

Feuerstein is perhaps most famous for his work with children with special needs, but there is a huge and growing body of evidence reporting successful projects around the world where his methods have been successfully applied in mainstream classroom settings. This growing interest is partly due to an increased general awareness amongst educators of the need to teach children how to think independently, and partly because Feuerstein’s dynamic approach for both assessment and intervention considers all aspects of development - cultural, emotional and intellectual, whilst maintaining a conscious awareness of the learning potential of all individuals. Without a deep understanding of the fundamental importance of these social and emotional dimensions of learning we ignore a vital part of our humanity.

Moreover, the world is changing more rapidly than ever before, and there is now a recognition that education must change with it. We have technology to do much of the mechanical calculation and information gathering which was so much part of education to past generations. Now, we need to teach our students how to be creative thinkers, selective in how they gather, organise and present information, make ethical and moral judgments, and in doing so prepare the next generation for a world that our own can barely envisage. Of course, the numerous and very practical challenges of initiating any innovation in teaching practice are considerable. Successful projects do not happen without

good leadership, a clear purpose, a defined set of goals, planning, cooperation, sufficient training, commitment of teachers, and a great deal of hard work. Initially questions will come to mind, such as, ‘What are our goals for initiating such a project? How do we know it works? What do we really want for our students? What is the relevance of this work in this context, and in our own learning environment?’ And, ‘What are its implications both for our students’ future and our own professional development? To answer some of these questions, and hopefully generate more, examples of how Feuerstein’s work is currently being implemented in a number of diverse settings is reported in this commemorative issue of Professional Development Today.

Teachers who have been trained in any aspect of Feuerstein’s methods have found it to be an enriching and rewarding experience; but this training is not a quick-fix for professional development or for the students who benefit from this teacher training. Like anything worthwhile, professional development in Feuerstein’s approach requires an investment and commitment, but the many psychologists, teachers and therapists who make this investment speak of how both the theory and the use of its practical tools have made a profound impact on their professional practice. Indeed, Pnina Klein, collaborator and co-author of Feuerstein’s key text, Mediated Learning Experience (1994) was once heard to say that it is very easy to make a good teacher into a wonderful teacher. The selection of articles included here are presented to the reader with this principle in mind.

■■■ Belief in individuals

In the first article, Judy Silver sets the scene by describing how and where the fundamental principles of Feuerstein’s philosophy developed, why his belief in the learning potential of all individuals was to become the driving force of his life’s work, and introduce the reader to the main features of Feuerstein’s ideas. These include the key tools of his practical methods for assessment, the Learning Propensity Assessment Device (1979), his programme for intervention, Instrumental Enrichment (1980), and his didactical framework for intervention, Mediated Learning Experience (1994). She also demonstrates why these ideas have such a powerful resonance for educators and in particular, classroom practitioners today.

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■■■ Positive assessment in the classroom

In Feuerstein’s approach, assessment and intervention are part of the same journey towards understanding the needs of students, and identifying and using a student’s abilities to strengthen their weaknesses is a vital part of that process. Anne Theresa Lawrie describes how the parameters of Feuerstein’s theory of Mediated Learning Experience (1994) could provide a pedagogy for assessment and learning which supports and compliments

the Assessment for Learning framework (Black and William, 1998) used in Scottish schools. In classroom practice, it is easy sometimes to make assumptions about the abilities and inabilities of our students, but Maria Dolores Calero tells us about important developments in the use of Feuerstein’s Dynamic Assessment for identifying potential giftedness in the classroom, reminding us of the too often untapped or undeveloped talents and abilities of students in our care.


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■■■ The inspiration of a positive approach

to learning

Finding ways to transfer theory into teaching practice is one of the major challenges of our profession, yet Yaron Schur’s Thinking Journey does just that. He describes how Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning Experience inspired the development of The Thinking Journey, a programme designed for teaching astromony, and now successfully applied to other curricular subjects for classroom practice. Yvette Jackson takes up this theme, and makes a compelling case for using Feuerstein’s theories to inspire teachers in the field to eliminate what she calls, the ‘tragedy of low expectations’ and instead, foster an alternative and optimistic ‘pedagogy of confidence’ in classroom practice.

Anne-Therese Lawrie describes a project in the Scottish Borders which initiated an increased prevalence of using Feuerstein’s thinking skills programme in Scottish schools, and in particular examines the teacher training dimension and its impact on both teaching and learning.

Elsewhere in the UK, Kate O’Hanlon describes research in Northern Ireland where students achieving average or below average attainment in five schools were given lessons using Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment programme. The research showed that these students made significant improvement in national examinations when compared with students in five control schools which did not undertake the programme.

■■■ A pedagogy for early intervention

Feuerstein emphasises the importance of early intervention, particularly in relation to children born into poor and deprived communities. Pnina Klein, colleague and collaborator of Reuven Feuerstein, and co-author of his key text, Mediated Learning Experience (1994) devoted much of her career to developing methods for assessing and addressing the quality of adult-child interactions of children at risk using naturally occurring situations and objects. Abraham Salinas-Miranda, Shawna Green and Martha Coulter make a compelling case in their article by calling

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References: Burden, R.L. (2000), Feuerstein’s unique contribution to educational and school psychology. In Kozulin and Rand (Edits), Experience

of Mediated Learning, Pergamon Press. ■ Lewin, K. (1951), ‘Field Theory in Social Science’, Harper & Row, New York.

for action in improving family centred care programmes, using Feuerstein’s mediated learning experience as the theoretical basis for improving the dynamics of parent-child relationships. By focusing on the parent-child dynamics of family care programmes, their article offers an interesting and alternative application of Feuerstein’s ideas. Cynthia Pelman’s personal experience of working in the poor townships of Cape Town in South Africa vividly illustrates similar objectives, demonstrating how Feuerstein’s fundamental principles and theories can be used to guide every step of parental and teacher intervention. She highlights the fact that many small children need to be consciously taught the most basic building blocks of learning in preparation for school readiness. With no funding or financial support, her story reminds us of the power of good teaching practice when supported by a strong theoretical basis.

■■■ Championing special learners

Enhancing the potential intelligence of all children, no matter their disability, is exemplified in the following articles. Feuerstein and his colleagues have always championed the cause that children with Down‘s Syndrome and other mild or moderate learning difficulties should be included in mainstream classrooms, arguing that such children learn best when integrated into a high and mixed ability group of children. However, children with Down’s syndrome have traditionally been assessed using standard static tools which predict flat or low expectations of these children. Sari Alony and Alex Kozulin’s article demonstrates a different perspective of both assessment and intervention of children with Down’s Syndrome and other mild or moderate disabilities which focuses on their language development. They describe a study which used a cognitive programme of intervention and a dynamic approach to assessment to elevate the language development of a group of children with Downs’ Syndrome and other mild and moderate disabilities which revealed that intervention not only enhanced the language development of these children, but their cognitive ability as well, thus highlighting the link between language development and cognition. This study would seem to make the case for

suggesting that with specialist support, children with mild and moderate learning difficulties could benefit from inclusion in mainstream classrooms. When Roman Gouzman first met Reuven Feuerstein, he found Feuerstein concerned about the many blind and partially sighted individuals with good learning potential, unable to access many of the cognitive tasks of Feuerstein’s assessment tools and programme for intervention because of their disability.

Roman Gouzman and Judy Silver bring this special issue to a close with their description of how Gouzman executed Feuerstein’s initial ideas to develop the Tactile Instrumental Enrichment programme for the blind and partially-sighted. An added and welcome benefit of this programme is its application for students with Attention Deficit Disorders and other related conditions, demonstrating that Tactile Instrumental Enrichment can be used as a powerful tool for enhancing the cognitive development of a growing number of people with disabilities.

■■■ Legacy and challenge

So we hope that this special issue will not only serve to acknowledge and honour the depth and breadth of Feuerstein’s’ work explored by our contributors, but also that it will challenge anew the thinking and practice of Professional Development Today readers. Some may already be familiar with particular aspects of Feuerstein’s work; others may be discovering his ideas for the first time. For all of us this will be an opportunity to be newly inspired and motivated to read and explore more.

Judy Silver is a Honorary Fellow at the Cognitive

Education Development Unit in the Graduate School

of Education, University of Exeter, UK. She can be

contacted directly on [email protected]

Graham Handscomb is Honorary Professor at

University College London; Professor of Education

and Dean of the College of Teachers; and Editor of

Professional Development Today

[email protected]



As the work of Carol Dweck has proved, no matter how able, a child’s perception of themselves as learners will determine their academic careers. If it is poor it will:

• Undermine their resilience, so that they give up at the slightest obstacle

• Make them defensive learners, unwilling to challenge themselves

• Make them over-reliant on teachers and on received opinion

• Write-off successes as ‘flukes’• Under-perform in exams and tests• Have low aspirations and under-achieve in life

Whilst there are other self-esteem tests, no other test measures a child’s perception of themselves, specifically as learners, so well. This is why MALS has gone around the world as the key test to use to measure a child’s image of themselves as learners and thinkers. Using it will enable you to:

• Uncover, beneath external shows of confidence, which children have poor views of themselves as learners and therefore will be liable to under-perform

• Pinpoint exactly where their problems are• Measure progress in developing ‘open-mindsets’ in

children

Teacher Skills

The MALS is also a very subtle test of teacher performance – those teachers who succeed in lifting a child’s MALS score have the ability to motivate and teach the skills of independent learning... and vice versa! This too is often far from being easily visible.

Visit our online catalogue: www.teachingtimesbookshop.co.uk

Confidence is everything in learning!

Myself As a Learner Scale 8-16+Analysing self-perception

Price: £60.00

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Feuerstein’s Legacy - the relevance of Feuerstein to practitioners todayJudy Silver provides a comprehensive guide to the historical origins of Feuerstein’s work,

and explains his key ideas and programmes. She shows how his thinking is grounded

in a deep understanding of humanity and is still of profound relevance to the modern

educational world and to contemporary society.

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Feuerstein’s Legacy - the relevance of Feuerstein to practitioners today ■■■■■

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■■■ A journey of transformation

My earliest introduction to Feuerstein’s methods was as a novice practitioner of the Instrumental Enrichment programme (Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman and Miller, 1980) in the early Nineties. I had been a classroom teacher for a number of years but had for some time become disillusioned with recommendations made to me about how to help those children in my class who, for a variety of reasons, found some aspects of the curriculum challenging, despite my best efforts and those of my colleagues. It seemed clear to me that these children were bright and articulate but something was lacking, and I began to question whether the problem and its solution lay within the quality of my teaching and the learning environment, rather than the children themselves.

These thoughts triggered an interest in exploring the different thinking skills programme available at the time, so when I found a training programme in Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment offered in London where I was living at the time I immediately applied for training, attended the workshop, and my teaching practice was changed forever. As my understanding of the programme deepened, I learnt how these methods can become a powerful tool for unlocking learning potential. I also learnt that the major strength of Feuerstein’s complex and multifaceted approach is not its practical programme for intervention but its underlying philosophy and didactical method of delivery, namely, Mediated Learning Experience (Feuerstein, Klein and Tannenbaum, 1994). This strong theoretical basis provides the teaching practitioner with an overarching conceptual framework. This is used to address not only intellectual development but the social and emotional aspects of development and their impact on learning, such as motivation, fostering a feeling of belonging, self-efficacy and so on. It is these dimensions in Feuerstein’s work which sets it apart from other thinking skills programmes.

To put Feuerstein’s work into context for the teaching practitioner, this article is in two parts. The first part tells the story of how Feuerstein’s passions and philosophy grew in a time and a place when his belief in the learning potential of all human beings developed, and the second

part describes the practical tools of Feuerstein’s teaching methods and explains how they are applied.

1. A Historical Perspective...

Turbulent origins

To understand the importance of Feuerstein’s legacy to the world of education, you first need to understand a little about the man himself and how his work developed out of his own experiences. Reuven Feuerstein was born in Rumania in 1921 into a large orthodox Jewish family, highly intelligent and actively involved in the vibrant culture of their local community. Whilst he was still a child and through his study with younger children in the community, he had his first taste of teaching, and his first experience of the power that good teaching can have on human development.

As a young psychologist after the end of the Second World War, Feuerstein was employed in two contrasting environments. Two or three days a week were spent at the Piagetian school in Geneva designing and developing cognitive tools for assessment, and the remainder of his time was spent over the border in France in refugee camps, assessing Jewish children and young people released from the death camps and ghettos of Nazi Europe, in preparation for their settlement in the new State of Israel. These young people had originally come from many countries and diverse cultures; but now, through their tragic experiences of deprivation and survival, they shared a common dilemma, losing not only their families but their cultural heritage and consequently, any framework for how to conduct their lives in a changed world (Feuerstein, Tannenbaum, and Klein, 1994).

Cultural difference and cultural deprivation

These environments provided Feuerstein and his colleagues with two distinct and contrasting sources of clinical and academic interest: that of cultural difference in one environment and cultural deprivation in the other. They came to understand that the culturally different children seen at the Piagetian school were hungry to learn, stimulated by new experiences and demonstrating what they described as cognitive modifiability. That is, despite having some cultural

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differences between them, they demonstrated an ability and motivation to develop new strategies and techniques for learning. However, in contrast to the children in Geneva, the refugee children in the French camps showed little appetite for learning. These culturally deprived children were passive and apathetic to learning, and required a huge investment of effort by the assessor to help them become open to new ways of thinking, which went far beyond that which Feuerstein and his colleagues were accustomed to make (Burgess, 2000).

The experience of working in these two contrasting environments was to have a profound effect on the development of the young psychologist, who vowed to find a way to help all the young people in the camps acquire the cognitive skills they needed but had been deprived of developing normally during their years of survival (Sharron, 1996). This became the passion which governed his life’s work, sustained by his belief in the learning potential of all human beings. Thus, from the outset, Feuerstein acknowledges the complex interrelationships between society, the context for learning, and cognitive development.

There are interesting parallels between the historical times in which Feuerstein’s ideas developed, and the turbulent times in Russia a generation earlier in which Vygotsky first became interested in the innovative and revolutionary idea that human development is reliant on both natural and socially mediated factors by ‘significant others’ such as parents, mentors, teachers and community. In the early years of the twentieth century, the young Vygotsky had been expecting to follow his interests in literature and the humanities. However, the brutal times of post-revolutionary Russia forced everyone to find any occupation which would help them survive, so when he was offered a post teaching, he took it. This was where he first encountered children with special needs, victims of political revolution, socio-cultural dislocation and educational deprivation (Kozulin, Gindis, Ageyev and Miller, 2003). Similarly, thirty or forty years later, following the Holocaust in Nazi Europe, Feuerstein was entrusted with the assessment of Jewish children in the chaos of post-war Europe in preparation for their new life in Israel. Again, dislocation and educational deprivation had led to culturally and educationally deprived children.

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Current day challenges

Now, in our own rapidly changing times, these same problems of dislocation and educational deprivation are just as real, and it is argued here, just as pressing, as a huge migration and movement of peoples from a number of diverse cultures move across the globe, producing as they do so a younger generation dislocated from its cultural roots (Kozulin, Gindis, Ageyev and Miller, 2003). Similarly, in our own society, small and hitherto thriving communities with their traditional cultures and practices, in both rural and urban settings, are being swept away as new technologies are developed in the name of progress and profit. Nevertheless, in the multicultural society of today’s British culture, it is argued here that the potential talents of its diverse population are the country’s greatest natural resource.

Creating vibrant learning environments

It would seem therefore that the need for a socio-cultural perspective of education has never been more necessary. We need to foster and support learning communities in our schools where ethical values can be developed and promoted through shared goals and shared meanings; where people can grow and learn and live together to create strong, vibrant and optimistic learning communities; and, in order to sustain a competent, productive and optimistic society, there is now an identified need to find ways to build learning communities which reflect this social phenomenon based on trust, mutual respect and sound ethical principles. It would be logical therefore to expect these needs to be reflected in how we organise our school and vocational environments, where young people can develop the social, intellectual and affective skills they need to live meaningful, fulfilling and productive lives. However, research suggests that education has been slow to respond to these rapid changes in society, and we desperately need to rethink the kind of education we should be offering the younger generation in preparation for meeting the challenges of the twenty-first century (Craft, Gardner and Claxton, 2008). Happily, in schools around the world, things are beginning to change, and there is now a broad consensus amongst educators that teaching children to think independently

and creatively is a good idea, and that a whole-school approach to teaching thinking is the way forward. This latest thinking would seem to reflect Feuerstein’s ideas for what he refers to as the conditions for the ‘modifying environment’, developed more than forty years ago (Beker and Feuerstein, (1990), where the a number of essential factors must be considered when we want to create vibrant learning environments that generate permanent and lasting intellectual, social and emotional change in the human condition. These are: the underlying philosophy of that environment; a strong belief that human beings are capable of change throughout their lifetime; and, the relationships between people within that environment.

2. Feuerstein’s Practical Tools – What are they

and how do we use them?

Feuerstein’s approach relies on two essential factors: an unwavering belief in human capacity for change, and a practical set of tools to make that belief a reality. These methods start from the premise that to learn effectively and be successful in life we need to be observant, able to select and analyze relevant information; choose the correct words to organize our thoughts and communicate our ideas clearly and coherently; and identify relevant relationships between different concepts or ideas, make valid judgments, and solve problems logically and effectively. To develop or enhance all these cognitive processes and more, Feuerstein developed two practical tools: a programme for intervention: Instrumental Enrichment, (1980) and a set of dynamic assessment tools: The Learning Potential Assessment Device (1979).

The Learning Potential Assessment Device (Feuerstein,

1979)

The Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) differs fundamentally from psychometric assessment which measures the candidate’s abilities and disabilities on a given day by means of standardised scales of ability. In contrast, LPAD is a shared and dynamic experience that evolves over time between the candidates and the examiner. This does not imply however that LPAD is unstructured. On the contrary, this is a highly structured

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and practical framework which takes into account the cognitive, social and emotional aspects of development, how efficiently the candidate takes in information, processes and manipulates that information and how the candidate performs, acts out and responds to that information. Conducted over a number of sessions it explores not only what the learner knows but what s/he needs to learn, and what the mediator - the examiner - needs to do in order to make positive changes in the candidate’s responses and behaviours. A dynamic assessment is conducted either individually, in small groups, or larger groups in the classroom, using tasks designed to examine a range of specific cognitive skills such as perceptual understanding, analogies, matrices, visual and verbal memory, orientation and direction, comparison, classification and so on. The tools are presented in a variety of materials that include paper and pencil tasks, large coloured posters and diagrams, and 3-D objects suitable for individual and small group work. This dynamic and interactive method of assessment leads to a greater understanding of the cognitive strengths and weaknesses of the candidate and paves the way for a structured programme of intervention.

The Instrumental Enrichment Programme (Feuerstein,

1980)

Instrumental Enrichment (IE) is a highly structured programme that teaches thinking skills. Each of the fourteen sets of paper and pencil exercises (Instruments) are carefully designed to address different aspects of cognitive development such as visual perception, spatial orientation and direction, comparison and sequencing, classification, progressions, analogical reasoning and so on. The instruments are in the form of tear-off worksheets which can be used with individuals or groups of students of all ages, usually above the age of eight or nine in both clinical and mainstream classroom settings. A downward extension of IE called FIE Basic has been developed for younger children. Initially, a great emphasis is placed on developing the habit of careful, painstaking analysis. The rationale underlying this is that to learn effectively, a methodical approach must become second nature. Because the non-contextual tasks are

unfamiliar to students there is no experience of failure, and the tasks are both simply presented and cognitively challenging. Principles are developed in the lessons, and a technique called ‘bridging’ is used extensively whereby the mediator (the trained IE teacher) actively helps the student apply a newly developed principle to a context meaningful to the life or lives of the students. The more links that can be made within different aspects of the life of the students, the more secure the principle becomes. As this bank of strategies and principles grows, so motivation and self-esteem increases. Two examples of tasks from the Instruments Organization of Dots and Comparisons are here below:

Task Example 1: Organisation of Dots

In page 1A of the first Instrument, Organization of Dots, there are two exercises. In the first exercise, there are two squares in the top left-hand corner. In each of the following frames, and hidden within a cloud of dots, there are two squares identical to the model in size but not orientation. The task is that the student must work out which dots make which square. The rules are:

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■ Figures may overlap ■ All the dots must be used ■ If a dot is used for one figure it cannot be used for the other.

The concepts and properties of a square are discussed. Once the student understands the principle of counting the dots, and looking carefully at the positions of the dots and their relationships one to the other, the task becomes easier, and a discussion takes place about the merits of completing the task one way and not another. In the second exercise the task becomes more complex, and the properties of a triangle must be taken into account when solving each of the following frames. One principle to be gleaned from such an experience might be for example, ‘When I am not impulsive and I think carefully before I draw a line, I don’t make so many mistakes.’ Or, ‘knowing exactly what I am looking for helps me to find it’. The principle or principles developed in the IE lesson are then applied in different contexts such as curricular subjects at school, life skills, relationships and so on.

Task Example 2: Comparisons

These two exercises, taken from the Instrument Comparisons, illustrate a more complicated problem- solving activity. Here, the student is asked to follow the instructions at the top of the pages, looking first for what is common between the pictures on page 9, and then the differences between the pictures on page 11. The challenge here is to keep in mind the instructions whilst comparing the pictures and the words to describe them.

Through the activity of completing increasingly complex tasks the student is thus made aware of the changes in his or her own thinking processes over time. Such reflection and self-awareness helps the student understand that s/he is capable of change, perhaps learn how to control his/her impulsivity or become more pro-active; think before s/he acts; that planning a task will lead to greater chance of success; and that to solve unfamiliar problems s/he must develop the most effective strategy whilst becoming flexible enough to change or adapt a newly learnt strategy for use in other contexts. It is within the shared experience of a dynamic three-way dialogue between the student(s) - the trained teacher/mediator – and the IE task, that

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the student learns how to use logical verbal reasoning, take calculated risks and eliminate errors, all of which leads to a greater sense of mastery, achievement and independence.

Mediated Learning Experience (Feuerstein, Klein,

Tannenbaum, 1994)

Both the Learning Potential Assessment Device and Instrumental Enrichment are used in conjunction with the theory of Mediated Learning Experience MLE). This is a conceptual framework concerned with the quality of the interaction between the student and the mediator/teacher and its impact on the student’s learning. The mediator in this sense is the more knowledgeable, experienced person in this shared learning experience, or the ‘significant other’ in the relationship, such as the parent, mentor, caregiver or teacher. In this approach, the trained mediator is aware of the impact of his or her intervention on the student’s development, and adjusts that interaction accordingly. The MLE framework provides the teaching practitioner and colleagues with the vocabulary and concepts to discuss what is needed in their interaction with students, acknowledging that all

individuals learn differently and therefore may require different qualities and intensities of mediation. For example, in the same group, one student may lack self confidence and need careful, frequent encouragement and positive acknowledgement and reinforcement for every tentative step towards success, while another student may be over confident, impulsively using trial and error behavior and thus require a different quality of mediation such as regulation and caution in the strive towards accuracy and efficiency. The framework of MLE thus provides the practitioner with a conceptual framework to guide intervention.

Thinking on your feet

The three essential characteristics of a mediated learning experience are intentionality and reciprocity, transcendence and meaning. An interaction can only be said to be a mediated learning experience if these three qualities are applied (Feuerstein, Klein, Tannenbaum, 1994). Intentionality and reciprocity describe the main conditions for a mediated interaction, where the mediator (teacher) demands the student’s attention, first to explain his/her intention, and then to gain a response,

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either visually, verbally or non-verbally, thus setting up an atmosphere for learning. Examples of intentionality are: ‘I need you to understand this because...,’ or, ‘I want you to know how to do this, therefore I will do it slowly.’

The second essential aspect of mediated learning experience, transcendence, describes the intention of the mediator to help the learner look beyond the here and now of the concrete activity of the task, creating an awareness or consciousness of the more important lessons to be learnt. Transcendence is evident in an Instrumental Enrichment lesson, where the prime objective of a task for example, is to develop a rule or generalisation from the activity, and then by means of mediated learning experience think how such a rule might apply in different situations beyond the classroom. In this manner, the newly developed rule or generalisation takes on a far deeper significance for the learner beyond the boundary of the task itself. This notion of transcendence has been described elsewhere as ‘knowing in action’. In Feuerstein’s approach, the mediator needs to maintain a conscious awareness of what is happening in his/her interaction with the

student whilst it is happening, thinking on one’s feet how to mediate the deeper significance of the experience for the benefit of the student’s development (Schon, 1991; also see Friere, 1973). Schon says: ‘If common sense recognizes knowing in action’, (emphasis in the original) ‘it also recognises that we sometimes think about what we are doing. Phrases like “thinking on your feet”, “keeping your wits about you”, and “learning by doing” suggest not only that we can think about doing something but that we think about doing something while doing it. Some of the most interesting examples of this process occur in the midst of a performance.’ (Schon, 1991). Mediation of transcendence is therefore governed by the mediator’s awareness of the deeper significance of his/her shared experience with the student.

Mediation of Meaning, the third essential characteristic of MLE refers to the notion of the special significance attached by the mediator to a particular object or event in time. It makes explicit and transparent those practices which may not be obvious to the student or newcomer at the time, answering ‘why?’, or ‘what for?’

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questions which would help make clear the local routines and practices which need to be learned and understood.

A further nine qualities are identified and applied in specific situations and contexts because we know that learning requires far more than intellectual competence and that the attitudes and self-image of learners have a profound effect on the way they perceive themselves as learners (Burden, 2012). These qualities include:

■ mediation of competence; ■ regulation and control; ■ sharing; ■ mediation of the awareness of the human being as a changing entity;

■ respecting individual needs and differences; ■ goal seeking, setting and achieving; ■ mediation of challenge and the search for novelty and complexity;

■ seeking an optimistic alternative; and ■ fostering a feeling of belonging in the learner - inclusion in the learning community and promoting responsibility to and respect for others, being part of something, and making a contribution.

Making it a reality

Mediated learning experience is a powerful tool for all teaching practice, not only used with LPAD and IE but applicable across the curriculum and in therapeutic settings. In the hands of a skilful mediator in classroom practice mediated learning can help guide students towards a deeper understanding of curricular subjects. In recent years important developments in Feuerstein’s approach in curricular subjects have paved the way for a more infused approach to learning such as Schur’s

Thinking Journey which uses the theory of Mediated Learning Experience to provide a framework for teaching science and other curricular subjects (Schur, 2015). The applications of Feuerstein’s methods have been widely explored and are still being discovered. Indeed, ongoing projects in mainstream settings reported from around the world demonstrate the impact this work in mainstream classrooms provided that:

■ a whole-school approach is established; ■ there has been adequate training of teachers; and that ■ the school where the work is adopted uses a structured programme of Instrumental Enrichment, which is then infused across the whole curriculum.

Only then can the full potential of Feuerstein’s methods make a deep and lasting impact not only on students’ development but the quality of teaching practice across the whole learning community. Feuerstein’s legacy to the world of education and psychology is profound in that it encompasses a deep understanding of the fundamental needs of humanity and that the social context of learning is significant in this process. From this premise, his elegant theories and highly practical tools of analysis and intervention provide guidance and support for both the therapeutic and teaching practitioner to demand a higher level of functioning not only of our students, but of ourselves.





References: Beker, J. & Feuerstein, R. (1990), Conceptual foundations of the modifying environments in group care and treatment settings for

children and youth, Journal of Child and Youth Care, 4(5) ■ Burden, R.L. (2012), Myself as a Learner Scale (MALS), Produced and printed by

the University of Exeter, Graduate School of Education ■ Burgess, R., (2000), Propelling the Change: Promoting Continuity, in Kozulin, A. and

Rand, Y. (Edit.) Experience of Mediated Learning, Pergamon Press. ■ Craft, A., Gardner, H. & Claxton, G. (edits.), (2008), Creativity, wisdom, and

trusteeship: Exploring the role of education, Corwin Press, a Sage Company, Thousand Oaks, CA 91320. ■ Feuerstein, R. and Rand, Y. (1979),

The dynamic assessment of retarded performers, Baltimore University Park Press. ■ Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y. and Hoffman, M., and Miller, R.

(1980), Instrumental Enrichment, Scott, Foresman and Co., Illinois. ■ Feuerstein, R., Klein, P. and Tannenbaum, A. J. (1994), Mediated Learning

Experience (MLE): Theoretical, psychological and learning implications, (2nd Edit.), Freund Publishing House, Ltd. ■ Friere, P. (1973), Education

for critical consciousness, Sheen and Ward: London ■ Kozulin, A., Gindis, B., Ageyev, V.S. & Miller, S.M., (Eds.) (2003), Vygotsky’s educational

theory in cultural context, Cambridge University Press. ■ Schon, D.A. (1991), The Reflective Practitioner, Arena Ashgate ■ Schur, Y., 2015,

Thinking Journeys in the Classroom, this issue ■ Sharron, H. (1996) (3rd Edit.). Changing children’s minds: Feuerstein’s revolution in the

teaching of intelligence. Imaginative Minds.


Creative learning, assessment and connecting with Feuerstein ■■■■■

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Creative learning, assessment and connecting with FeuersteinAnne-Theresa Lawrie explores the potentially dynamic relationship between

Assessment for Learning and Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning Experience and how

together they ensure learning is placed at the heart of the curriculum.

This article explores the key components of Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) and how these relate to the four areas highlighted in Assessment for Learning (AfL): sharing

learning intentions, peer and self-assessment, effective questioning techniques and feedback. The Assessment

for Learning programme has been introduced across schools in the UK and has been highly influential. So this article examines the links between MLE and AfL and considers how MLE could be developed as a pedagogy within which, teachers could develop their knowledge of how to implement formative assessment techniques.

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■■■ The rise of Assessment for Learning

(AfL)

The purpose of AfL is to develop a streamlined and coherent system of assessment to ensure pupils, parents and other professionals have the feedback they require in relation to pupils’ learning and development needs.

The AfL programme was founded on research by Black and Wiliam (1998) which emphasised that learners learn best when they:

1. understand clearly what they are trying to learn, and what is expected of them

2. are given feedback about the quality of their work, and what they can do to make it better

3. are given advice about how to go about making improvements

4. are fully involved in deciding what needs to be done next, and who can give them help if they need it.

During 2002-2004 Assessment for Learning developed as a supported, bottom-up approach, using action research undertaken by teachers in schools to inform developments. Initially, ten projects were identified and these covered aspects of formative and summative assessment, recording and reporting. Cumulatively, the projects aimed to:

1. develop a unified system of recording and reporting (personal learning plan)

2. bring together current arrangements for assessment, including the Assessment of Achievement Programme, National Tests and the annual 5-14 Survey of attainment

3. provide extensive staff development and support through its project-based approach.

The feedback from the initial projects and from formal evaluations suggested that there were three key areas to be addressed in order for assessment to be effective: assessment FOR learning, assessment AS learning and assessment OF learning. These three areas became the focus of AfL developments between 2004-2007. The three areas were developed by encouraging local authorities and schools to develop assessment practice

in ways that considered current research on managing change and schools received small grants to engage as associated schools groups (ASGs) to explore how to further develop AfL. Hayward et al (2004) evaluated the AfL projects in Scotland and their analysis suggested that after engagement in AfL projects many teachers reported:

‘ …their experience as a process of rediscovery, of remembering what attracted them to become teachers, and of the joy of watching learners growing in confidence and competence. The ideas of formative assessment and its potential to enhance the learning environment have seemed to resonate with many teachers’ memories of better times; particularly of less pressured classrooms where there was more space for learning’.

The AfL projects were also evaluated by the University of London (Hallam et al, 2003) and both evaluations highlighted the increased levels of pupil engagement, pupil confidence and pupil enthusiasm reported by the teachers across the pilot project. In 2004, Peter Peacock the Minister for Education launched ‘Ambitious, Excellent Schools’, a new vision for Scottish education which included a commitment that all schools should be ‘part of the AfL programme by 2007, to ensure that assessment supports learning’. An evaluation of AfL in Scottish schools was published in 2007 and the main findings of this are described in the next paragraph.

Hilliam et al (2007) carried out an evaluation for Learning and Teaching Scotland entitled’ Assessment of Learning Evaluation’ and it had a particular focus on Assessment of Learning (AoL), which focuses upon using evidence, sharing standards and monitoring and planning for improvement. The outcomes of the research suggested that awareness and understanding of AfL and AoL is not firmly embedded across teachers in Scotland. However, it was proposed that AoL has resulted in an increase in the range of assessment methods used to monitor and record pupils’ achievements, and helped teachers to become more confident in the different methods that they use to make assessments of pupils’ learning .It was reported that the most effective element of AoL was the focus on moderation and standard sharing and this received the most positive feedback in

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the research. Highland Council carried out extensive work on AfL and part of this involved a project looking at the role of ASGs in promoting change in relation to both AfL and CfE. The project evaluation was carried out by Priestley (2008) and he proposes that ASGs have offered a valuable stimulus to teacher collaboration, the dissemination of ideas and the development of innovative practice across the Highland region. The Highland data from the Highland AfL project has been analysed in more detail in a subsequent publication and this is discussed in more detail in the next paragraph.

Priestley et al (2010) in a further analysis of the Highland project suggested that teachers participating in the AfL project found the ASG space useful in a number of ways, including the availability of space for dialogue, opportunities for networking and sharing ideas and the facilitation of reflection, especially for sense making when working out how to translate policy into practice. One of the teachers in the Highland project proposed that in order for to sustain and develop reflective learning approaches, he would require support from is department and school. Priestley et al (2010) propose from their research that for change in relation to curriculum development to be sustained, it is necessary to address the wider social, cultural and policy environment within which the teachers are operating and to look more closely at how these interact with the dynamics of the classroom and school environments in which the curriculum enactments are carried out.

The importance of continuous professional development (CPD) in relation to the development of new initiatives was considered to be fundamental by teachers participating in the project. The teachers proposed that teachers themselves need to be given more say in how the CPD is organised so that it is useful and relevant. Indeed, there was a feeling that teachers need to be trusted more and given more control over their own professional development and the over the way their students are assessed. Many of the emerging key issues from this research resonate with Feuerstein’s MLE. MLE is a teaching approach, which could be implemented to augment or develop AfL approaches, and this is the key focus for this paper. The key features of AfL will be outlined in the next paragraph.

■■■ Key features of AfL

The literature review carried out by Black and Wiliam’s (1998) resulted in the publication of ‘Inside the Black Box’, which highlights that formative assessment is not an end in itself but rather:

■ ‘it is at the heart of effective teaching’ (p5).

Indeed, they make it clear that:

■ ‘the term assessment refers to all those activities undertaken by teachers, and by their students in assessing themselves, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged’ (p2).

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Black and Wiliam’s (1998) review of research on assessment suggested that formative assessment improves learning in ways that are measurable, are taken from studies involving learners from the age of 5 to those at university. The message of ‘Inside the Black Box’, which is based on solid and extensive research, is that formative assessment enhances the learning process. The message is often translated into four key elements:

1. sharing learning intentions2. feedback3. effective questioning4. peer and self-assessment.

The four key elements listed above provide teachers with

practical strategies, which may be a means to improve classroom practice. For effective learning to take place, learners need to understand what it is they are trying to achieve. In order to achieve this, teachers need to ensure that they share learning intentions with the learners and also ensure that the learner understands the intentions. The importance of this is emphasised by Hodgen and Wiliam (1999):

‘In order to learn, students must first understand the learning intention, which requires the understanding of what would count as a good quality work (success criteria). They must also have an idea of where they stand in relation to that target. Only with these two can they achieve the power to oversee and steer their own learning in the right direction, so that they can take responsibility for it’.

In order to ensure the above, a teacher would have to think about how best to share learning intentions with individual pupils and also ensure that pupils understand the learning intention. AfL does not provide links to pedagogies, which could elucidate its four key elements, and as a result it does challenge teacher thinking on how best to structure lessons to incorporate the key features.

The role of feedback in relation to improving student learning is crucial. If a student understands the learning intention for a particular task, he/she will be able to embark on the task. When the task is completed, the student will require feedback in order to find out what he/she may need to do in order to improve. Indeed, Black and Wiliam (1998) summarise this in the following way:

‘Feedback to any pupil should be about the particular qualities of his or her work, with advice on what he or she can do to improve, and should avoid comparisons with other pupils’ (p9).

Feedback can be given orally to students as part of classroom practice or it may be given as written feedback. Many teachers mark students work and the quality of the work is assessed by awarding an overall mark which may also be converted into a grade.

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Black and Wiliam (1998) indicated that marks do not give the learner advice on how the work or the learner’s understanding can be improved. They also comment that marks emphasise competition and not personal improvement. They noted that marks appear to demotivate learners and provide no challenge to high attainers. From their research evidence Black and Wiliam (1998) propose that instead of marking student work, the teacher can:

■ provide specific feedback on a particular aspect of a pupil’s work

■ identify particular patterns of errors in a pupil’s work ■ give structured feedback that enables a pupil to identify errors for themselves

■ encourage pupils to use their existing knowledge in assessing their own work.

For many secondary teachers, awarding marks in order to gauge how well a student is doing is the norm and to incorporate the advice above on feedback, will require a change in practice. Shirley Clarke has written a number of books, which outline ways to incorporate the key features of AfL into the classroom. Clarke (2005) also links AfL with current thinking about teaching and learning, which Black and Wiliam (1998) failed to do. The next paragraph will highlight the role of questioning in AfL.

One way in which students can express their understanding of their learning is through answering questions, which allow them to express their understanding. Black and Wiliams (1998) identified the ways in which teachers can inhibit student responses to questions: teacher looks for a particular response and lacks the flexibility to deal with the unexpected; teacher directs the student to give the expected answer; teacher does not allow time for student to process the question and the teacher directs questions to the same few students. The practice described is prevalent in many classrooms and needs to be changed if questioning is to be concerned with eliciting understanding of student learning. There are a number of strategies that Black and Wiliam (1998) suggest for teachers to engage in effective questioning:

give pupils’ time to respond to questions; pupils to discuss their thinking in pairs or small groups so that a respondent is answering on behalf of others; giving pupils a choice between different possible answers and asking them to vote on it. The quality of questioning is also important and part of lesson planning can be concerned with the generation of questions that really develop understanding. Black et al (2003) point out:

‘More effort has to be spent in framing questions that are worth asking: that is, questions, which explore issues that are critical to the development of children’s understanding.’

Strategies for developing effective questioning are encompassed within ‘Inside the Black Box’ but again this is not linked to pedagogies, which may help structure, the implementation of the strategies and the case for the using MLE as pedagogy for AfL will be presented in the final section of this paper. The fourth element of AfL, peer and self-assessment will be discussed in the next paragraph.

The fourth key element in AfL is concerned with peer and self-assessment. Self-assessment means that students make judgements about their own achievement and learning processes and take part in decisions about action for further progress in learning. In order to do this, they need to have a clear understanding of the goals of the learning and of the criteria to be applied in judging how well the goals have been attained. Peer assessment involves students in assessing each other’s work, again through reflection on the goals and what it means to achieve them. It may take place in groups, where the aim may be as much the development of group processes as the promotion or judgement of individual learning. It may also take place in pairs. Sebba et al (2008) carried out a systematic review of research evidence of the impact on students in secondary schools of self and peer assessment and most studies reported some positive outcomes for the following:

■ pupil attainment across a range of subject areas (9 out of 15 studies showed a positive effect)

■ pupil self-esteem (7 out of 9 studies showed a positive effect)

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■ increased engagement with learning especially goal setting, clarifying objectives, taking responsibility for learning, and/or increased confidence (17 out of 20 studies showed a positive effect).

Self and peer assessment appear to demystify the learning for students and also enhances pupil self-esteem. The four key elements of AfL have been described in this section but no links to any aspect of pedagogy has been made. In the next section the parameters of MLE will be described and in the final section the links between AfL and MLE will be highlighted.

■■■ Mediated Learning Experience

MLE is a teaching approach devised by Feuerstein (2006) that emphasises the importance of the interaction between the teacher and the student in facilitating the process of learning. MLE is an approach, which can be categorised as cognitive psychology, which is concerned with the way in which the human mind thinks and learns. Cognitive psychologists including Feuerstein are therefore interested in the mental processes that are involved in learning. Feuerstein et al (1980) suggests that right from birth a child’s learning is shaped by the intervention of significant adults. He refers to these significant figures in the child’s learning as mediators and the experiences they provide as mediated learning experiences. These adults, at first parents, but later teachers, select and organise stimuli that they consider the most appropriate for the child, to shape and present them in ways considered most suitable to promote learning. The interaction between the mediator and the child enables the child to construct a view of the world and his/her place in it.

Parameters

The theory of MLE has a framework for its application – parameters - and for any interaction between teachers and learners to be considered mediational, Feuerstein (2006) proposes that three parameters must be applied: intentionality and reciprocity, meaning and transcendence. It is therefore essential that for teachers to provide a mediated learning experience for students three key elements must be present: clear learning

intentions to which the student responds (intentionality and reciprocity); the learning is meaningful, relevant and conveyed to the learner with interest and emotional involvement from the teacher (meaning); that the underlying skills required for learning are made explicit and when knowledge is integrated and linked to a broader context (transcendence). Apart from the three parameters deemed necessary for an interaction to be considered mediational, there are nine further parameters of MLE applicable in certain contexts described here:

■ Mediation of competence involves developing the learner’s self-confidence and the teacher does this by giving the student positive and constructive feedback on their successes and how to improve on future work.

■ Mediation of self-regulation and control of behaviour aims to encourage children to take responsibility for their own learning and behaviour. It involves teaching children to think about their own thinking (metacognition).

■ Mediation of sharing occurs when the mediator and learner, or a group of learners focus on an activity together and respond together.

■ Mediation of individuation involves fostering the development of the individual’s autonomy and unique personality.

■ Mediation of goal setting is concerned with the teacher working with a student to set realistic goals and help the student plan, review and modify the goals.

■ Mediation of challenge involves evoking in the learner the motivation to attempt something new and the determination to persevere with something difficult.

■ Mediation for self-change is when the teacher encourages self-evaluation of individual progress and when learners use criteria for evaluating progress. Mediation for the optimistic alternative occurs when the teacher encourages students to think of a range of positive solutions to problems.

■ Mediation of fostering a sense of belonging in the learner is achieved by the teacher including all learners in the learning process.

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Influential research projects

In the UK, there are two research projects of particular importance which report on the implementation of Feuerstein’s thinking skills programme, Instrumental Enrichment (the teaching approach for this is MLE) into the classroom. These are Blagg’s (1991) evaluation of Instrumental Enrichment (IE) in Somerset schools, and the QIE (2007) report of IE in Scottish Border schools. Both reports provide feedback from teachers on MLE and this is outlined in the next two paragraphs.

Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment’s (FIE) was piloted in 14 schools in Scottish Borders in 2005. Thirty-two teachers were trained in FIE which incorporates MLE, and they worked with children who were underachieving due to social, emotional, and behavioural needs. The project aimed to find out if IE could be used as a way of promoting social inclusion for children and also as a means to improving self-confidence and attainment. In addition, forty newly qualified teachers were trained in MLE. The pilot programme was part of the Future Learning and Teaching programme (FlaT) set up by the Scottish Executive (2009) to attempt to identify innovative pedagogic practices. The evaluation of the IE

pilot carried out by Strathclyde QIE Department (2007) reported on the impact of IE on pupils compared to a control group.

They concluded that: pupils doing IE had an improved perception of themselves as learners; IE pupils looked forward to lessons; IE had helped pupils improve their behaviour; IE had helped pupils persist with work and use analysis to help solve problems and IE pupils made more cognitive gains compared to the control group. The QIE (2007) evaluation of the SBC pilot project reported that many of the newly qualified teachers (NQTs) used the MLE training as a means of reflecting on their practice (2007:14). The teachers were broadly positive about the MLE training and intended to continue trying out the approach in their next post.

However, they also found that the training lacked practical strategies for implementation and opportunity for discussion was limited. Nevertheless, ninety-eight percent of the teachers trained in IE and MLE believed that the training had helped them develop a better understanding of the learning process and that they used MLE not only to deliver IE but curricular content as well. Both Blagg’s (1991) and the QIE (2007) evaluations will be discussed in the next paragraph.

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Some key evaluations

The QIE (2007) evaluation reported that teachers trained in MLE could envisage how MLE linked to AfL . There is however no exemplification of these links in the report and this why I propose that it is worthwhile investigating MLE as one pedagogy which may facilitate the implementation of AfL. Blagg’s (1991) analysis of the implementation of FIE focuses on the impact of this methodology on both pupils and teachers. Four secondary schools, thirty teachers and over one thousand low achieving 14 to 16 year olds were involved in the project. There was no evidence reported in this study to indicate that pupil attainment had improved because of the IE programme.

In Blagg’s (1991) study, teachers only received two weeks training in IE and therefore they had no means of knowing how to measure the impact of IE on pupil attainment. The teachers were not guided on how to plan IE lessons and as a result they had no platform to engage in professional dialogue related to the impact of IE on pupils’ attainment and cognitive skills. Indeed, Blagg(1991) reports that relatively few of the teachers had further opportunity for further training in Israel or the time to immerse themselves in the wider literature on the teaching of thinking skills. Blagg (1991) records that in general the FIE trained teachers became more analytical about their work but admitted that changes in teaching style were more limited by time restrictions created by competing management and curriculum content demands.

The structure to promote and integrate IE into the curriculum was not incorporated into this study and as a result there was no support for teachers or pupils undertaking the IE programme.

Teachers involved in both IE and MLE training in the Scottish pilot project (2007) received support on how to implement their training into their classroom practice. The support was in the form of a development officer who trained in IE and who could work with individual teachers in their classroom. The development officer also introduced base line assessments for both teachers and pupils in order to measure the impact of IE on professional practice and pupils’ perception of themselves as learners. Both IE and MLE training

was incorporated into school improvement plans and agreed with senior management in the school and this further supported the implementation of both IE and MLE into the school curriculum. The development officer for the pilot project became an IE trainer and as a result has continued to both train and support teachers in Feuerstein methodology.

However, the teachers in the 1991 study appear to have had a positive experience during the training in FIE, because Blagg (1991) noted:

“Above all else, Instrumental Enrichment has prompted teachers to think about how pupils think and learn. There is no doubt that the vast majority of teachers were enormously stimulated by the training course that prompted them to examine their role as mediators of children’s intellectual development.”(1991:121)

Blagg’s (1991) evaluation also claimed that teachers were encouraged to reflect on the learning process as a result of participation in the FIE project. Similarly, one of the implications from the QIE (2007) evaluations of the pilot FIE project is that MLE as a methodology appeared to help teachers understand how pupils learn. The four key areas of AfL could be implemented in the classroom by teachers utilising the parameters of MLE, and these links are discussed in the next section.

■■■ Links between MLE and AfL

AfL is described in terms of a list of practices, which were discussed earlier in this paper as the four key elements of AfL but Black and Wiliam (2009) have reformulated these as the following strategies:

1. clarifying and sharing learning intentions and criteria for success;

2. engineering effective classroom discussions and other learning tasks that elicit evidence of student understanding;

3. providing feedback that moves learners forward;4. activating students as instructional resources for one

another; and5. activating students as the owners of their own

learning.

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These strategies can be used to inform classroom practice but there is still no reference made to pedagogies, which could underpin classroom practice. Indeed, in a report for Highland Council in relation to the project work on AfL, Black (2009) reports that work on formative assessment was promoted and developed without a clear view of its role in a comprehensive theory of teaching and learning, its interdependence on other aspects of pedagogy has not been spelt out. He does suggest that a teaching strategy should start with a clear purpose, then frame classroom based tasks to work towards those purposes, then so conduct these interactions in and around the implementation of those tasks that pupils develop understanding and confidence, and include some foresight about how to review progress from time to time to determine how the strategy may have to be revised. Formative assessment is concerned with the interactions.

Black (2009) is proposing a structure for a teaching and learning, which hopefully ensures that the five strategies for AfL listed above are implemented in classroom practice. There are possibly a number of pedagogies, which could provide a teaching strategy for AfL and in the next paragraph, MLE will be proposed as on possible pedagogy which could be a teaching strategy for AfL delivery in the classroom.

The first parameter of MLE is intentionality and reciprocity and it requires that the teacher frame classroom interaction by ensuring that the learning intention is shared with students and also to ensure that the students understand the learning intention. This particular parameter relates to providing a clear purpose for the learning as suggested by Black (2009) and also it is a means of sharing and clarifying the learning intentions (Black and Wiliam 2009). The second part

of the proposed teaching strategy for AfL is the framing of classroom-based tasks (Black 2009) and Meaning, the second parameter of MLE is concerned with the teacher making explicit the underlying strategies and skills involved in a task which is concerned with the framing of the student task and this also links with sharing criteria for success (Black and Wiliam 2009). Mediation of goal setting is concerned with the teacher helping a student plan and achieve goals by making the process to do this explicit, and this too appears to link to the teaching strategy for AfL where the teacher makes clear to the student the processes involved in learning tasks.

The third parameter of MLE is transcendence and this is concerned with making links between learning in all subject areas and this is can be achieved by the teacher constructing questions, which allow students to demonstrate their understanding. Transcendence appears to relate to the second strategy of AfL which is concerned with engineering classroom discussions and other learning tasks that elicit evidence of student understanding and Black (2009) suggests that classroom questioning is the main way of implementing this. The links between AfL and MLE will be discussed in the next paragraph.

Black (2009) in his description of a teaching strategy to promote AfL proposes that whilst conducting interactions for the implementation of classroom tasks, teachers should develop understanding and confidence in their students. The parameter of competence tasks teachers with helping learners develop self-confidence by ensuring that they understand the processes that lead to successful performance in the learning tasks. The parameter of competence appears to relate to the aim of developing confidence in the student. The third strategy of AfL is concerned with providing feedback that moves

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References: Black, P. (2009) ‘Embedding A Curriculum for Excellence in the Classroom. A Highland CPD Journey 2004-2009 ‘LTS ■ Black, P.,

Harrison, C., Lee, C., Marshall, B. And Wiliam, D. (2003) ‘Assessment for Learning’ OUP ■ Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (2009) Developing the Theory of

Formative Assessment. ‘Educational Assessment, Evaluation and Accountability, 21, (1), 5-31’ ■ Black, P. & Wiliam, D. (1998) ‘Inside the Black Box:

Raising Standards through Classsroom Assessment’ London: Kings College. Hayward, L. Priestly, M. And Young, M. (2004). Ruffling the calm

of the ocean floor: merging practice, policy and research in assessment in Scotland. ‘Oxford Review of Education Vol. 30, No. 3, September

2004’ ■ Clarke, S. (2005) ‘Formative Assessment in Action – weaving the elements together’. Hodder Murray ■ Hallam, S., Kirkton, A., Pfeffers,

J., Robertson, P. & Stobart, G. (2003) ‘Interim report of the evaluation of programme one of the Assessment Development Programme: support

for professional practice in formative assessment’ London, Institute of Education, University of London ■ Hilliam, A., Granville, S. & Castley,

N. (2001) ‘Assessment of Learning Evaluation’ LTS ■ Hodgen, J. & Wiliam, D. (1999) ‘Mathematics inside the black box’ nfer Nelson ■ Priestly,

M. (2008) ‘The social practices of curriculum development’ LTS ■ Priestley, M. & Humes, W. (2010) The development of Scotland’s Curriculum

for Excellence: amnesia and déjà vu. ‘Oxford Review of Education, Vol. 36, No. 3, June 2010, pp 345-361 ■ Priestly, M., Miller, K., Barrett, L. And

Wallace, C. (2010) Teacher learning communities and educational change in Scotland: The Highland Experience. ‘British Educational Research

Journal 2010, (1) pp 1-20 ■ Scottish Executive Education Department (2004) ‘A Curriculum for Excellence’ Curriculum Review Group Edinburgh.

the learner forward and this articulates with the one of the aims of the parameter of competence, the teacher making the student aware of their progress. The parameter of challenge is concerned with the teacher presenting tasks to students in a way that will motivate and enthuse them to undertake the learning task. Black (2009) suggests that in formulating and presenting tasks to pupils, teachers should have the potential to engage and challenge students in such a way that their responses will provide critical evidence about their prior understanding and will open up a dialogue to develop that understanding. Challenge and the formulating and presenting of tasks have similar aims in relation to ensuring that the teacher engages the student in the learning task which will also motivate the student to develop their understanding. The type of feedback provided to the learner should help move the learner forward and this AfL strategy resonates with the parameter of search for the optimistic alternative, which aims to help the learner choose an optimistic alternative approach to a learning situation. The importance of students learning from each other is a common theme in both MLE and AfL and this is discussed in the next paragraph.

The fourth strategy of AfL (Black and Wiliam 2009) is concerned with activating students as instructional resources for one another. The parameter of sharing is concerned with students cooperating with one another in order to facilitate learning. There is commonality of purpose in students being instructional resources for one another and also in cooperating with each other to enhance learning. The parameter to promote a sense of belonging is concerned with ensuring that the learner values being part of a group and this articulates with

the aims of students working together to facilitate the learning process. Working with others is one perceived way to promote learning but both MLE and AfL highlight the importance of the individual taking responsibility for their own learning. This is reflected in the fifth strategy for AfL, which is concerned with activating students as the owners of their own learning. The parameter of self-change is concerned with the teacher helping the leaner develop responsibility for continual self-change where they may use a progress chart to monitor their progress. The ultimate aim of self-change is for the student to become an independent and autonomous learner, which articulates well with the AfL aim of students as owners of their own learning. The parameter of individuation is concerned with the teacher encouraging independent and original thinking from the learner and this appears to foster the learner taking responsibility for his or her own learning.

■■■ Conclusion

AfL has the capacity to place learning at the heart of the curriculum (Hallam et al 2004) and MLE may be a vehicle to promote this (QIE 2007).By placing learning at the heart of the curriculum, teachers will have to reflect on the processes involved in the learning process and how best to develop these for students. It would be worthwhile for educators to use Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning Experience as the pedagogy for Assessment for Learning in order to promote a deep learning experience with excellent interaction between all learners.

Anne-Theresa Lawrie lives and works in the UK. She can

be contacted on [email protected]

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Dynamic Assessment!How do we identify gifted children and what factors contribute to our understanding

of giftedness Maria Dolores Calero explains through her review of developments of

Feuerstein Theory.

■■■ The gaining of new insights

The late-1970s brought the appearance of two books by Reuven Feuerstein and colleagues, where they present the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) and the Instrumental Enrichment Programme (IEP)

(Feuerstein, Rand & Hoffman, 1979; Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman, & Miller, 1980). These publications produced a wide-ranging impact on educational assessment and intervention, which quickly extended to many different countries. Their work showed the

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Dynamic Assessment! ■■■■■

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way toward educational integration and improvement of children who occupy special and compensatory education classrooms everywhere; consequently, the work has been reviewed, replicated, analyzed, developed, completed and appraised by many different psychologists, in many different contexts, leading to what is today a broad field of study in dynamic assessment and cognitive education programs.

Following the original approach of Feuerstein and colleagues (Feuerstein, Rand & Hoffman, 1979; Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman & Miller, 1980), most initial developments were applied to children in disadvantaged situations: children with retardation, with learning problems, language problems, ethnic minorities, etc. (see Lidz & Elliot, 2000), since this methodology was the means to gain a more positive, less stigmatized view of these populations, and improve their social adaptation and their performance in the educational context.

■■■ Learning Potential

Two factors led to an increased understanding of how society and culture affect children’s performance. First there was the acceptance of sociocultural deprivation, understood in its broadest sense, as the cause for deficient performance on cognitive tasks. There was also the insight that the action of a conscious mediator can mean significant cognitive change in all of these children. Together these two features, not only equipped educational psychologists with an effective intervention tool, but empirical support was given to the hypothesis that a child’s performance at any given moment is a sociocultural product, as proposed by authors such as Vygotsky (1974). Thus, within a few years, applications of Learning Potential (LP) assessment were expanded to other, non-deficient groups of categories of children, and the objective was not only to plan remedial interventions for visible deficits, but also to predict performance and to prevent possible future deficits in populations undergoing development (e.g., preschoolers) (Lidz & Elliot, 2000, Lidz & Gindis, 2003; Tzuriel, 1995, 1997), and in groups that, while not strictly labeled as disadvantaged, might come to be at a disadvantage because of their current performance on traditional intelligence and/or aptitude tests (Lidz & Macrine, 2001).

Today, after more than 30 years of development in dynamic assessment, there continues to be debate on the concepts of LP and cognitive modifiability. This has also embraced considering their relationship to each other and to intelligence, aptitudes and motivational factors. At the same time, one can perceive the tremendous influence of these assumptions on the population in general, and particularly in psychology. We can observe how these terms are used in very diverse contexts, and how it is accepted that a child’s performance can be improved through directed and guided interaction with an adult (or a more capable peer). Similarly, LP assessment is beginning to be accepted as providing different information than traditional assessment, and as sometimes more useful, because it may indicate the causes of poor performance and the ways that it might be improved (Haywood & Lidz, 2007; Tzuriel, 2011). Moreover, after many years of limited use, we are finding more and more studies of applications of this tool to different contexts and tasks, such as: predicting skill acquisition for working with schizophrenics (Sergi, Kern, Mintz & Green, 2005); professional selection (Nieuwenhuis & Van Woerkom, 2007; Kozulin, 2010); acquisition of a second language (Poehner & Lantolf, 2013); perceiving emotions (Bedwell, 2010), and so on.

■■■ LP assessment in the gifted

Focusing now on the field of intellectual giftedness, Sternberg noted in 2010 that tests for determining children’s abilities have changed relatively little since the work of Alfred Binet and Theodore Simon; however, new models that go beyond conventional IQ have been proposed for identifying giftedness. Other aspects to consider in determining a child’s excellence now include abilities such as motivational and affective factors, self-regulation, creativity, flexibility, metacognition, working memory and engagement in the task (Calero, García-Martín, Jiménez, Kazén & Araque, 2007; Joseph & Ford, 2006; Kaur, 2004; Naglieri & Ford, 2005; Renzulli, 2005; Sternberg & Davidson, 2005; Tzuriel, Bengio, & Kashy-Rosenbaum, 2011). Furthermore, giftedness is understood not only in terms of the individual’s exhibited performance, but also from the perspective of potential performance and of possibilities

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for cognitive change (Babayeva & Volskunovskiy, 2003); in this context, learning potential may supply additional information for better diagnosis.

Incorporation of LP assessment in this context took place in the United States in the 1990s, with awareness of the small percentage of Hispanic and African-American children that were enrolled in specific programs for the gifted; some authors expanded on the sociocultural view of dynamic assessment by hypothesizing that certain children may have ample learning potential, but do not present high scores in intellectual performance and/or aptitudes, and are therefore overlooked in programs designed to screen for giftedness. As Sternberg (2010) notes, results obtained on traditional tests lead to confusion between socioeconomic class and ethnicity, because the poor performance of ethnic groups might be primarily a function of economic class (Sternberg & Grigorenko, 2000, 2002). To accept this once again emphasizes the sociocultural nature of cognitive and/or intellectual abilities. All the authors who take up this initiative start from the fact that dynamic testing has already proved to be valid for identifying children with low intellectual level and/or with learning disabilities, and to be useful for planning follow-up intervention; and therefore that this technology also might be used for identifying gifted children within these ethnic minorities.

■■■ Identifying the “hidden” gifted

Thus, the initial, exploratory studies carried out by Stanley (1993) and Boling and Day (1993) indicate the utility of LP assessment for identifying gifted children who are not detected on traditional intelligence tests. LP assessment is oriented toward identification of different learning abilities, processes, and strategies in children who have identical intelligence scores, focusing on their learning potential, and providing specific information on metacognitive factors, specific deficient functions, and qualitative aspects of problem-solving. Later, Borland and Wright (1994) and Kanevsky (1995) include dynamic procedures in screening processes, and confirm that these procedures increase the number of children identified as gifted. The results showed that by introducing observation, portfolio measurements and/

or dynamic assessment, there was better reliability in identifying these children in urban preschools of New York City, where economically disadvantaged children were enrolled (Borland & Wright, 1994).

They also showed that the use of dynamic assessment increased the percentage of African and Latino children that were incorporated into specific programs for high abilities (Sibaya, 1996). For these reasons, they suggest that dynamic assessment may identify potentially gifted students that are overlooked when static measures are used, and furthermore, may identify children that, while scoring very high on static measures, may not have much greater potential than any other child their age (Calvo, 2004; Lidz & Macrine, 2001; Matthews, 2002; Matthews & Foster, 2005; Sheenan, 2000; Stuart, 2002).

The study by Kanevsky (2000), with children of preschool age and an IQ between 110 and 150, showed that gifted children had a broader Zone of Proximal Development (ZPD)1,as well as the ability to learn more quickly and with greater generalization. Additionally, the study confirmed that these children’s learning was associated with high levels of motivation, metacognition, self-regulation and flexibility – a finding that has been supported in other studies (Calero, García-Martín, Jiménez, Kazen, & Araque, 2007; Nisbert et al., 2012; Tzuriel et al. 2011)-. Later, Kanevsky and Geake (2004) find significant qualitative and quantitative differences in the LP of gifted children and children with normal IQ. However, these results were not very conclusive due to the small sample size (5 gifted / 20 non-gifted). In a later study by Tzuriel et al. (2011), where they analyze the relationship between high functioning and motivational factors in gifted children, they found that the groups of outstanding-high (OH), outstanding-low (OL), and typical (T) children were discriminated first by the motivation factor (.80), followed by behavior shown during the dynamic assessment (.65), the post-test of the specific LP test (figure completion) (.42) and

1. Understood, following Vygotsky (1978), as the distance

between the actual developmental level of the child,

determined by its ability to solve a problem independently,

and the level of potential development as determined through

problem solving under adult guidance.

.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................


38

the amount of mediation during the assessment (.37). These results question the validity of traditional tests as the sole method of determining the intellectually gifted, especially in some very young children or belonging to different cultural groups. Also they directed about the need to include motivational aspects in enrichment programmes that are designed for gifted children.

■■■ Contributions from dynamic

assessment in determining giftedness

Two assumptions underlie these first studies on dynamic assessment in giftedness: gifted children show greater and more significant improvements in LP techniques than do children with normal intelligence; and these improvements are generalized across different tasks, such

that gifted children may be thought to have a high overall modifiability that would be a global indicator of high ability.

The research group at University of Granada has attempted to confirm the validity of these two assumptions in a sample of 64 children between ages 8 and 11 (Calero, García-Martín, & Robles, 2011). These children – who do not belong to socially disadvantaged minorities – were members of associations of gifted children, having been previously identified by educational assessment teams, and they were compared to 63 children of similar age and socioeconomic context, with average intelligence. All of them were assessed with the K-bit and three LP tests: the organizer, the stencil design and the positional learning tests (Feuerstein et

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al., 1979)2. The results showed that children with high IQ have a broader ZDP than do children with average IQ. In other words, under the same training conditions, the high IQ children achieve markedly superior results on the three tasks performed.

As for the second objective, the study confirmed the opinion of other authors, verifying that the excellence of high-ability individuals is exhibited across very different contexts and tasks (McCoach & Siegle, 2003; Selby, Shaw, & Houtz, 2005). The results showed that children with a high IQ learned more than children with average IQ on each and every task, thus representing different abilities: memory of positions, verbal reasoning and perceptive structuring. By contrast, the learning potential scores of children with average IQ varied from one task to another, with differences between the improvements gained.

Additionally, dynamic assessment was confirmed in its effectiveness in predicting children’s initial classification (gifted/non-gifted), while the opposite did not occur; that is, IQ scores did not predict achievement on dynamic tests (agreeing with prior studies by Kanevsky and Geake, 2004).

■■■ Stability over time

A second study set out to verify stability over time (over a two-year period) of the IQ measurement and the measurements of learning potential in initially gifted children, with the objective of mitigating possible reliability errors that seem to occur in identifying gifted children. This research was carried out with 49 children between the ages of 5 and 9 with an initial IQ between 134 and 159, as determined through the usual screening processes in Spanish public schools, prior to our investigation. These children were assessed with the same tests as in the earlier study, plus a measure

of working memory, at the initial assessment and in a follow-on assessment performed two years later.

In the subjects assessed, results showed no significant differences in measurements of learning potential or working memory between the first and second assessments (after 2 years); however, differences were found in three measurements of IQ. Total IQ, verbal IQ and matrices decreased significantly between the first and second assessment in a large number of participants (22 of 49). It should be noted that, though the children all had similar intelligence scores initially, those who maintained their status of giftedness were the ones who showed the greatest improvements in learning potential tests and greater working memory on the initial assessment. There was also an interesting, significant difference in the age of subjects who made up the two groups; the children who did not maintain their IQ from the first to the second assessment were the initial 5 to 7-year-olds. This phenomenon, where the greatest number of identification errors occurs in smaller children, has been detected in a large number of research studies from years past, and it is an issue that needs to be resolved, due to the great harm that it causes in the false positive children (see Silverman, 1986; Ramsden et al, 2011).

Finally, we checked again for the ability of the different assessment variables to predict stability in IQ scores, and once again, two measures of LP and the working memory measurement were significant predictors of giftedness status, such that a classification based on these criteria was able to correctly identify 100% of the participants (Calero & García-Martin, 2014).

These results support numerous other studies that claim that learning potential measurements can supply very useful information when identifying intellectually gifted children. This is so even in children who do not show outstanding performance, since this type of assessment does not seek to measure achievement, but the subject’s potential for positive change and the motivational and behavioral factors that are associated with such a change (Calero et al., 2011; Noel & Edmunds, 2007; Renzulli, Gubbins, Del Siegle, Zhang, & Chen, 2005; Tzuriel et al., 2011). Moreover, relevant

2. Brief Intelligence Test Kaufman (Kaufman & Kaufman, 1994)

is a screening test that aims to measure verbal and nonverbal

intelligence in children, adolescents and adults, by two subtests:

vocabulary and matrices.

These three tests of LP are part of the LPAD of Feuersein et al.

(1979) for children, with high level of complexity have been

selected for gifted children (for a more extensive knowledge of

these tests refer to Feuerstein et al., 1979)

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40

information is gained for reducing the number of false positives, especially when evaluating small children, in line with the arguments from Lidz and Macrine (2001).

Based on the results obtained to date, it would seem that when children have single talents, that is, when they excel in specific areas, this is more related to their sociocultural environment and to their motivation than to their abilities. Multiple research studies to date establish a broad, generalized zone of proximal development in the intellectually gifted.

■■■ Implications for teacher professional

development

There are a number of important implications here

for teachers, their approach and for their professional development. Teachers will of course play a significant role in the identification of gifted children. This should be made taking into account not only the actual development but also the potential development of other skills such as flexibility, working memory and involvement in the task. Age is an important factor to take into account in the evaluation criteria, because although early detection is important, we must consider that the lower age is, there is more risk of false positives. So at lower ages it will be important to conduct more careful and thorough evaluation.

Once children are identified, in order to achieve a harmonious development teachers need to take care

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to address aspects of development that could prove difficult and problematic, especially the emotional and motivational development and the most adaptive aspects.

Another educational need appearing in classrooms that include gifted children, is to consider the different rates of learning, for teacher instruction must be adjusted to each student, so that it can follow it without demotivated. Cognitive education programs based on a mediational approach, allow this flexibility of action the teacher.

In addition, educational systems, based on an interaction mediated, usually have very positive results with these children because their training needs are generally not basic skills, but skills such as flexibility, contextualization, motivation etc... to perform optimally. Mediated interaction allows the teacher to adjust the levels of each child and guide their learning, providing only those aids which the needs of both metacognitive processes (planning, regulation and evaluation of their work) and cognitive or motivational (involvement, reinforcement and consistency).

Now you can find programs and texts that help teachers to form a mediational teaching methodology (see Lauchlan & Carrigan, 2013: Tzuriel, 2013; etc.)

■■■ The potential for application

Taking the necessary precaution with any claims based on our results, given that these studies should be replicated with other techniques and other samples in order to generalize any conclusions, we would go

so far as to emphasize the important contribution that Feuerstein’s theories have made to assessment and intervention with high ability children. Not only is there increased reliability in identifying these children, thereby helping to mitigate the large problem that is created by mistaken diagnoses, but non-intellectual factors that affect performance are taken into consideration (whether personal or environmental), and data is generated that may be useful for individualized educational planning. In fact, the instrumental enrichment program itself may be a suitable educational instrument for optimization with gifted children, just as it is with children who have difficulties.

In summary, the Feuerstein theory represents an applied development of Vygotsky’s theory, and can serve as a framework for action in many different areas and contexts. When adapted to the theory of multiple intelligences (Gardner, 1983), it leads to establishment of an intervention methodology (cognitive education) that can be applied to different types of persons who are not necessarily deficient and also to non-intellectual skills in the traditional sense of the word, including intra- and interpersonal skills. In this direction, the development of intervention programs for non-academic skills in children with normal performance or high capacities has yet to be undertaken.

Keeping in mind the role of emotional-motivational factors in the continuance of giftedness, it is reasonable to think that these factors should also be included in screening procedures, as this technology allows, and be incorporated into enrichment programs for gifted children. This training would allow children to receive greater benefit from gifted programs that are already under way, and thus promote the continuance of their potential abilities.

In short, in this area of action, Feuerstein’s theories may give rise to important developments in the near future.

Maria Dolores Calero is Professor of Psychological

Assessment, University of Granada Faculty of

Psychology. Granada (Spain). Tel. +34 958243754;

email: [email protected]

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42

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■ Matthews, M.S. (2002). Dynamic Assessment of academic ability of bilingual immi-grant Latino children (Doctoral Theses no published).

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D. & Turkheimer, E. (2012). Intelligence : New Findings and Theoretical Developments. American Psychologist, 67, ( 2) 130–159 DOI: 10.1037/

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C., Seghier, M. L. & Price, C.J. (2011) Verbal and non-verbal intelligence changes in the teenage brain, Nature, 479 , 113- 116. Doi: 10.1038/

nature10514. ■ Renzulli, J. S. (2005). The Three-Ring Conception of Giftedness. A Developmental Model for Promoting Creative Productivity.

En Sternberg y Davidson, (2005). Conceptions of Giftedness. Cambridge University Press, 246-279. ■ Renzulli, J. S., Gubbins, E. J., Del Siegle, J.,

Zhang, W. & Chen, C. (2005). Assumptions underlying the identification of gifted and talented students. Gifted Child Quarterly, 49(1), 68-79.

■ Selby, E.C. Shaw, E.J. & Houtz, J.C. (2005). The Creative Personality. The Gifted Child Quarterly, .49 (4). 300-314. ■ Sergi, M. J., Kern, R. S., Mintz,

J., & Green, M. F. (2005). Learning potential and the prediction of work skill acquisition in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 31, 67–72. ■

Sibaya, P. (1996). Giftedness and Intelligence Assessment in a third World Country: Constraints and alternatives. Gifted Education International,

11 (2), 107-113. ■ Silverman, L. K. (1986). Parenting young children. In J. R. Whitmore (Ed.), Intellectual giftedness in young children: Recognition

and development (pp. 73-87). New York: Haworth. ■ Sheehan, B. (2000). A Study of Maximizing the Learning Potentials of Exceptionally Gifted

Eleventh Grade Students in an Advanced Track Class. Dissertations Thesis. Chicago: University of Illinois. ■ Stuart, O. ( 2002). Teaching and

Learning through Multiple Intelligences. Roeper Review. 23 (3.) 170-171 ■ Stanley, N. V. (1993). Gifted and the “Zone of Proximal Development”.

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for a new millennium. Learning and Individual Differences, 20, 327–336 ■ Sternberg, R.J. & Davidson, (2005). Conceptions of Giftedness.

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R.J. y Grigorenko, E.L. (2002). Dynamic Testing. The Nature and Measurement of Learning Potential. Cambridge, UK. Cambridge University

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59-80 ■ Tzuriel, D., Bengio, E. & Kashy-Rosenbaum, G. (2011). Cognitive modifiability, emotional-motivational factors, and behavioral

characteristics among gifted versus non-gifted children. Journal of Cognitive ■ Education and Psychology, 10, 253-279. doi:10.1891/1945-

8959.10.3.253 ■ Vygotsky, L. S. (1974). Thought and language. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

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Thinking Journeys in the Classroom ■■■■■

44

Thinking Journeys in the Classroom – the Power of Uncertainty and MediationYaron Schur examines the emotional processes at the heart of learning and explores

how the Thinking Journey approach, based on Feuerstein’s ideas, can make learning

meaningful to children and help transform teaching.

■■■ An overview of the “journey”

In order to teach for understanding teachers have to be bold and attentive at the same time. Teaching for understanding requires that students change their initial understanding of concepts. Experiencing change processes is not easy for the students. It involves emotional confusion and sometimes resistance to the teaching offered. The emotional processes that involve

curiosity and a willingness to learn new knowledge are called, ‘uncertainty processes’. These require students to leave their comfort zone and experience meaningful learning, whilst going through these uncertainty processes. Therefore, it is important to mediate with a combination of empathy and assertiveness. Reuven Feuerstein’s approach is concerned with cognitive change processes. His work provides multiple examples

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of enabling children to go through meaningful change and how to construct teaching methods for meaningful understanding of subject matter.

The Thinking Journey (TJ) mode of instruction is based on mediated interactions in subject matter teaching. It was developed in a classroom of low functioning students who learnt astronomy. Conceptual change processes occurred through a journey in the mind of these students to unexpected environments that provided new perspectives of concepts. It was found that change processes only occur when the student is prepared to move beyond their egocentric perception of a concept, meet learnt concepts in unknown contexts, and experience using these concepts as a means to orient to new environments.

■■■ Believing in and challenging children

Reuven Feuerstein was a great believer in the ability of human beings to change their cognitive abilities. His belief was not only directed generally but always focused specifically on the child in front of him. His mediation, that is, the quality of his intervention, was always on two levels; first, related to finding ways to enable the child to experience meaningful cognitive change and enable the child to solve the given problem or task set before her; and secondly, to explain these cognitive changes to observing parents and teaching experts gathered in his room to watch him work with a child. In this manner, Feuerstein always considered the perspective of both the child and the mediator (the teacher or parent) during these short mediated interactions, always looking for the positive aspects of the functioning of the childFeuerstein’s dialogue with children, which occurred at the beginning of treatment processes, seemed to me very similar to classroom teaching, even though it was done on an individual basis. Feuerstein usually worked with very low functioning children. He listened carefully to their cognitive difficulties, and enabled them to feel able to feel successful when they solved different problems.

Feuerstein’s first assessment session with a child involved a mediated interaction that was the first step in treating a child, where cognitive change processes were constructed from a series of mediated interactions.

Belief in the ability of the child to change was expressed through the fact that Feuerstein never tried to predict what the outcome of an encounter might be. Even children with severe problems were asked to participate in the learing process. The mediated interaction with the child allowed him to concentrate on the current situation, without yet determining long term goals. and it was these small changes that showed him how to proceed. In this manner, each change was a starting point for the next. Believing in the child meant challenging her. The processes observed in Feuerstein’s room while working with low functioning students thus served as an example for classroom teaching of regular students that also tackle challenging learning assignments.

■■■ Lifelong learning and variety of voices

Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) (Feuerstein et al., 2006) is relevant to two main challenges facing current classroom teaching. On the one hand, the changing era demands students to be able to cope with the constant changes of our age, meaning that they have to be able to continue learning throughout life. Experiencing meaningful changes, even small ones, enables children and adults at any age change their feeling of competence and know that they can improve their ability to learn. At the same time, classes nowadays are composed of students that come from a variety of backgrounds, and teachers need to be able to listen to the variety of voices of the class. MLE gives educators the tools to listen to the cognitive difficulties of students in the class and enable students to use strategies for tackling the different assignments that they have to face.

Feuerstein’s focus on change processes made him concentrate on the cognitive processes of students. As he rightly emphasized that it would be much easier to enable mediatees to change, if mediation were to focus on the thinking processes. In order to enable students experience cognitive change he tried as much as possible to use tools that did not include the need for content knowledge. Feuerstein et al. (1991) claimed that content knowledge posed a much higher degree of difficulty of change in comparison to a content free context. The

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46

Instrumental Enrichment program was constructed along this line of thought, with the goal of enabling students to experience cognitive changes that could be later bridged to tackle learning content knowledge.

■■■ Encountering Feuerstein’s ideas

When I came to work at the Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem in 1991 as the Head of the Instrumental Enrichment Institute, I already had a great deal of experience teaching physics to students for matriculation exams, and was familiar with the long term goals of learning as required by the Ministry of Education in Israel. Students were expected to meet the national standards and succeed in solving the problems of the national matriculation test. Although my students were successful in these tests, I had the feeling that they did not learn how to think. They learnt how to cope with the demands of solving problems not very different from those of previous years. In hindsight, my teaching was too technical.

I remember the joy I had when I first experienced working with some pages of the IE Instrument, Organization of Dots. I realized then the power of short term mediation. Mediation enabled students to mentally approach or distance themselves from the cloud of dots presented in the task that represented reality (Feuerstein et al., 1997). The difficulties experienced by specific students were opportunities for me to listen to their dilemmas and to enable them to use cognitive strategies to find the geometrical figures hidden in the cloud of dots. The process was similar to finding a principle that can enable a student to organize an unknown environment. eReuven Feuerstein and the methods of Mediated Learning gave me a theoretical and practical approach that enabled me to understand, in a new way, the power of teaching and learning. The possibility to change cognitive performance through mediation opened my eyes to the possibility of using short term mediated interactions also in subject matter teachingThe MLE (Mediated Learning Experience) theory was very practical in relating to cognitive difficulties and mediation processes. How can it serve for meaningful teaching and learning of subject matter? The first step was to think of challenging teaching where students

can benefit from mediated learning in subject matter learning. I chose to teach astronomy in a school for low functioning girls in the 9th grade (14 – 15 years old). Astronomy is considered to be a challenging subject and I asked myself how mediation could be used in its teaching.

■■■ Constructing understanding of subject

matter

Teaching subject matter requires widening its theoretical background. Three aspects are considered:

1. The constructivist approach to conceptual understanding

2. Two levels of conceptual understanding3. Creating “spaces of learning”

Relating to the three aspects above that effect subject matter learning:

1. The constructivist approach to conceptual

understanding

In the late seventies and eighties of the last century a group of scholars recommended basing meaningful learning at any age on the principles of the vast studies of Piaget (Driver & Easely, 1978). As small children develop their understanding of the world on their active experiences, so do older students. Small children develop their conceptual understanding as they grow, and their conceptual development was studied in detail by Piaget. The constructivists’ scholars studied the alternative concepts of students in relation to the scientific understanding of them. Thousands of studies were conducted. As good examples of a collection of studies of alternative concepts of students, one can quote two important books (Driver et al., 1985; Driver et al., 1994). Posner et al. (1982) defined meaningful learning as conceptual change. 2. Two levels of conceptual understanding

Carey (2009) in her monumental book “The Origin of Concepts”, focused on the long and complex learning processes of little children immediately after birth. Some of the processes relate to the senses; others require disconnection from them in order to understand

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theoretical frameworks. She articulates two levels of understanding that describe the learning of human beings throughout life, which are important in designing learning activities in the classroom:

a. Core cognition – Conceptual understanding that connects to the senses. The representation of a variety of environments that is done in iconic symbolic structures. For example, through learning language children improve their ability of observing and understanding reality around them. Children are able to observe environments in a new way through the use of categorizations of objects in colors, shapes, sizes etc., or by organizing events in space and time.

b. Alternative theories – Theoretical based understanding that requires disconnection from the senses, for example, the long and complex process of learning to count between the ages of 2 – 4.

3. Creating spaces of learning

In order to know something you have to compare

it to other elements. Marton et al. (2004) describe a meeting between three people from Nepal that engage in a conversation. One of them was able to tell that the host spoke in a local dialect. The other two were unable to do so. The difference between them was the fact that only one of them knew other dialects of Nepalese. This means that an analysis of a situation requires being able to compare it to another one. In order to teach for understanding a concept or an object of learning, one has to compare between variations of them in different contexts. The art of teaching requires choosing meaningful environments that will allow a comparison between the variations. The definition of the concept is derived from the invariant representation of it that stays constant in the different contexts.

■■■ Uncertainty processes and

the Thinking Journey (TJ) towards

understanding

Thinking Journey (TJ) combines the above approaches with the MLE theory in order to enable students to experience meaningful learning. The above approaches design a map of the steps for learning for a student

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to reach a scientific understanding of a concept (the object of learning). The student has to compare in order to understand a concept. She needs to move from her current alternative concept to another level of understanding, and combine her learning with her sensual perception of the world, or disconnect from it in order to understand a more theoretical analysis of the world. It is not enough to design the desired learning path, but it is necessary to enable students to experience learning and to listen to the wide range of constraints that typifies their learning in order to have a meaningful dialogue with them. The Thinking Journey (TJ) is focused on conceptual learning based on a mediated dialogue that is necessary in order to experience changes in their understanding of a learnt concept. Similar to small children, people of all ages require a process of going through a long and complex journey in quest of understanding. Mediation involves listening to the uncertainty processes that occur during the change processes of learners’ experience in relation to the learnt concept. The dialogue can be designed in a series of unexpected mediated interactions that enable students to observe the learnt concept from multiple perspectives

Change processes are not easy for learners either in cognitive or subject matter learning. In the conceptual change process, as Nussbaum (1985) describes it, students have to go out of their current point of view of a certain environment. He claimed that conceptual changes require getting out of the egocentric point of view of the learner concerning the environment. In the process of change, students find themselves changing their initial concepts not knowing where this change will lead them. Learners have mixed feelings. They are confused and puzzled and sometimes ask themselves why they need to participate in a process that is not clear to them and at the same time are curious to meet new knowledge and understanding and discover new territories. The students’ uncertainty processes relate to the emotional state of students during change processes. One can look at the point of view of the students from a wider perspective and relate also to the emotional side that effect their ability to change their level of functioning in the classroom. The way that they

expressed their difficulties in their actions and words, was significant and important for the mediators to watch and learn. Each student had her own way of tackling new tasks. The uncertainty process that connects to change processes is an important factor in understanding where the student is in her learning, and in designing an approach for enabling her to tackle new learning challenges (Schur & Nevo, 2015).

■■■ Intertwined uncertainty and

mediation

The basic relations between the mediator and the mediate require considering two contradicting processes that affect learning. On the one hand, there are the goals of the teacher and the means that the teacher uses in order to enable students to go through planned learning processes. Mediators set goals and give students cognitive tools that enable them to perform the required tasks, and reach new territories in their minds. On the other hand there are the constraints that distance the learners from understanding the teaching goals: the alternative conceptual understanding, the cognitive difficulties and the uncertainty processes. Students feel uncertain what to do and how to change. They feel remote even from knowledge that seems simple to the mediator. Classroom assignments require the learners to start a change process. However, as the learning continues, there is a need for empathy by the mediator towards the difficulties that students may encounter. The intertwining of mediation and uncertainty processes requires being at the same time assertive and sensitive, demanding and empathic.

The uncertainty processes appear during change processes. Whilst trying to tackle the demands of the task many students make efforts to conceal their lack of knowledge. They combine anxiety and curiosity in their feelings towards the new task. The Thinking Journey (TJ) approach allows an ongoing process to take place so that the mediator can listen to the uncertainty processes of the students in order to enable them connect the learnt concept with their worlds. Learning is constructed in a way that allows mediated interactions to occur. Learning is done in a series of mediated interactions, where the place of the learner changes and her point of

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view of the learnt concept changes too. The journey’s aim is to disconnect students from the regular places where they encounter the learnt concept, thus taking them out of their comfort zone and allowing them to be free from the difficulties of understanding because of constraints of their habitual way to relate to the learnt concept. Thinking Journey allows students to experience a journey in their minds, disconnected from the known contexts. Students experience unexpected encounters with the learnt concept. It is important to surprise them and enable them to have a new perspective on the concept in each mediated interaction.

■■■ A thinking journey to the moon

When I started working with 9th grade (14-15 years old) students on astronomy in 1993, I tried to combine Instrumental Enrichment tools with known programs for teaching the subject matter. However, students were not satisfied; they wanted to learn physics and not other things. They compared their own studies to that of friends in other schools, and complained that in their physics class they learnt other things, such as relevant pages of Feuerstein’s programme for intervention, Instrumental Enrichment. It was an interesting lesson for me, one of many I was to learn from these students, that even students considered to be “low functioning”, look for meaningful studies.

I understood that I had to integrate mediated interactions into the subject matter, the teaching of astronomy. I had to teach the content of subject matter whilst constructing a meaningful mediated dialogue in the classroom. I decided to use astronomical context as a means for the students to learn scientific concepts. Visiting remote environments in their minds could become a means by which students would see new connections between scientific concepts and phenomena. . It took me some time before I decided to use pictures and drawings as means to allow them to experience a journey in their minds to the moon and space. The aim of the journey was to enable them to observe the Earth from multiple perspectives and to compare it to the moon. In their minds, the students returned through the use of pictures, to Earth’s environments and see them in a new way.

The mediated interactions were done through the journeys that students undertook in their minds through pictures. Look at the picture below, the Earth is seen from the moon (Picture 1). The sky of the moon is black. The Earth is in a phase, in a shape that resembles the way one can see the moon from the Earth’s point of view. The ground of the moon is lit. It is daytime on the part of the moon that can be seen. This level of analysis relates to the “core cognition”, and connects to seeing the details of the picture.

The picture caused a lot of excitement in the class. Students asked a lot of questions. In order to have a broader scientific understanding of the picture, we worked on “projection of relation”, meaning relating to the experiences that students had and comparing them to the new phenomena that they saw on the moon. So, for instance it was like understanding how the Earth looks from the moon by knowing how the moon looks from the Earth. The phenomena of phases of Earth and that of the moon have the same scientific explanation, and they can be analyzed as light (day) and shadows (night). Another cognitive principle was “conservation of constancies”, meaning that the same scientific principles can enable students to explain what they saw on the moon. The phenomenon look different from its appearance but the underlying principles are the same. For example, Astronauts walked on the moon in a different manner than the way people walk on Earth, because of its weaker gravity. For many students the existence of gravity on the moon came as a surprise. Moreover, its different appearance led some of them to say that it existed only on the top of the moon or that it can hold only heavy objects. The comparison between the Earth and the moon enables students to understand that the same scientific principles can lead to different appearances of phenomena, like that of the gravity on Earth and the moon or the different colors of the sky where for example, the sky seen from the moon is black, caused by the lack of air (atmosphere) on it.

■■■ Journey to new places

A thinking journey resembles a real journey in enabling students to get out of their known environments and discover new places. They can experience going to places

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where human beings have not been or to places that are part of a literary reality. They can move in time and space in their minds. Arriving in a new place enables students to ask a lot of questions. Scientific principles that were seemingly clear in the known environments, like the nature of gravity or that of day- night cycle, seem unclear in the new environment. Are the same principles governing the reality also in the remote place? If a place is lit, does it mean that it is in day time? What is the nature of gravity on the moon? Students ask questions about phenomena that they thought they knew. It gives students the opportunity to make their understanding wider and deeper. The challenging environments enable students experience exciting processes of learning. The challenge involves uncertainty processes that are part of the need of students to find their way in unexpected environments and use scientific principles in an unknown environment. Mediation is important in order to make it a process of group effort of orientation in the new environments. Learning is a social phenomenon. A group of students is able to relate to complex ideas and to come up with creative ways of analysis.

The students liked the thinking journey to the moon, and they changed meaningfully both their understanding of the concept of Earth and their cognitive functioning (Schur, 1999; Schur et al., 2002). The results show the importance of enabling students get out of their egocentric point of view of a learnt concept and having enough time to learn about it through having some complimentary perspectives of it. At the same time, after repeating the learning process with many groups of students, and particularly when we started listening to uncertainty processes, we found that when students had to relate to the details of pictures like the one shown right, some university students also found it difficult to tell if the lit part of the Earth is in day time or at night (or if the ground on the moon is at day time or at night). Feeling a lack of knowledge when relating to pictures that show known places from an unusual perspective can cause students to feel lack of competence about the learning process they experience.

The same challenging assignment that enabled students to experience meaningful learning caused some to have feelings of confusion when confronted with

unknown contexts. Thus, the uncertainty processes and meaningful learning go together. Mediated interactions enable students to get out of their comfort zone, which is a pre-requisite for learning for understanding, whilst at the same time, encountering emotional and cognitive difficulties in the process. The art of mediation is expressed in this challenging and complex process of learning for understanding.

Earth as seen from the moon

■■■ Research results

The experience of the astronomy classroom described above was the basis of writing a textbook “Thinking Journey to the Moon” (Schur, 1998; Schur & Orion, 2002) that was accepted as a part of the national curriculum for science teaching in middle schools in Israel. Another textbook used for the matriculation exams in high school followed: “A Thinking Journey to Mars” (Schur et al., 2002). A twelve-year research project followed in collaboration with Igal Galili, Head of the Science Teaching Department at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, with the participation of students for doctorate and Masters Degrees. The research focused on the teaching of scientific concepts such as: weight and gravity, day-night cycle or life characteristics with a variety of populations of students. Some international research was done (Galili et al., 2012) and some articles were published: Schur &

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Galili, 2009; Schur et al., 2009; Schwarz et al., 2011; Stein et al., 2014.

The learning experience of thinking journeys can be similarly applied in every subject matter. In many academic courses students construct thinking journeys in literature and history, in Religious Education and in mathematics, in computer sciences and in geography; with kindergarten students and with primary and high school classes.

■■■ A case study showing uncertainty

processes and real conceptual learning

The following case study can show a meaningful conceptual change process and the uncertainty process that was involved. Tami (pseudo-name) was a new immigrant to Israel from Ethiopia. She learnt for a whole year about the Earth concept in Geography lessons. The process of her learning was described in two articles (Schur & Valanides, 2005; Schur, 2012). The student had difficulties of connecting herself to the Earth concept that was taught in the geography lessons. Her general feeling of detachment was meaningful in the

way she functioned in the subject matter class. The globe was shown to the students as a means of representing the Earth during the lessons on it. Tami learnt many facts about the Earth, but she could not connect it to her own world. She put the Earth in the sky, claiming she has never seen it and never been on it. She drew the Earth in the sky with scientific information on it (longitudes and one latitude, maybe the equator). Near the Earth she drew the moon (she wrote Earth and moon in Hebrew near the drawings of them). She drew also the clouds. She explained that they hide the Earth. She drew herself standing above the ground. Her drawing can be connected to notion 1 of initial understanding of the concept of Earth (Nussbaum, 1985).

Mediation to Tami involved the use of picture 1 together with a picture of the astronaut Aldrin standing on the moon (Apollo 11). It did not add scientific information; as Tami showed quite a lot of knowledge, but was aimed at enabling her connect between her world and the concept of Earth. We asked her if places that she knew were connected to the unseen Earth. Israel was connected to it, meaning that it was not a place that

Earth is in the sky. Initial concept of Earth for Tami, a student from Ethiopian origin

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Tami knew. But the city of Rehovot, where Tami lived, was the first real place that Tami was able to connect herself to in her near environment, but Tami was not able to understand that both she and the city of Rehovot was part of planet Earth.

Following mediation, Tami made a second drawing showing some connection between Tami and the Earth, but it was with the globe and not with the real Earth. She drew herself on the globe, near the continents of America and Asia (these are written in Hebrew). However, she disconnected herself from the ground. The globe appears to be a weird place on which to live, and it is not clear from her drawing how Tami held herself there.

At this stage, Tami felt that all the questions about the Earth were too much for her. She said: “I don’t know why we need all these questions”. Tami was on the highest point of confusion. On the one hand, she had made some connection between herself and the Earth - a new feeling for her - but on the other hand, it was not the real Earth she related to, but a globe in the sky with longitudes and latitudes. At this point she felt tired of the whole process and was ready to stop. Mediation was applied to encourage her to continue: “It is in order for you to know where you live, where your house is” we told her, to which Tami answered: “I live on the ground”. Her confusion was now over and she felt connected to the ground. On the ground, she felt secure. Her anxiety lessened.

Tami put herself on the globe, the representation of the Earth

At the end of the process we offered another comparison to the moon. From this comparison Tami deduced that people could stand on the moon in the same way that people stand on the planet Earth. She did not disconnect from the ground, but put herself on the ground of planet Earth. She drew herself again (drawing 3) which now clearly shows a conceptual change where she is seen to be standing on the ground of Earth. Her drawing is similar to Notion 2 of Nussbaum’s ‘5 Notion description’ of the Earth concept, leading to the scientific concept (Nussbam, 1985).

Tami put the ground where she stood inside the Earth

In conclusion, learning for Tami involved the need to overcome the pain of moving from her beloved Ethiopia to a very different country, Israel. Studying a scientific concept, the Earth, made her tackle her inner pain and she refused to connect the learnt knowledge with her own world. Her initial understanding of the Earth showed her refusal to connect to the learnt concept of the Earth. She learnt about it and knew some scientific information, but put the Earth in the sky. The mediation focused on possible connections between Tami and places where she lived and the Earth. The uncertainty process was at its highest point when Tami did her first step and connected herself to the globe. At this point she felt ready to stop the learning process. However as we showed her the initial pictures again, she had now different explanations to them. She could put herself inside the Earth through the comparison with being able to stand on the moon.

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■■■ Brave teaching for understanding

Often teachers find it hard to disconnect from their point of view of the learning process. Their focus is usually on the content, the concept and its ingredients. Often this point of view makes it difficult for the teacher to connect with her students, because their alternative knowledge, cognitive and uncertainty processes take them to a very different point of view of the learnt concept. Teaching for understanding involves change processes of the students. It is not easy to change, and this applies also to the changes of conceptual understanding. Students have their own unique ways to resist to the changes, which we call uncertainty processes. Relating to uncertainty processes enables mediators to connect to the real worlds of students. The mediator should have empathy for the uncertainty processes that the learners go through.

In many knowledge exchange processes, both the teacher and the students stand on firm ground. There is no need to change, and the goals of teaching are very clear. But teaching for understanding requires the students to go out of their egocentric points of view and to experience change. The same challenging assignments enable students to experience meaningful learning and uncertainty processes, resisting the change processes and being attracted to it.

Teaching for understanding requires being brave, because one has to take risks in order to enable students to get out of their comfort zone and to experience change processes. One can learn from Reuven Feuerstein the need to construct unexpected mediated interactions as a means to enable students to experience meaningful learning.

Thinking Journey is a means to enable students to understand concepts and for teachers to connect with students during the learning process. The journey itself enables the students to free themselves from the constraints of their known reality, of the difficulties of space and time that makes it hard for them to cope with the learnt concept. The journey is constructed from mediated interactions that are based on Feuerstein’s MLE, that enable the mediator, the teacher, to have a meaningful dialogue with students in the class.

In teaching for understanding using the Thinking Journey method, one has to go through unexpected reactions, whilst at the same time give students a chance to reach out to new territories in their understanding.

Yaron Schur is is based at the David Yellin Academic

College, Jerusalem, Israel. Email [email protected]

References: Carey, S. (2009). The Origin of Concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press ■ Driver, R. and Easely, J. (1978). Pupils and paradigms: a

review of literature related to concept development in adolescent science students, Studies in Science Education, (5) , 61 -84. ■ Driver, R.,

Guesne, E. & Tiberghien, A. (1985). Some features of children’s ideas and their implications for teaching. In R. Driver, E. Guesne & A. Tiberghien,

(Eds.), Children’s Ideas in Science. NJ: Open University Press, Milton Keynes ■ Driver, R., Squires, A., Rushworth, P. & Wood-Robinson, V. (1994).

Making Sense of Secondary Science: Research into Children’s Ideas. New York: Routledge ■ Feuerstein, R., Feuerstein, R.S., Falik, L. & Rand,

Y. (2006). The Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Program. ICELP Publications. Jerusalem ■ Feuerstein, R., Feuerstein, Ra. & Schur, Y. (1997).

Process as Content – in regular education and in particular in education of the low functioning retarded performer. In A.L. Costa & R.M.

Liebmann (Eds.), If process were content: sustaining the spirit of learning. Ca: Corwin Press. ■ Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y., Hoffman, M., Egozi, M., &

Ben-Shachar-Segev, N. (1991). ‘Intervention programs for retarded performers: goals, means and expected outcomes.’ In L. Idol & B. Jones (eds.),

Educational Values and Cognitive Instruction: Implication for Reform. Erlbaum, Hillsboro, NJ, Vol. 2, pp. 139-178. ■ Galili, I., Schur, Y., Weizman,

A., Stein, H., Eckstien, O., Nezer-Tarcic, Moria. (2012). Science Education in Israel: Perspective on the Situation and Problems of Innovation.

TRACES final report. ■ Marton, F. & Tsui, A.B.M. (2004). Classroom Discourse and the Space of Learning. Lawrence Erlbaum, Mahwah, NJ. ■

Nussbaum, J. (1985). The Earth as a cosmic body. In Driver, R. Guesne, E. & Tiberghien, A. (eds.), Children’s Ideas in Science, NJ: Open University

Press, Milton Keynes, . ■ Posner, G., Strike, K., Hewson, P. & Gertzog, W. (1982). Accommodation of a scientific conception: Toward a theory of

conceptual change. Science Education, 66, 211-227 ■ Schur, Y. & Galili, I. (2009). Thinking Journey: A New Mode of Teaching Science. International

Journal of Science and Mathematics Education. 7, 627-646 ■ Schur, Y. & Valanides, N. (2005). Earth in the Sky: Cultural and Personal Aspects

of the Concept of Earth. In D. Koliolopoulos & A. Vavouraki (Eds.), Science Education at the Crossraods: Meeting the Challenges of the 21st

Century (pp. 135-149), EDIFE, Athens, Greece ■ Schur, Y. (2012). Mediation of a Conceptual Change of the Earth. The Circles of Education. Vol. 3

p. 59 – 85. ■ Schur & Nevo (in press). Uncertainty Processes in Learning for Understanding. Submitted to Dapim. ■ Schur, Y. (1998). A Thinking

Journey to the Moon, Ma’alot Press, Jerusalem, p. 216. ■ Schur, Y. & Orion, N. (2002). “From Earth to the Moon”. Weizmann Institute. Rehovot.

■ Schur, Y., Brand, R. & Yair, Y. (2002). ”Thinking Journey to Mars”. Open University. Tel Aviv. ■ Schur, Y. (1999). Constructivism and Mediated

Learning Experience as a Basis for a Process of Conceptual Change in Students’ Concepts of Earth, Unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of

Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa ■ Schur, Y., Galili, I. & Shapiro. T. (2009). Multiple Perspectives of Science Learners using Thinking

Journey for Understanding the Day-night Concept. Journal of Science Education, 10(2) ■ Schur, Y., Skuy, M., Zietsman, A. & Fridjhon, P. (2002).

Thinking Journey based on constructivism and mediated learning experience as a vehicle for teaching science to low functioning students

and enhancing their cognitive skills. School Psychology International 23, 36-67 ■ Schwarz, B., Schur, Y., Pensso, H. & Tayer, N. (2011). Perspective

Taking and Synchronous Argumentation for Learning the Day/Night Cycle. International Journal of Computer Supported Collaborative

Learning v6n1 p113-138. ■ Stein, H., Galili, I. & Schur, Y. (in press). Teaching Weight and Gravitation in Thinking Journey Mode of Instruction.

Accepted for publication in JRST – Journal of Research in Science Teaching, 30 pages

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Pedagogy of Confidence –applying Feuerstein’s Theory to dispel the colour achievement gap mythYvette Jackson confronts the low expectations of students of colour which she sees

as endemic in the United States. She shows how Feuerstein’s Thinking can inspire high

intellectual performances and transform learning.

■■■ The Tragedy of Low Expectations

I have worked with urban schools around the United States where underachievement has become the norm. These districts are predominantly in cities where “urban” is a euphemism for the label “low-performing students of colour.” In these districts, administrators frantically look for that magic programme that will save them from the penalties attributed to the low standardized

test performance of many of their students of color, a situation coined with the pernicious label of “the achievement gap” between Caucasian students and students of colour. The label has exacerbated the cultural myth that the only way to close that gap is by focusing on weaknesses. As a result, educators have been obsessively misdirected to turn their backs on the vast intellectual capacity of these students and to

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56

regard “minimum proficiency level” as the ceiling, dismissing two inherent truths about learning that have been proven by Reuven Feuerstein, and substantiated by neuroscience:

1) All people have the intrinsic desire to learn and be self-actualized. Maslow (1943) expounded on this same theory, showing that this desire is the human imperative.

2) All brains are the same colour. In other words, the way the brain makes learning happen does not differ from one culture to another. All brains require:

■ mediation that provides enrichment; ■ opportunity to demonstrate and build strengths; ■ explicit strategies that develop critical thinking, enrichment analysed through probing questions that connect to personal experiences;

■ supports to address underdeveloped cognitive functions, and

■ experiences that build dispositions needed to be focused, engaged, tenacious, self-confident, and self-actualized.

(Feuerstein, 1978, 2006; Holloway, 2003; Medina, 2008; Sternberg, 1998).

The myth about poor, urban students requiring the focus of their education to be their weaknesses is so robust, so spellbinding that it has caused us to turn a blind eye to these truths, as well as to the most critically affecting reality regarding the achievement of these students: the disadvantaged-ness of students from poor, urban areas is that they are in fact school-dependent (Cooper, 2004). They depend on school to be provided with the enrichment, prerequisites, and opportunities needed for them to learn, achieve at high levels, and measure up to the same standards as “other people’s children” (Delpit, 1995).

In spite of these truths about learning, and the reality of school-dependence of poor students of colour, the myth that perpetuates a focus on weaknesses drives the policies that replace enrichment with remediation and penalizing sanctions that incite fear-halting innovation and steering teachers away from the belief in the

innate propensity of ALL brains for high intellectual performances - and with this has gone the confidence and competence of thousands of teachers to inspire their students to demonstrate their potential. The resulting tragedy is a morass of disengagement that has stifled the motivation and development of high levels of student thinking to be demonstrated in school.

The tragedy of the vicious cycle of reciprocal disengagement and unnecessary underachievement in urban schools continues to catalyze my dedication to kindle in educators a Pedagogy of Confidence®- the belief in the vast capacity of their urban students and belief in their own ability to inspire high intellectual performances from these students. When we truly believe in the intellectual potential of students, we start with the goal of identifying strengths and then provide enriching options because we know intuitively and through personal experience what Piaget proved so long ago: High level activities increase intellectual development (Piaget, 1950).

■■■ The Quest

I had the great fortune of having been able to teach the same group of students for three consecutive years. My belief in the intellectual potential and motivation of these students of colour from homes low on the socio-economic ladder became more profound as I witnessed their deep desire to learn manifest into engagement and genuine determination for high achievement. I recognized the critical impact culture and poverty had on their learning (i.e., culture sometimes creating learning patterns antithetical to traditional teaching practices, and poverty rendering students void of requisite experiences and nourishment needed to build the skills required for traditional academic achievement).

Like so many teachers committed to divining for the intelligence of these students, I set out on the quest for an assessment tool that would be capable of literally diagnosing and addressing the cause of cognitive impairments, which traditional assessment and instruction were incapable of doing. I sought a tool that was in fact a divining rod, created specifically to tap intellectual ability that lay stagnant due to the lack of experiences that stimulate academic learning.

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My unwavering quest led me to the transformational, seemingly miraculous work of Dr. Reuven Feuerstein.

■■■ The Found Treasure - the

transformative theory and practice of

Feuerstein

Prompted by belief in the vast intellectual capacity of all people, Reuven Feuerstein was determined to prove that impairments resulting from debilitating conditions -whether environmental, socioeconomic, emotional, cultural, or genetic - were reversible with the right mentally enriching practices. His research into reasons for underperformance led him to three seminal findings. These findings addressed critical factors poignantly related to the development of intelligence, learning and dispositions for achievement of students of color affected by poverty.

Sociocultural Deprivation-Unlike the American definition of sociocultural deprivation, which refers to students’ not steeped in middle class Eurocentric culture as being deprived, Feuerstein describes sociocultural deprivation as missing links to one’s own culture. He recognized that knowing one’s own culture provided the

anchor to past history and adaptation tools needed to strive for possibilities for one’s future. He determined that culture is shared and elaborated through interactions specifically selected by a parent, relative, or teacher (a person he termed a mediator) to expand understanding and develop the intellectual capabilities of a child. These cultural interactions transmit (verbally or through modelling) certain ways of confronting and adapting to new experiences (recognizing one’s perceptions of something, gathering needed information, being sensitive to problems, properly defining situations to be responded to, solving problems, and making rational and grounded decisions). He determined that students deprived of these sociocultural interactions experience a short-circuit in the ways of thinking that would enable them to make meaning, interpret, or infer, restricting their intellectual development and ability to adapt (Narrol & Giblon, 1984, p.ix) (p. 57).

Structural Cognitive Modifiability - Feuerstein observed during his assessments that when students were guided through introspective questioning and explicit bridging to familiar experiences, processes indicative of intellectual behavior were strengthened.

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These processes included: connecting ideas, classifying them, identifying relationships between them, and hypothesizing about them. This led him to determine that with the appropriate intervention the structure of the students’ thinking processes was ameliorated, or modified, mitigating the negative impact of their debilitating experiences. This determination is the basis for the theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability. The theory elucidates how the structure of one’s cognition can be affected by guided interactions (or the lack of guided interactions) that affect the “fundamental processes of thought, learning, and problem solving” (Narrol & Giblon, 1984 p. ix).

Mediation - Feuerstein found that the most salient catalyst for assisting restructuring of cognitive functions and the development of intelligence was the interaction between the teacher or parent (or mediator) and the student. He used this recognition to codify the type of pedagogical interaction or process that would heighten intellectual capacities to maximize learning. He called this process mediation, or the quality of interaction between a learner and his or her environment. This interaction is mediated, or transformed, by a mediator who intentionally and specifically aims to make the interaction of the learner with learning experiences more effective. The goal of the mediation process is to elicit from the learner a personal motivation for learning and to provide the strategies needed for efficient and effective learning. The mediator - guided by intention, culture, and emotional investment in his or her learner - organizes and exposes learning experiences to provide the learner with opportunities to deeply investigate information by posing authentic questions strategically framed in the cultural context of the learner.

This guided investigation includes probing for elaborations and searching for personal connections, enabling learners to critically analyze tasks and focus on what is relevant to the learning required. The mediator amplifies learning by providing additional examples of concepts being taught and explicit feedback to facilitate acquisition of relevant relationships, expand language development relative to the focus, and fortify both the cognitive skills necessary to master the task at hand as

well as those cognitive functions needed throughout life (e.g., focusing on problems or issues, inferring connections, organizing information, sorting relevant from irrelevant information, and classifying information – skills that create the mental anchoring that strengthens high levels of critical thinking such as hypothesizing, theorizing, and philosophizing) (Feuerstein, 1982, 1998, 2010).

Feuerstein used his findings to develop a comprehensive learning system which applies mediation through his Learning Propensity Assessment Device (LPAD) and Instrumental Enrichment (IE), the cognitive training process designed to work in tandem with LPAD to repair cognitive dysfunctions and accelerate intellectual development. His theory and methodology radically extended understandings of the development of intelligence to the frontier of cognitive science. This is a frontier that still begs for altering the way we assess and design pedagogy so we can amplify intelligence and maximize learning for all students, but especially for those whom traditional instruction has failed: students of colour whose cultural frame of reference through which they interpret the world is different than those who standardize assessments and instruction.

■■■ New focus on potential

Feuerstein’s findings substantiated my recognition of the innate potential of students of colour and my adoption of the premise of gifted education as the philosophy that fuelled my pedagogy. It thus shifted the focus of instruction for school-dependent students of colour from their “weaknesses” (and the recognition of these “weaknesses” as underdeveloped cognitive functions) to identifying and amplifying their intellectual potential and strengths, for engaging motivation and accelerating learning. As noted by Feuerstein in the foreword of Pedagogy of Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in Urban Schools (Jackson, 2011), his practices provided me with a fundamental foundation of professional development and understanding. In particular it showed how educators can gain a profound appreciation of the deep capacity of their students for learning, It also generated assurance in the ability to create the environmental, psychological and

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educational conditions that could support and encourage the upward mobility of students who grow up in poverty and discrimination. His mentoring inspired me to translate my philosophy and the professional development and technical assistance it generated into the Pedagogy of Confidence.

■■■ Pedagogy of Confidence

Pedagogy and equity cannot be isolated from each other. When we are truly committed to equity, we design pedagogy that achieves its original purpose: ‘to lead a child for self-actualization and self-transcendence - self-actualization that enables students to thrive in society, and self-transcendence that motivates them to contribute to that society” (Chen, 2014; Freire, 1970; Jackson, 2011). This is the purpose of Pedagogy of Confidence.

Pedagogy of Confidence is based on the fearless expectation that all students are capable of high intellectual performances. It is an assets-based approach that translates Feuerstein’s theory into High Operational Practices™ geared at mediating learning so the strengths and intellectual potential of students can be identified

and amplified to motivate self-directed learning, self-actualization and self-transcendence. High Operational Practices are actually labels for the categories of supports fundamental for mediating high levels of engagement and intellectual processing. The practices can serve to guide teachers in making effective pedagogical choices of strategies to optimize learning.

The High Operational Practices include:

■ Identifying and activating student strengths ■ Building relationships ■ Eliciting high intellectual performances ■ Providing enrichment ■ Integrating prerequisites for academic learning ■ Situating learning in the lives of students ■ Amplifying student voice (Jackson, 2011, p. 71)

These practices are the fulcrum around which the Pedagogy of Confidence revolves, gearing the objectives for each practice to facilitate students exploring and acting on their potential to produce the high intellectual performances that can motivate self-directed learning, self-actualization, and self-transcendence.

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■■■ Implications of Feuerstein’s Theory for

Professional Learning

Feuerstein has provided us with profound theories about learning. I have found that when staff understand these theories, these understandings are like sonar that guide their choices of High Operational Practices to mediate cognitive functioning. To assist in cultivating these understandings, I found it helpful to summarize Feuerstein’s theories into four pedagogical considerations for reversing underachievement and eliciting high intellectual performances that are fundamental to the Pedagogy of Confidence. They have guided the codification of the High Operational Practices inherent in the Pedagogy of Confidence and the main framework for the professional learning provided by our organization, the National Urban Alliance for Effective Education (NUA).

First pedagogical consideration

The fundamental considerations start with three beliefs unequivocally reflective of Feuerstein’s theory of Structural Cognitive Modification:

■ Intelligence is Modifiable ■ All students benefit from a focus on high intellectual performances; and

■ Learning is influenced by the interaction of culture, language, and cognition

Second pedagogical consideration

The second consideration is acknowledgement that underachieving school-dependent students often live through debilitating circumstances caused by realities outside of school (physiological, environmental, and socio-economic, all of which affect emotional balance) as well as inside of school (marginalizing labels, assessments, and programs). These realities restrict intellectual development, causing cognitive dysfunctions that impede learning. Third pedagogical consideration

The third consideration is recognition that – since the brain is modifiable - enriching mediation can correct cognitive dysfunctions and strengthen the brain so high intellectual performances can be elicited.

Fourth pedagogical consideration

Lastly, the fourth consideration is that mediation can be facilitated through High Operational Practices that affirm potential, provide specific training in cognitive skills that explicitly activate cognitive functions and engage learners by bridging instruction to real-life applications that are meaningful and relevant to the students. These applications cultivate a continuous direction of learning growth.

The overarching message of the four pedagogical considerations derived from Feuerstein’s contributions is the monumental power of the process of mediation. Mediation is the process through which these considerations transform traditional instruction into the Pedagogy of Confidence.

■■■ Positive perceptions

All students have an innate desire for engagement, challenge, reflection and feedback (Jensen, 1998). Mediation through High Operational Practices activates these catalysts, encouraging the high intellectual performances school-dependent students are capable of achieving. These high intellectual performances invigorate students’ perceptions of themselves as competent learners while spawning positive perceptions of their teachers as facilitators of this learning. I have seen in the schools with whom we partner these positive perceptions aroused creating a fellowship of commitment between teachers and their students that vitalizes them both, transforming classrooms

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into oases of extraordinary teaching and learning. These perceptions of teachers and students that reflect the impact of the Pedagogy of Confidence are well articulated in the following poem written by an

adolescent student of colour to teachers who were not participating in the Pedagogy of Confidence professional learning and a letter from an educator who did (See Box 1).

Box 1

A Student’s Poem

My Stream of Consciousness

You think that I don’t know that you think

I got an F because I’m lazy and indifferent.

But maybe I’m just under-challenged and under-appreciated.

Deep down I am begging you to teach me

To learn and create—not just to memorize and regurgitate.

I’m asking you to help me find my own truth.

I’m asking you to help me find my own beauty.

I’m asking you to help me see my own unique truth.

We need a miracle

One for every kid who subconsciously wants

To be pushed to the edge/taken to the most extreme limits.

I want you to make my brain work in a hundred different ways every day.

I’m asking you to make my head ache with knowledge spin with ideas.

I want you to make my mind my most powerful asset.

—S. T., 10th grade (Jackson, 2001)

A Teacher’s Letter

Dear Dr. Jackson,

I want to thank you for your presentation. The past year I have been at the district level after spending 30 years

in the classroom. I have been going to schools with low state scores. I have been feeling depressed and now

I know why. Since the focus has been on looking at weaknesses, this negative energy has become my reality.

Being negative is really not me. This disconnection has shaken my world. It has affected my health and put me

in depression. Even feeling that I am not good at my job has been a concern for me. I want to help teachers and

therefore help students.

Changing my focus to see the positives and strengths to help weaknesses, has given me a lifeline. Focusing on

students as people is also a very important part of my belief system. You have validated my beliefs. You have

given me the courage to go to my assigned schools and say, “We are going to look at the strengths of you and

your students. Then we are going to assign lessons geared to strategies that tap into your strengths.”

Thank you! Thank you!! I feel better already!

---K

PS. I truly believe that each student is gifted!!

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■■■ Removing the cycle of

underachievement

Feuerstein, like a true diviner, was attuned to the interior reality of innate intelligence not readily apparent on the surface. He has shown that when school- dependent students are provided with prerequisite opportunities for explicit training in thinking skills, mediation of underdeveloped cognitive functions, extensive discourse in learning concepts, overt, succinct feedback, and guidance in reflection, their learning is transformed. They develop the foundations that strengthen their cognitive functioning so their intellectual capacities

can be realized and optimized, replacing the cycle of underachievement with accelerated achievement and self-directed learning that spawn motivation and self-actualization.

Reuven Feuerstein remains both my mentor and my hero for he has led the way to a brighter future for everyone!

Note: This article is developed from Pedagogy of

Confidence: Inspiring High Intellectual Performance in

Urban Schools, Yvette Jackson with permission from

Teachers College Press, 2011)

References: Caine, R.N., & Caine, G. (2006). The way we learn. Educational Leadership, 64 (1), 50-54. ■ Chen, I. blogs.kqed.org/mindshift/2014/08/

how a bigger purpose can motivate students to learn/ ■ Cooper, E.J. (2009). Realities and responsibilities in the education village. In L.C. Tillman(Ed.),

The Sage handbook on African American education (pp.435-450). Los Angeles: Sage. ■ Feuerstein, R. (1978). Instrumental enrichment

manual. Batlimore: University Park Press. ■ Feuerstein, R. , Feuerstein, T.S., & Falik, L. H. (2010). Beyond smarter: mediated learning and the

brain’s capacity for change. New York: Teachers College Press. ■ Freire, P. (1970). Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder and Herder.

■ Goldberg, E. (2001). The executive brain: Frontal lobes and the civilized mind. New York: Oxford University Press. ■ Hilliard, A. (1977).

Classical failure and success in the assessment of people of color. In M. Coleman (Ed.), Black children just keep on growing. Washington,

DC: Black Child Development Institute. ■ Holloway, M. (2003). The mutable brain. Scientific American, 289 (3), 79-85. ■ Jackson, Y. (2001).

Reversing underachievement in urban students: Pedagogy of confidence. In A. Costa (Ed.), Developing minds. Alexandria, VA: Association

for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ■ Jackson, Y. (2011) Pedagogy of confidence. New York: Teachers College Press. ■ Jensen, E.

(1998). Teaching with the brain in mind. Alexandria, VA: Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. ■ Maslow, A.H. (1943). A

theory of human motivation. Psychological Review, 50(4), 370-396. ■ Medina, J. Brain rules: twelve rules for surviving and thriving at work,

home, and school. Seattle: Pear Press. ■ Piaget, J. (1950). The psychology of intelligence. New York: Routledge. ■ Sternberg, R. (1998). All

intelligence testing is “cross-cultural”: Constructing intelligence test to meet the demands of person x task x situation interactions. In R.

Samuda (Ed.), Advances in cross-cultural assessment (pp. 197-217). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

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Learning how to learn ■■■■■

64

Learning how to learnAnne-Theresa Lawrie describes how Feuerstein’s programmes have been explored by

schools in the Scottish Borders and in particular examines the teacher training dimension.

■■■ Overview of the Scottish Borders

project

Training teachers to implement Professor Reuven Feuerstein’s thinking skills programme is becoming increasingly prevalent in Scottish education. This thinking skills programme is called Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) and the pedagogy used to deliver the IE programme is called Mediated Learning

Experience (MLE). In the light of decades of worldwide research that indicates that the FIE programme has potential to enhance learning and attainment (Romney and Samuels, 2001) a pilot programme was launched in Scottish Borders Council (SBC) schools in September 2005. Since the programme includes activities to help pupils to control impulsive behaviour, most pupils selected for the programme had a history of

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underachieving due to social, emotional or behavioural problems.

There are two strands to the pilot project: one is equipping teachers to deliver the FIE programme to the most vulnerable pupils, the other is the adoption of the Feuerstein approach using mediating learning across schools. While the first strand is very resource intensive, the second strand can operate with more modest investment. In 2005-2006, 32 primary and secondary teachers, including members of school Senior Management Teams, volunteered for the Feuerstein accredited training and began to deliver the FIE programme with the selected pupils for around 80 minutes per week.

Scottish Borders Newly Qualified Teachers (probationers) also participated for three days in the area of the Feuerstein training that deals specifically with mediated learning. Since there is extensive research evidence that the quality of the teacher’s mediation is a major influence on learning, early career training in mediation was thought likely to yield long-term dividends.

The impact of the FIE pilot project on both teachers and pupils will be discussed later in this paper. Teachers and support staff have continued to be engaged in FIE and MLE training across Scottish Borders Council following on from the pilot project. There has also been involvement of parents and carers in an early years parenting programme called Flying Start which is based on MLE and this programme is now part of the universal provision for early years parenting programmes. Flying Start will also be discussed in this article.

■■■ Our understanding of MLE

MLE is a teaching approach that emphasises the importance of the interaction between the teacher and the learner. Three key texts which describe MLE and introduce the terminology associated with it are Feuerstein (2006), Greenberg (2005) and Mentis, Dunn-Bernstein and Mentis (2008). Feuerstein (2006) describes MLE in the following way:

“Mediated Learning Experience refers to the way in which stimuli experienced in the environment are transformed by a mediating agent, usually a parent,

teacher, sibling, or other intentioned person in the life of the learner. This mediating agent, guided by intention, culture and emotional investment selects, enhances, focuses, and otherwise organises the world of stimuli for the learner, according to a clear intention and goals for the learners’ enhanced and effective functioning” (2006:68).

Feuerstein developed MLE to attempt to explain how children learn effectively. He proposes that in order for a child to interpret the stimuli they receive from the environment a mediator should interpose him/herself between the child and the stimuli, and the mediator’s role is to help the child interpret and respond to the stimuli.

Katherine Greenberg has interpreted MLE through the implementation of Cognitive Enrichment Advantage (CEA). Her central aim is to ‘provide teachers with skills to help underachieving students learn how to learn’ (2005:2). She describes MLE as:

“Feuerstein’s Theory of Mediated Learning Experience is a social constructivist view of learning in that it describes how individuals construct a meaningful world through the reciprocal interactions they have with more knowledgeable others who share a system of cultural meanings and values… mediated learning occurs when a more knowledgeable person prompts a less knowledgeable person to label, compare, categorise and give meaning to a present experience as it relates to prior and future ones” (2005:31).

For Greenberg, MLE helped to develop a common language for learning which teachers and students found advantageous. She claims knowledge about learning became explicit for both teachers and learners.

The theory of MLE has a framework for its application (parameters). For any interaction between teachers and learners to be considered mediational, Feuerstein proposes that three parameters must be applied: intentionality and reciprocity; meaning and transcendence. Feuerstein (2006) defines these three parameters in the following way (the bold emphasis has been inserted into this quote from Feuerstein):

“Intentionality and Reciprocity: The content and process of an interaction are shaped by the intention to mediate,

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not only for the particular stimuli to which the learner is exposed (the content) but also by the specific conveyance of the intention which is the process of the mediation… Reciprocity indicates that an interaction has occurred, is being responded to, and that the transformations that are an integral part of MLE will be more effective… Mediation of Transcendence: This dimension is tightly related to the intentionality of the mediator and the mediational interaction, and takes the individual beyond the ‘here and now’ and away from a dependence on direct and immediate contact with the objects and events of experience. It is the directionality of the interaction, and conveys to the mediatee that what is being experienced has a larger perspective and a further meaning… The Mediation of Meaning: The third criterion of MLE is the mediation of meaning. This parameter relates to the affective/energetic dimension of mediation, answering questions such as why, what for” (2006:72-73).

So for Feuerstein, it is essential that for teachers to provide a mediated learning experience for students three key elements must be present: clear learning intentions to which the student responds (intentionality and reciprocity); the learning is meaningful, relevant and conveyed to the learner with interest and emotional involvement from the teacher (meaning); that the underlying skills required for learning are made explicit and when knowledge is integrated and linked to a broader context (transcendence).

In establishing the CEA programme to help teachers become effective mediators who can facilitate the learning process for underachieving students, Greenberg (2005) incorporates the essential parameters of Feuerstein’s MLE as essential qualities of an effective mediator. Greenberg (2005) has defined the parameters in the following way:

“For a high quality mediated learning experience to occur, mediators need to display four essential qualities when interacting with learners: 1. Reciprocity: establishing a positive connection of acceptance, trust and understanding 2. Intent: catching and focusing attention 3. Meaning: energising awareness and making the experience personally relevant 4. Transcendence: expanding understanding beyond the current learning context” (2005: 36).

Mentis, Dunn-Bernstein and Mentis (2008) have also interpreted Feuerstein’s MLE by providing a practical guide which intends to equip teachers and parents with strategies to help students develop cognitive skills. For Mentis, Dunn-Bernstein and Mentis MLE can help students to become more effective thinkers and learners. This guide is used as a key instructional document in training staff in Scottish Borders in MLE and also in the early years parenting programme.

Probationer teachers in SBC received a three days training in MLE in order to use this approach for lesson planning. A group of six experienced class teachers who had been implementing FIE and MLE in their practice shared their lesson planning templates based on the parameters of MLE with the probationer teachers. The three day training programme was initially delivered by an external Feuerstein trainer therefore support in the classroom was not available. I subsequently became a Feuerstein trainer and was able both to deliver the MLE training and provide support in the classroom for teachers which made the training more sustainable. Support staff and other multi-agency workers requested training in MLE in order to ensure a consistency of approach when interacting with students. A home link worker at one of the secondary schools developed a parenting programme based on MLE for teenagers which was received very positively by both students and parents.

■■■ Lessons learnt from the pilot

The Quality in Education centre QIE (2007) evaluation of the SBC Feuerstein pilot project reported that many newly qualified teachers used the training MLE as a means of reflecting on their practice (2007:14). The teachers were broadly positive about the MLE and intended to continue trying out the approach in their next post. However, they also found that the training lacked practical strategies for implementation and opportunity for discussion was limited. However, further limitations include the fact that only 25 out of 40 of the newly qualified teachers filled in the MLE questionnaire and so the responses of a significant number of views were not represented. Nevertheless, ninety-eight percent of teachers trained in both IE and

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MLE believed that the training had helped them develop a better understanding of the learning process and that they used MLE not only to deliver IE, but curricular content as well. An apparent limitation of this study is that views expressed by the FIE teachers are subjective and that there was no direct classroom observation to evidence the inclusion of MLE approaches in curricular teaching.

■■■ The training plan

As a result of the evaluation of the MLE training from the pilot project, four secondary schools and their associated primary schools embarked on a three year plan of training staff in MLE. MLE was included as a core part of every school improvement plan in order to ensure that the training would be implemented and evaluated as part of the school improvement planning process. Each of the four school clusters had a teaching and learning group consisting of both primary and secondary teachers who would lead the MLE training across the school. Each teaching and learning group worked with the SBC

IE trainer on ways of incorporating the parameters of MLE into classroom practice. The groups developed lesson plans from all curricular areas demonstrating ways of improving the quality of interaction between teacher and pupil and pupil to pupil. Teachers across sectors carried out peer observation to look at the quality of interaction in the classroom. Feedback from teachers in the three year training was that MLE provided a means of improving the quality of classroom interaction and they could see how this related to the Assessment for Learning initiative.

■■■ Giving parents and children a Flying

Start

The early years parenting programme Flying Start which is based on Feuerstein Mediated Learning Experience was written in response to parents asking if they could find out more about the cognitive functions their children were talking about. Children in the nurseries of the five primary school involved in the Feuerstein IE pilot project were able to discuss and apply the

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cognitive functions they were developing through the IE programme and parents were interested in finding out more about the principles of Feuerstein’s work and how they could support this learning at home in order to help the children consolidate their learning.

The Flying Start programme is an eight week course where parents come to the nursery to work directly with their child in activities which develop understanding and practice of how to mediate the four of the parameters of Mediated Learning Experience: intentionality and reciprocity, meaning, transcendence and competence. Each session begins with the parents having a discussion session with the Feuerstein practitioner about the purpose of the session and activities that will develop the mediated learning parameter. Parents then work with their child on the activities which will develop a mediated learning experience. Parents evaluate the session with the practitioner and take away activity sacks

which they use at home to further develop mediated learning experience. The feedback from parents, over a six year period as to the value of learning of the Flying Start programme is extremely positive. Parents report that they now know how to: communicate more effectively with their child; learning is not limited to the here and now; to add meaning to their child’s learning and being able to praise their child’s learning .The programme is used extensively in nurseries across Scottish Borders Council. The photographs below demonstrate the Flying Start programme.

■■■ The benefits of Feuerstein’s

Instrumental Enrichment Programme

A huge body of evidence suggests that by providing a systematic and adequate approach to remedying ‘deficient cognitive functions’, FIE can equip young people with the cognitive wherewithal to cope with

school curricula and to succeed in post-school education and training. This evidence also suggests that the approach can reverse links between disadvantaged circumstances and difficulties with fundamental cognitive functions.

The FIE programme consists of paper-and-pencil exercises that have been grouped into 14 ‘instruments’ (sets of activities) designed to enable learners to practise cognitive functions that are connected with achieving success in school, in the workplace and in everyday life. These cognitive functions underlie competences important in schooling and elsewhere, such as control of impulsivity, development of intrinsic (self ) motivation, working systematically with and imposing structure on strands of information, looking for evidence, making comparisons and forming and testing hypothesis. Deliberately free of school curricula content, each of the FIE instruments provides learner activities aimed at developing cognitive functions underlying not only school tasks but also everyday or workplace tasks such as

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assembling flat pack furniture, diagnosing machinery faults, parking a car, map reading or co-ordinating food preparation.

The FIE trained teachers in the Borders IE pilot project evidenced a significant shift in attitudes towards learning and learners reported that they were acting in accordance with their changed understandings. These shifts relate to a belief in and an ability to engage in a more open and powerful type of dialogue that is likely to develop young people’s ability to learn for themselves. These teachers support the continuance of the programme and the implementation of a mediated learning approach throughout the schools. They believe that the Feuerstein version of mediated learning is likely to enhance the aims of other initiatives (e.g. A Curriculum for Excellence; Assessment is for Learning) and contribute to National Priorities. They also believe that the Feuerstein approach offers a coherent framework for accommodating ideas presented in other CPD programmes and, in particular, provides tools for enhancing the abilities of all pupils. The FIE trained teachers were more enthusiastic about the training than

the Newly Qualified Teachers, possibly because they were able to locate the ideas in their richer classroom experience.

Overall, the findings from the various sources of data indicate that the FIE trained teachers were generally very positive about the impact of their training on professional practice. The effectiveness of the programme was reflected in positive outcomes including raised awareness and reflective practice, particularly in relation to cognitive functions and tackling deficiencies. The FIE instruments (learner activities) were typically found to be useful and effective in facilitating relationship building and enhancing focus on teaching objectives. Scottish Borders Council had the project development officer trained as an IE trainer and IE training has continued as part of the CPD training on offer to teachers across the local education authority.

One of the most significant findings is that teachers reported progress over six months for over three-quarters of the sample of 67 pupils that they rated on 6 aspects of cognitive functioning targeted by the FIE programme,

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all of which are connected with school attainment. It is impressive that teachers reported that 98% improved on one particular and important aspect: ‘correction of deficient cognitive functions’.

The younger FIE pupils (nursery-P4) had higher scores than their control group on a FIE related task. The older FIE group pupils (P5-S3) achieved higher scores on FIE related tasks than the control group pupils and the differences were statistically significant. It appears that the FIE pupils, with a history of social, emotional or behavioural needs, not only retained what they learned, but also generalised their learning to a new task. Work is ongoing to ensure optimal ‘bridging’ from the Feuerstein activities to mainstream classroom work. Many pupils talked about improving their behaviour “a wee bit”. Secondary but not P5-P7 pupils reported that they were better learners after six months in the FIE programme and reported improvements in their task completion ability over the same period. The youngest (Nursery-P4) seemed to understand better what was involved in task completion.

IE is still being used in Scottish Borders in a range of settings but predominantly as part of a programme

for children with social, emotional and behavioural needs and for children with additional needs. IE is not being used as widely for whole class teaching which is in part due to the introduction of a new curriculum and qualifications and other national priorities. The FIE pilot project in SBC demonstrated that this approach is beneficial to enhancing the learning process for both teachers and students because students are more engaged in their learning whilst teachers feel better equipped to understand the learning process. One of the key priorities within Scottish Education at the moment is to reduce the attainment gap between the richest and the poorest children. One way of realising this could be whole class using FIE. Research evidence demonstrates that FIE results in students improving their cognitive abilities and this approach could be a means to empowering young people to improve their attainment levels and thus improve their lives.

References: Adey , P. and Shayer, M. (1994). Really Raising Standards: Cognitive Intervention and Academic Achievement. London: Routledge.

■ Baumfield, V.M., Butterworth, M. And Edwards, G. (2005). The Impact of the Implementation of thinking skills programmes and approaches

on teachers. In: Research Evidence in Education Library. London: EPPI – Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University

of London. ■ Blagg, Nigel (1991). Can We Teach Intelligence: A Comprehensive Evaluation of Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment Program.

Lawrence Erlbaum Associates ■ Feuerstein, Reuven (2006). Creating and Enhancing Cognitive Modifiability: The Feuerstein Instrumental

Enrichment Program.Part 1Theoretical and Conceptual Foundations Part 2 Practical Applications of the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment

Program. ICELP Publications. ■ Flat (2009). Future Learning and Teaching Programme. Available online at:http://staging.ltscotland.org.

ukl/ltu/flat/aboutflat.asp ■ Gardner, H. (1993). Multiple Intelligences. New Horizons: Basic Books. ■ Greenberg, K.H. (2005). The Cognitive

Enrichment Advantage. KCD Harris and Associate Press. ■ Haywood, H.C. (1993). A mediational teaching style. International Journal of Cognitive

Education and Mediated Learning 3,pp27-38 ■ H.M. Inspectorate of Education (2006). The Journey to Excellence. Scottish Government. ■

Higgins, S., Baumfield, V., Lin, M., Moseley, D., Butterworth, M., Downey, G., Gregson, M., Obeski, I., Rochett, M. And Thacker, D. (2004). Thinking

skill approaches to effective teaching and learning: what is the evidence for impact of learners. In: Research Evidence in Education Library,

London: EPPI – Centre, Social Science Research Unit, Institute of Education, University of London. ■ Kaufman, R. and Burden, R. (2004). Peer

tutoring between young adults with severe and complex learning difficulties: the effects of mediation training with Feuerstein’s Instrumental

Enrichment programme. European Journal of Psychology Vol. 19, 1: 107 – 117. ■ Kinard, J. And Kozulin, R. (2008). Rigorous mathematical

thinking. Cambridge University Press. ■ Kirkwood, M. (2005). Learning to Think: Thinking to Learn. Hodder Gibson. ■ Kozulin, A. (2006).

Integration of culturally different students in mainstream classes. Transylvanian Journal of Psychology: Special Issue on Inclusive Cognitive

Education 2: 99 - 105 ■ Leat, D. (1998). Thinking Through Geography. Cambridge: Chris King. ■ Mendis, M., Dunn-Bernstein, M. and Mentis, M.

(2008). Mediated Learning. Teaching, Tasks, and Tools to Unlock Cognitive Potential .Corwin Press ■ Nakra,O. (1990). The teacher as mediator:

An evaluation of Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment program in the classroom. International Journal of Cognitive Education and Mediated

Learning, 1,pp221-227 ■ Q.I.E. Centre, University of Strathclyde (2007). Evaluation of Scottish Borders Pilot Programme available online

at -http://staging.ltscotland.org.uk/lts/flatprojects/northeasteduc/feuersteinpartnershipasp ■ Vygotsky, L. (1978). Mind in Society: The

Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. ■ Scottish Executive (2004). A Curriculum for

Excellence. Curriculum Review Group, Edinburgh. ■ Skuy, M., Gower, A., Osrin,Y., Khuniv, D., Fridjohn, P. and Rushton, J.P. (2002). Eddiccts of

Mediated Learning Experience on Raven’s Matrices Scores of African and Non-African University Students in South Africa. Intelligence Vol.

30 pp 221 – 232. ■ Skuy, M. (2002). The Development of MLE Based Intervention Programmes in the Context of Education in South Africa.

School Psychology International 23: pp 88 – 111. ■ Sternberg, R. (2008). Applying Psychological Theories to Educational Practice. American

Journal of Research, Vol. 45, No. 1 pp 150 – 165 ■ Trickey, S. And Topping, K.J. (2004). Philosophy for Children: a systematic review. Research

Papers in Education 19: 335 – 380.

Anne-Theresa Lawrie lives and works in the UK. She can

be contacted on [email protected]

Sandra Garner, Pat Gould and Lesley Woodward

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Closing the achievement gap in UlsterThe golden rule of thinking skills programmes is to ‘turn-round’ children with learning

difficulties. Kate O’ Hanlon’s long-term study shows that Feuerstein’s Intrumental

Enrichment can allow ‘no-hopers’ to achieve surprising GCSE results.

Has it been accepted in the world of education, in the UK and in countries around the world, that teachers should have an understanding of ‘cognition’, of

what is meant by ‘thinking skills’, of what a ‘thinking school’ should be? It would appear that ‘thinking’ is in; however, we are not all agreed as to how much training, curriculum time or resources should be devoted to this aspect of children’s development.

The research project described below proposed to demonstrate that a direct, explicit focus on the teaching of thinking skills will have a measurable impact on the attainments of students. The students in this project were provided with the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment programme for the first to third year of their secondary education. Their achievements at General Certificate in Secondary Education (GCSE) (two years later) were compared with the students in

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the Control group which had followed the normal N. Ireland curriculum, where thinking skills are ‘infused’ as part of the area of learning.

Education in N. Ireland moved towards a new era of change in 2003 when the N. Ireland Revised Curriculum became statutory after a number of years of discussion and consultation with a wide range of stakeholders. The curriculum review was aimed at pupils aged 4 to 14, from Foundation Stage to Key Stage 3. From 14-19 pupils follow a programme of study to achieve national qualifications at GCSE and GCE ‘A’ level.

Selection at age eleven by means of the 11 plus examination remains common practice, despite efforts made by the Department of Education for N. Ireland to eradicate this method of transfer.

The Revised Curriculum in N. Ireland (4-14) identified eight subject/curriculum areas at Key Stage 3 (Years 8 – 10):

■ The Arts, English, Mathematics, Environment and Society, Modern Languages, Science and Technology, Physical Education, Religious Education.

An emphasis has been placed on Assessment for Learning as good practice and a thinking skills framework was introduced; ‘Thinking Skills and Personal Capabilities’:

■ Managing Information ■ Thinking, Problem-Solving and Decision-

Making ■ Being Creative ■ Managing Oneself ■ Working with Others.

Schools are required to ensure that the framework of thinking skills is ‘infused’ across the curriculum. The focus has moved away from a content-driven curriculum towards the development of skills. Pupils are required to be adaptable in new learning contexts and be able to transfer these skills to other curriculum contexts and beyond.

■■■ Instrumental Enrichment (IE):

principles and practices

This programme was developed in the 1950s by

Professor Reuven Feuerstein, a clinical psychologist and researcher. It is now a recognised programme across the world and many evaluation studies have recognised and measured its effectiveness. (Romney and Samuels, 2001.)

It is based on the understanding that intelligence is not a fixed state. Feuerstein’s theory of SCM, structural cognitive modifiability, suggests that cognitive functioning can be changed. He developed criteria for mediated learning experience, a special and focused interaction in the learning situation which aims to promote quality teaching and learning.

The FIE programme consists of 14 Instruments, each of which works to improve habits of mind and to correct deficient cognitive functioning. Bridging from the instruments to other areas of learning is an essential element of the work. The programme emphasises the ‘metacognitive’ classroom.

FIE is highly structured and non-subject-specific. The age range of the target population is from 5 to adulthood and these are often, but not always, people who experience problems with learning. It is used in a wide range of contexts across the world. (For further information read: ‘Changing Children’s Minds,’ Howard Sharron.)

FIE and other thinking skills’ programmes were not given a place within the structures of the Revised Curriculum in N. Ireland. A subject-centred curriculum, based on detailed, separate programmes of

Logo for Organisation of Dots, the first instrument in the programme.

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74

study, left little room for a programme which proposed to develop cognition.

The current research project provided an opportunity to evaluate the impact of a non-subject specific thinking skills’ programme on the achievements of learners who do not find learning easy. The research aimed to base the final evaluation on the longer-term achievements of the pupils at the end of Key Stage 4, when formal, statutory educational provision will have ended for them.

While former studies of FIE (Blagg, ’1991) looked at short term effects, this research project is the first time in the UK that a longer-term evaluation has been carried out.

The hypothesis upon which this research is based is similar to that promoted by Adey and Shayer (’1993). Their work in the CASE (Cognitive Acceleration Through Science Education) project linked early cognitive education to longer-term impacts on student attainments across the curriculum: ‘long-term far transfer effects’. The intention of the current research was to compare the achievements of the group of students who had experience of IE for 3 years with a similar group who had pursued the normal curriculum for these first three years of post-primary education. The main measure of

comparison was determined to be GCSE qualifications by the end of Year 12. The parameters were:

■ Total number/% of GCSEs at Grades A to G ■ Total number/% of GCSEs at Grades A to C ■ Number of Grades A to C in English and Maths.

■■■ Aims

■ To enable a sample of post-primary schools to introduce the FIE Programme for Key Stage 3 lower-attaining pupils

■ To evaluate the impact on pupil achievement in the short, medium and longer term.

■■■ Objectives

SCHOOLS:

■ To select a group of 5 experimental schools ■ To match them with a control group of 5 schools ■ To provide the 3 levels of FIE training required to deliver the programme to pupils (5 days per level)

■ To measure any impact at whole school level.

PUPILS:

■ To identify and assess the target Year 8 group (aged 11-12 years) in the ten schools

■ To provide the FIE Programme to the experimental group for 3 years

■ To end the programme after three years and assess pupil achievements after their fifth year at school, (Year 12) especially their GCSE attainments

■ To compare the end of Year 12 achievements of the pupils in the control group and make comparisons.

TEACHERS: ■ To provide training and the necessary materials to the FIE teachers

■ To provide ongoing support through seminars and in-class/in-school work.

■■■ Design/Method

The Southern Education and Library Board is one of the five education authorities in N. Ireland. SELB supports and helps administer the 250 primary and 53 post-primary schools in the area.

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Five schools in SELB responded to an invitation to become involved in the five year project. One of these schools is an all-girl, mixed ability school, while the other four cater for pupils who, in most instances, did not achieve a grammar school place through the 11+ selection procedure at the end of primary school.

Each of these schools was matched to a school which was similar in terms of school type, ensuring cross -community representation and geographic spread. The % of FSM across all ten schools ranged from 25 to 52%. Free school meal indices are used by the Department of Education in N. Ireland as an indicator of social deprivation.

PUPILS:

The targeted pupils were the lowest-attaining mainstream Year 8 groups who began post-primary education in September, 2004. These groups are determined on entry to post-primary school by Key Stage 2 Level of Attainment in English and Maths. The average level of attainment expected by this stage is Level 4 (82% of pupils achieved this level in English and Maths in SELB in 2009). The targeted pupils were working at Level 2 on average in both English and Maths on transfer in 2004, so were significantly behind the standard of their peer group.

TEACHERS:

Two teachers from each of the experimental schools were identified for the training programme in order to ensure professional support for the FIE teacher in each school. Only one class in each school received the programme for the first 3 years of post-primary education. The teacher identified in the control group was the Year 8 Tutor.

■■■ Details of the research

TEACHERS

Nine teachers were trained in FIE, Level 1.Seven teachers completed Levels 2 and 3.

■■■ Curriculum experiences

The IE experimental group followed the normal statutory curriculum but, in addition, they were given 2 (40 minute) lessons in Instrumental Enrichment each week for three years.

The control group, on the other hand, also followed the normal statutory curriculum, and had an additional 3-4 (40 minute) lessons of extra English each week for three years.

Both groups were withdrawn from lessons in Modern Languages in order to access the IE or the extra English.

Baseline assessments

All pupils were assessed in their own schools by the researcher. The following procedures were used:

■ NFER (National Foundation for Educational Research) Verbal IQ

■ NFER Non-Verbal IQ ■ MALS (NFER) – Myself as a Learner Scale (Total Score possible = 100; Average range 60-82)

SCHOOLS

EXPERIMENTAL CONTROLS

St Catherine’s College, ArmaghCity of Armagh HSSt Patrick’s College, DungannonSt Patrick’s College, BanbridgeSt Joseph’s HS, Crossmaglen

St Mary’s HS, NewryDromore HSSt Joseph’s College, CoalislandDrumcree College, PortadownSt Paul’s HS, Bessbrook

STUDENTS

EXPERIMENTAL CONTROLS

8747 BOYS40 GIRLS

8943 BOYS46 GIRLS

.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................


76

■ Organisation of Dots ■ Complex Drawing ■ Attainments: reading and spelling ages/standardised scores, levels of attainment in English and Maths.

■■■ Monitoring and evaluation

PUPILS:

1. Both groups of pupils were assessed by their schools for curriculum attainment, ie. levels of attainment in English and Maths on arrival into Year 8.

2. Teachers in both groups used a Student Observation Survey to rate student Habits of Mind or Thinking Behaviours.

3. The researcher assessed cognitive abilities and got a measure of pupil self-esteem.

TEACHERS:

A series of questionnaires were completed:1. Teacher expectations of lower-attaining pupils.2. Attitudes to Myself as a Teacher Survey.3. Some classroom observation with an observation schedule was used by each teacher as part of the ongoing

monitoring process throughout the three years of the programme.

SHORT-TERM EVALUATION:

Timing: end of Year 8 (May/June 2005):A series of measures were used: reading ages, levels of attainment, end of year examinations and self-esteem.

MEDIUM-TERM EVALUATION:

Timing: end of Key Stage 3 – (May/June 2007):A series of measures were used: end of Key Stage 3 results in English, Maths and Science; self-esteem using the MALS.

LONG-TERM EVALUATION:

Timing: end of Key Stage 4 (August 2009):Key Stage 4 results at GCSE level or equivalent.

Table 1: Baseline Assessments:

Range of IQ

Average IQ

Reading Age Range

Average Reading Age

Spelling Age Range

Average Spelling Age

MALS Range

MALS Average

Exper 60-103 79.62<7.00-10.00

8.50<7.00-11.00

9.00 24-96 65.49

Controls 70-95 78.3<7.00-10.00

8.50<7.00-11.00

9.00 36-95 69.6

The baseline assessments suggested two well matched groups in terms of ability and attainment.

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■■■ Results Table 2: Schools and subjects

NO. SCHOOLS

Count %

Intervention 5 50Control 5 50TOTAL 10 100

NO. STUDENTS

Count %Intervention 63 42.568Control 85 57.432TOTAL 148 100

The numbers in the IE group have reduced in the five years (87 in Year 8 but only 63 by end of Year 12.) There are fewer changes in the Control group (89 in Year 8 and 85 by end of Year 12). These students have been tracked and the reduction in numbers in the IE group is explained by the fact that they have in the main moved up a class from being in the lowest attaining class group

to a higher level group. In one case, a boy from the IE group became Head Boy in his final year.

There was considerably less movement in the Control Group. Here students either left the school or were expelled before the end of Year 10.

There is an even balance of male and female in the two groups by the end of the project. It has been interesting

to notice the gender differences and similarities in response to the IE programme in particular. Some of the instruments are preferred by one gender more than the other. For example, boys do less well on instruments such as Comparisons but prefer instruments such as Numerical Progressions.

A study which looked at the differences in more detail would be interesting, but in the current study there

have been differences in the performance of boys in the IE group when compared with boys in the control sample.

■■■ GCSE

examinations taken

This data indicates that the IE group sat and achieved grades in more subjects than did the Control group. While 20% of the Control

group achieved no GCSEs, only 5% of the IE are recorded as having none. On the other hand, 19 of the 63 IE students (30%) achieved 8 or 9 GCSEs, while only 3 of the Control group of 85 students (3.5%) were able to record the same achievements. Finally, 39 of the IE group (61.9%), recorded grades in 5 GCSEs. Fifty of the Control group (58.8%) did the same.

Table 3: Gender balance:

Student gender (count & %)

Female Male Total

Count % Count % Count %

Intervention 33 44 30 41.1 63 42.568

Control 42 56 43 58.9 85 57.432

TOTAL 75 100 73 100 148 100

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78

Analysis of the grades achieved by the students in the two groups reflect significantly better results within the IE group. They have more grades A* to C than the Control group and fewer grades in the lower grades of E, F and G. The girls have done well in the top grades but the boys in the IE group have done considerably better than boys in the Control group.

This summary table provides a clear contrast between the achievements of the two groups. There are 141 Grade A* to C (45%) in the IE group, while only 77 (25%) in the Controls. The Control group has more grades in the D-G grades than the IE group.

The IE group also records fewer U grades: 4 as opposed to 10. Again, the IE boys have achieved more than the boys in the Control group.

Table 4: GCSE grades A* to U, achieved by gender:

GCSE GRADE ACHIEVED BY GENDER (count & %)

Intervention Control Female Male Total Male TotalCount Count Count % Count Count Count %

A* 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0.00A 5 1 6 1.9544 2 0 2 0.66B 26 9 35 11.401 11 0 11 3.62C 49 51 100 32.573 30 34 64 21.05D 42 43 85 27.687 41 30 71 23.36E 15 21 36 11.726 39 29 68 22.37F 20 8 28 9.1205 28 21 49 16.12G 3 10 13 4.2345 14 15 29 9.54

U 2 2 4 1.3029 5 5 10 3.29

TOTAL 162 145 307 100 170 134 304 100

SUMMARY GCSE GRADE ACHIEVED BY GENDER (count & %)

Intervention ControlFemale Male Total Female Male TotalCount Count Count % Count Count Count %

A*-C 80 61 141 45.93 43 34 77 25.33D-G 80 82 162 52.77 122 95 217 71.38U 2 2 4 1.30 5 5 10 3.29TOTAL 162 145 307 100.00 170 134 304 100

Table 5: Summary of GCSE grades achieved by gender:

As with all public examinations at this level, each grade has a different weighting, as agreed by QCA, the examinations’ quality control body. The total weighting in the IE group is 10644, against 9030 by the Controls. This is particularly significant where it is noted that there are 22 more students in the Control than in the IE group.

■■■ GCSE weightings per grade

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■■■ Conclusion/recommendations:

Standards set by The N. Ireland Department of Education require schools to increase the percentage of students who achieve five GCSEs at Grades A* to C, including English and Maths. In a selective system, which is the situation in N. Ireland, the pupils are separated into grammar and secondary schools at the end of Year 7. In the post-primary sector, while the grammar schools achieve good standards in terms of GCSE and GCE ‘A’ level grades, there remains a long tail of under-achievement and low achievement; 1.8% left school in 2009 with no qualifications.

The percentage of students in secondary schools in 2009 who achieved a Grade C or above in English in secondary schools was 44.9% and in Maths 38.4%.

Tables 6 – 7 above record the results in English and Maths for the IE and Control groups. The results are very positive for the IE group, where 33.3% achieved a C or above, while only 7% of the Control group did so. In Maths, 17% of the IE achieved the C or above whereas no students in the Control group achieved at the same level.

The outcomes of the research project have demonstrated that the target group which received a programme of IE for three years has performed markedly better at the end of their school experience as evidenced by their GCSE results. The results are encouraging particularly when we look at the baseline data and appreciate that these were students not normally expected to achieve so much. It can be suggested that the effect was as a direct result of their involvement with the Instrumental Enrichment programme, as that was the only significant difference noted between the two targeted groups.

The following recommendations may be worthy of consideration, especially in a situation where education is trying to find ways to support students who find learning challenging and when challenging targets have been set for schools:

■ IE should be considered for students who have difficulties learning

■ It should be accepted that IE could make a great difference to those students who are achieving at the

Summary GCSE Maths Grades

Intervention Control Count % Count %

A*-C 8 17.02 0 0.00D-G 39 82.98 51 92.73U 0 0.00 4 7.27

TOTAL 47 100 55 100

Summary GCSE English Grades Achieved

Intervention Control Count % Count %

A*-C 12 33.33 3 7.14D-G 24 66.67 37 88.10U 0 0.00 2 4.76TOTAL 36 100.00 42 100.00

Table 6: Summary GCSE English Grades Achieved

Table 7: Summary GCSE Maths Grades

.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................


80

References: Adey, P and Shayer, M, ‘An exploration of the long-term far transfer effects following and extended intervention programme in high

school science.’ Cognition and Instruction, 11(1): 1-29. ■ Blagg, N. (1991), ‘Can We Teach Intelligence?’ L. Erlbaum Associates. ■ Feuerstein, R.,

Rand, Y., Hoffman, MB., Miller, R (1980), ‘Instrumental Enrichment: an intervention programme for cognitive modifiability.’ Baltimore: University

Park Press. ■ Romney and Samuels, (2001), ‘A meta-analysis of the implications of thinking skills’ approaches on pupils.’ EPPI Centre. ■ Sharron,

Howard, ‘Changing Children’s Minds.’ Imaginative Minds.

average or just below average levels of attainment ■ While these students benefited from the programme, more time assigned to the programme each week will reap even greater benefits

■ It is important that the whole staff in the school be made aware of the principles and practices of IE and, in particular, to have an understanding of mediated learning experience, which will sit comfortably within the philosophy underpinning the Revised Curriculum.

Kate O’Hanlon has taught IE and is a qualified IE trainer

Email [email protected]

IE students, with some of their teachers, receive their certificates at the end of their Level 3 programme in Armagh, N Ireland.

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A Mediational Approach to Family-Centered Care ■■■■■

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A Mediational Approach to Family-Centered CareAbraham Salinas-Miranda, Shawna Green and Martha Coulter sound a call to action

for improving family centred care programmes using a mediational approach based on

the work of Feuerstein.

■■■ Introduction

This article is intended for those who wish to learn how to use a mediational approach to family centered care programmes. It is particularly appropriate for supporting education programmes, early childhood intervention services, pediatric care, and other social services for children and their families. We explore our proposal for a mediational approach based on the application of Reuven Feuerstein’s theories of Structural Cognitive Modifiability (SCM) and Mediated Learning Experiences (MLE). In particular, we discuss how the theories of SCM and MLE could be applied to enhance

key learning processes within the family during services that are organized under a Family Centered Care (FCC) framework.

■■■ Family Centered Care

Family-centered care (FCC) is a model of provider-family collaboration and decision-making, that includes a set of principles and practice approaches to service planning, provision, and evaluation of healthcare (Figure 1) (Kuo et al., 2012, Harrison, 2010, 2003). Because FCC is endorsed by the US Bureau of Maternal and Child Health programmes (Maternal and Child Health

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Bureau, 2004) and the American Academy of Pediatrics (American Academy of Pediatrics, 2012, Schor, 2003), FCC is promoted most prominently in the United States as a guiding framework for a broad array of family services (Fingerhut et al., 2013). Examples of services adopting FCC framework include: specialized services for children with special healthcare needs (e.g. children medical services and early intervention in clinical, home-based, or school-based settings)(Homer et al., 2008, Kuhlthau et al., 2011, Iversen et al., 2003, Duby, 2007, Moeller et al., 2013), foster home services (Barton, 1999, Bribitzer and Verdieck, 1988), prenatal care(Jimenez et al., 2010, Sudia-Robinson, 2011, Tumblin, 2013), and others (e.g. emergency medicine, nursing homes) (Logue, 2003). In general, FCC involves a care provider or team of providers who work in partnership with the family and in coordination with all services (e.g. medical and non-medical services) needed to help children and their families achieve their health goals (Cooley, 2004, Decker, 1992, Medical Home Initiatives Project Advisory Committee, 2002, American Academy of Pediatrics, 2004). Services under a FCC framework are expected to facilitate the care experience in a way that will result in better family and provider outcomes (Kuhlthau et al., 2011, Homer et al., 2008). Figure 1. Family Center Care

Key Principles

■ Unbiased and complete information sharing ■ Respect and honoring of sociocultural differences ■ Partnership and collaboration in healthcare decision-making ■ Negotiation of caregiving challenges ■ Provision of culturally competent services.

Examples of FCC Practices

■ Gathering comprehensive information about children’s status, with assessment of family concerns and strengths ■ Setting goals that are meaningful to the family and from the family perspective ■ Case coordination and continuity of care for intervention services in the context of family and community ■ Measuring both family outcomes and child outcomes ■ Shared decision-making and collaboration in the care plan of family member and providers (e.g. individualized family service plan)

■ Adoption of cultural and linguistic competence staff and organizational strategies for family services, and transition plans

Although regarded as an ideal programmatic framework for quality services for children and families, inclusion of specific strategies for improving the quality of family interactions remain largely unincorporated within FCC services. FCC provides an expanded view of the “what” type of activities or services that must occur when working with children and families (Figure 1). However, “how” programme activities are to be incorporated into family routines remains unclear in the FCC model (i.e. the interactional or mediational aspects). Two critical aspects of FCC services that pertain to the learning processes within the family context are yet to be addressed: parental cognitive mediation and social-emotional support of carers to their children.

■■■ Cognitive mediation

Cognitive mediation is when a stimulus (e.g. event, service encounter, new information or requested course of action) is presented to the person (in this case a carer) and the person processes it mentally (cognitive appraisal). As a result of this process, the person may display an emotional response that is either negative or positive or a particular interpretation that leads to a positive or negative attitude toward the stimulus. In other words, parental cognitive mediation is the process that results in the carers’ interpretation of the stimulus

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(e.g. service received) and the likelihood of a particular course of action. For example, carers may identify a particular service as highly relevant or irrelevant to their own lives, compatible or incompatible with their own believe system, or acceptable or attainable with their own resources. Adequate cognitive mediation during non-routine problem-solving situations that arise from service provision is an essential process that must occur for programme effectiveness.

■■■ Social and emotional support

Most healthcare or social services provided to families demand that families be able to cope with change. In order to effectively cope with change, families need a variety of social-emotional support that should occur during the adoption of new behaviors or adherence to new treatments or services. For example, some carers may experience fear and insecurity because they don’t completely understand the child’s condition or don’t know what to expect. This is particularly salient when families are coping with newly diagnosed conditions (e.g. autism) that results in a variety of emotions (e.g. grief, anger, despair, sadness, etc.). In this context, carers need interpersonal relationships and connections to be able to express their views, feelings, and beliefs. Also, carers need to develop positive ways to interact with other family members to identify effective ways to cope with change. Positive family interactions are socially reinforced from relationships and social activities. Having family members who are partners in the healthcare decision-making process does not guarantee that family members will develop their own effective ways to cope with change. Hence, the importance of specifically addressing the quality of family interactions within FCC.

■■■ Incorporating Feuerstein’s strategies

In order to incorporate strategies to enhance the quality of family interactions into FCC practices, we consider that Reuven Feuerstein’s theories could be applied to enhance their FCC services.

Among the most important legacies to the world by the cognitive education giant, Reuven Feuerstein, are his theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability (SCM),

and the applied systems of Mediated Learning Experiences (MLE). SCM has three components: (1) modifiability, or having the ability to change or adapt, to alter, or to regulate, (2) cognitive, which relates to the ability to think, reason, and learn; and (3) structural, which involves organization and integration of the components that make up our thinking. Based on Feuerstein’s SCM, an individual’s ability to learn could be effectively changed by influencing the underlying mental processes or cognitive schemas (i.e. thinking skills) through quality human-to-human interaction. This phenomenon is possible at all ages and stages of development (Feuerstein et al., 1991). Mediated learning experiences (MLE) imply that the mediator (i.e. teacher, parent, carer, or educator) filters the input or effect of the stimuli on the learner, as well as the output or response in a particular learning situation (Feuerstein et al., 1991). The learner interacts with the mediator in a transactional manner and the quality of such interaction influence the learner’s needs system for further learning. These two theories address cognitive mediation and social-emotional support of carers to their children respectively.

■■■ What is a Mediational Approach?

A mediational approach in the context of FCC incorporates both parental cognitive mediation and the social-emotional support of parents to their children into the FCC service activities. For Feuerstein, intelligence is defined as a propensity or tendency to adapt to new situations, which is modifiable and subject to change through human mediation (Feuerstein et al., 1991). Translated to the context of the family as an aggregated dynamic system of individuals, we can refer to family shared cognition and the tendency of family members to adapt to new situations.

A key aspect that shapes mental processes is the quality of human-to-human interactions, which Reuven Feuerstein referred to as Mediated Learning Experiences (MLE). MLE in the context of the family implies that the carer (i.e. competent mediator) mediates the stimuli to the child and then his or her response to it. In this approach, for an interaction to be considered mediational, three essential criteria must be met (targets of mediational interventions): (a)

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intentionality and reciprocity, which refers to a mediator attempting to capture the learner’s perception and the learner’s responsiveness; (b) mediation of meaning, which refers to a mediator sharing with a learner his or her appreciation of significance of the world either verbally or non-verbally; and (c) transcendence, which refers to a mediator that attempts to broaden the learner’s cognitive awareness beyond the immediate setting to make connections to past, present, or future experiences (Feuerstein et al., 1991, Tzuriel, 2012). In addition to these essential features, a mediational approach based on Feuerstein’s MLE would also seek to improve parental mediation of (Feuerstein et al., 1991): 1) feelings of competence; 2) regulation and control of behavior; 3) sharing behavior; 4) individuation and psychological differentiation; 5) goal seeking, goal setting goal achieving, and goal monitoring behavior; 6) challenge—the search for novelty and complexity; 7) awareness of the human being as a changing entity; 8) search for optimistic alternatives; and 9) feeling of belonging.

Mediated learning studies have reported positive

effects on family development (Klein and Wieder, 1995, Tzuriel, 1999, Tzuriel and Shamir, 2007, Portowitz and Klein, 2007, Klein, 1991, Kahn et al., 2009, Isman and Tzuriel, 2008, Chiswanda, 1997), which have direct relevance for FCC services. Applications of SCM and MLE have been widely demonstrated in cross-cultural studies in more than 80 countries (Feuerstein, 2006, Klein and Hundeide, 1996, Coulter et al., 1996, Tzuriel, 2012, Kozulin et al., 2010, Skuy, 1997). In general, applications include assessment of the parental mediational profile, assessment of the child’s needs system and developmental potential, as well as specific culturally meaningful strategies designed and implemented by the parents to improve parent-child interactions.

■■■ Training in MLE for FCC services

We argue that Feuerstein’s theories can be applied to the learning process within the family that receives FCC services. Specifically, we recommend that practitioners of FCC receive further training in MLE and to identify ways to incorporate a mediational approach to FCC with

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the goal of enhancing parental cognitive mediation (e.g. carer’s teaching how to learn to the child) and improving the quality of family interactions (e.g. emotional and social support in key family activities). Based on this review, three programmatic implications of SCM and MLE for FCC are as follows: (a) improvement of parent-child interactions, (b) effective transmission of family values, and (c) adaptation and family adjustment.

Parent-child relationship as a new family centered

outcome.

Under the current FCC model, the healthcare provider (for example) acts to support the family’s chosen role in decision-making regarding child health care services. For this process to be optimal, it requires that parents or carers possess adequate decision-making, carer agreement, and the absence of family conflict. For families under significant stress, or socio-economic disadvantage, this is not always the case. Chronic stress (e.g. prior experiences of discrimination) and multiple worries are likely to cause a narrow view of choices and opportunities, which creates a constrained capacity for health decision-making. This is likely due to having low cognitive modifiability. Low cognitive

modifiability (in the child or carers) could be either caused by genetic/organic factors or psychosocial factors. Feuerstein’s revolutionary mediational interventions in a variety of contexts repeatedly demonstrate that humans can overcome the many negative conditions that result from poverty, socio-emotional disturbances, and organic disorders. Indeed, Feuerstein proposed and demonstrated that an individual’s ability to learn is not fixed, but rather modifiable, despite biological or sociocultural barriers that may hinder the learning potential. Extrapolated to the family as a group of individuals with interlinked lives, it means that socially shared cognition can be enhanced and that parental cognitive mediation can be modified through mediational interventions.

The target of mediational interventions in the family context will be to increase cognitive modifiability by affecting the learning needs of the individual family members and enhancing shared cognitive processes, so that new thinking patterns (i.e. cognitive structures) are developed within the family. Improving human-to-human interactions (e.g. parent-child interactions, family-patient interactions, teacher-student interactions, etc.) is likely to result in optimal family health and

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Instead of imposing any particular cultural view, effective MLE require parents to use their own culture to transmit meaning and transcendence in the learning process. Providers adopting a FCC framework (e.g. teachers, pediatricians, social workers, early interventionists, etc.) can serve as mediators of family learning at least in two ways: (a) aiding in the development of mediational skills for the parents (i.e. carers as active learners, who wish to become better teachers to their children), and (b) providing practical strategies for improving parent-child interactions by encouraging parents to apply their own cultural values within family routines. This view should be contrasted with a traditional model in which the role of the provider is mainly that of a conveyor of ethnocentric information where the family passively takes in the advice and later on is supposed to implement that exact information in their family routines without regard to the family cultural context. Because of the ineffectiveness of this approach, we urge administrators of FCC and providers to enhance their staff skills by adopting a mediational approach to FCC.

■■■ Helping Families Cope with Change by

Improving the Emotional Support of Carers

to their Children

Reducing parental stress

Under current FCC practices, providers attempt to take into account how interventions (e.g. diagnostic and treatment approaches, educational curricula) will affect the family life. However, there are families (particularly social and economically disadvantaged ones) who experience heightened family stress in a chronic manner. For example, families may be dealing with income poverty, literacy issues, linguistic barriers to care, racial/ethnic discrimination, divorce and other marital relationship issues, domestic violence, parental or sibling illnesses, and many other community-level factors. Just complying or adjusting to new interventions (e.g. medical treatment, speech therapy, or added homework demands) in a way that doesn’t cause distress is an unrealistic expectation for such families. On the other hand, by improving parental mediation within a mediational intervention, parents and other family members can learn how to become more sensitive

child development outcomes. However, improving parent-child interaction is not a typical target of FCC services yet. Under a mediational approach, parent-child interactions could be a cross-cutting goal and services could include additional support for families to improve parent-child interactions and maximize the effectiveness of FCC programmes.

Transmission of family cultural values that support

learning as part of cultural competent services.

FCC explicitly incorporates organizational and provider cultural competence as an important strategy to meet service goals that are culturally relevant to the families. Specifically, providers inquire about family cultural values, beliefs, or practices that might relate to the child health care or education. The problem, however, is the assumption that the family is always effectively transmitting their own culture to the child. Although cultural transmission is dynamic and permeates all aspects of human interactions and is not limited to health care, nevertheless, certain families experience significant barriers to the transmission of their own cultural values to their children in an ever increasingly globalized world, indiscriminate media influence, as well as linguistic and cultural barriers (e.g. immigrant families).

On the other hand, a mediational approach to FCC can help families overcome these barriers. FCC can provide added support to carers to enhance their own mediation skills to transmit their cultural values to their children. Through enhanced FCC programmes that include mediated learning training components, parents/carers can learn to develop their children’s need to go beyond the present experience and apply their own cultural knowledge to diverse settings. Providers trained in the MLE framework can coach families in becoming better mediators for their children and adolescents, while promoting culturally sensitive care and recognition of cultural diversity.

In order to influence all aspects of child health, not just health care outcomes, providers need to learn about families’ cultural beliefs and practices regarding caregiving. One initial aspect of MLE interventions is to determine the mediational profile of parents, which inherently implies learning about parents’ style for caregiving.

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and responsive to the child’s socio-emotional and cognitive needs, while also learning ways to improve family communication and reduce the impact of stress. Improvement of the quality of the mediated learning experiences at home, which will improve cross-cutting communication and coping skills, will result in the reduction of parenting stress, improvement of parenting skills, and reduction of children’s challenging behaviors (Tzuriel, 1999). These aspects will enhance the family learning process that must occur during FCC services.

Sensitizing parents

Every educational, medical, or social programme for children and families assumes that some form of learning will occur as a result of services, which is also a pre-requisite for the adoption of behavioral modifications in the family context. On the other hand, the provider-client encounter does not necessarily attempt to modify the quality and effectiveness of the learning processes within the family structure, unless there is a specific and intentional provider attempt to enhance the quality of mediation (e.g. early intervention focused on parent-child interactions). Yet, implementing effective means that improve the family learning process could result not only in improved direct service outcomes, but also in the development of socially shared cognition within the family cultural milieu and behavior changes that will be maintained over time beyond service provision.

FCC services operate under the assumption that because of heightened provider sensitivity to the family perspective, carers’ learning will occur in one way or another through the service encounter. This is not necessarily the case. A discouraging reality is that despite implementation of culturally competent services, some families demonstrate very little changeability of their behavioral patterns (and thinking patterns), whereas others learn and adapt quickly to diverse problems and contexts. Individuals who are able to modify their thinking patterns or cognitive schemas in a flexible manner are more likely to problem-solve situations in seemingly unrelated contexts and therefore tend to adapt to new challenges more effectively, whereas others with rigid mental structures are precluded from acquiring the necessary new knowledge and skills.

By using a mediational approach, providers of FCC could help sensitize parents to better understand their child’s needs, understand the impact of their own parenting behaviors, and learn how to take an active role in mediated learning experiences (Klein and Wieder, 1995). This will likely translate to improved family interactions, transmission of cultural values, and successful family adjustment to adverse situation and improved family resiliency. In contrast, if family-centered care programmes continue to limit themselves to only presenting information to families with little effect on the cognitive schemas shared by the family, then, sustainable effectiveness may not be achieved. Once out of the programme or services, the same maladaptive patterns persist or recur. Family members with important direct and indirect caregiving roles in the care of the child may already have maladaptive cognitive schemas (e.g. toward violence or depression) or rigid cognitive schemas that do not fit the problems faced (e.g. incompatible set of beliefs about the world). Their own adaptability to the new challenge be low and may result in psychopathology (e.g. having a child with a disability is a risk factor for parental depression) and poor learning and developmental outcomes for the child.

■■■ Room for improvement

In this article, we have examined how service providers of family-centered care programmes have the opportunity to play an important role in fostering the development of effective mediation among carers or family members by sensitizing carers in aspects of mediated learning. FCC represents a tremendous improvement from traditional health care and pediatric practice, but there is ample room for improvement. FCC, if boosted with SCM and MLE principles, could be an optimal platform to enhance the developmental trajectory of the family. However, little attention has been devoted to the importance of parent-child interactions and the role of mediated learning experiences in family learning processes that occur in FCC programmes. In summary, if a mediational approach is integrated into family services, FCC could positively influence the cognitive modifiability of families’ shared cognitive schemas. We recommend that practitioners of FCC programmes explore the potentially new application

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ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS 2004. Policy statement: organizational principles to guide and define the child health care system and/or improve

the health of all children. Pediatrics, 113, 1545-7. ■ AMERICAN ACADEMY OF PEDIATRICS 2012. Patient- and family-centered care and the

pediatrician’s role. Pediatrics, 129, 394-404. ■ BARTON, S. J. 1999. Promoting family-centered care with foster families. Pediatr Nurs, 25, 57-9.

■ BRIBITZER, M. P. & VERDIECK, M. J. 1988. Home-based, family-centered intervention: evaluation of a foster care prevention program. Child

Welfare, 67, 255-66. ■ CHISWANDA, M. V. 1997. Hearing mothers and their deaf children in Zimbabwe : mediated learning experiences. ■

COOLEY, W. C. 2004. Redefining primary pediatric care for children with special health care needs: the primary care medical home. Curr Opin

Pediatr, 16, 689-92. ■ COULTER, M. L., KLEIN, P. S. & GARLAND PUBLISHING, I. 1996. Raising caring and competent children in the United States:

Florida [Online]. ■ DECKER, B. 1992. A comparison of the individualized education plan and the individualized family service plan. Am J

Occup Ther, 46, 247-52. ■ DUBY, J. C. 2007. Role of the medical home in family-centered early intervention services. Pediatrics, 120, 1153-8.

■ FEUERSTEIN, R. 2006. Creating and enhancing cognitive modifiability : the Feuerstein instrumental enrichment program, Jerusalem, ICELP

Publications. ■ FEUERSTEIN, R., KLEIN, P. S., TANNENBAUM, A. J. & INTERNATIONAL CENTER FOR ENHANCEMENT OF LEARNING POTENTIAL

1991. Mediated learning experience (MLE) : theoretical, psychosocial and learning implications, London, Freund Pub. House. ■ FINGERHUT,

P. E., PIRO, J., SUTTON, A., CAMPBELL, R., LEWIS, C., LAWJI, D. & MARTINEZ, N. 2013. Family-centered principles implemented in home-based,

clinic-based, and school-based pediatric settings. Am J Occup Ther, 67, 228-35. ■ HARRISON, T. M. 2010. Family-centered pediatric nursing

care: state of the science. J Pediatr Nurs, 25, 335-43. ■ HOMER, C. J., KLATKA, K., ROMM, D., KUHLTHAU, K., BLOOM, S., NEWACHECK, P., VAN

CLEAVE, J. & PERRIN, J. M. 2008. A review of the evidence for the medical home for children with special health care needs. Pediatrics, 122,

e922-37. ■ ISMAN, E. B. & TZURIEL, D. 2008. The mediated learning experience (MLE) in a three generational perspective. British Journal of

Developmental Psychology, 26, 545-560. ■ IVERSEN, M. D., SHIMMEL, J. P., CIACERA, S. L. & PRABHAKAR, M. 2003. Creating a family-centered

approach to early intervention services: perceptions of parents and professionals. Pediatr Phys Ther, 15, 23-31. ■ JIMENEZ, V., KLEIN, M. C.,

HIVON, M. & MASON, C. 2010. A mirage of change: family-centered maternity care in practice. Birth, 37, 160-7. ■ KAHN, R., STEMLER, S. &

BERCHIN-WEISS, J. 2009. Enhancing Parent Participation in Early Intervention Through Tools That Support Mediated Learning. j cognit educat

psychol Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology, 8, 269-287. ■ KLEIN, P. S. 1991. Improving the quality of parental interaction with very

low birth weight children: A longitudinal study using a Mediated Learning Experience model. Infant Mental Health Journal, 12, 321-337. ■

KLEIN, P. S. & HUNDEIDE, K. 1996. Early intervention : cross-cultural experiences with a mediational approach, New York, Garland Pub. ■ KLEIN,

P. S. & WIEDER, S. 1995. Mediated learning, developmental level and individual differences: Guides for observation and intervention. Zero to

Three, 15, 16-20. ■ KOZULIN, A., LEBEER, J., MADELLA-NOJA, A., GONZALEZ, F., JEFFREY, I., ROSENTHAL, N. & KOSLOWSKY, M. 2010. Cognitive

modifiability of children with developmental disabilities: a multicentre study using Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment--Basic program.

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PERRIN, J. M. 2011. Evidence for family-centered care for children with special health care needs: a systematic review. Acad Pediatr, 11, 136-

43. ■ KUO, D. Z., HOUTROW, A. J., ARANGO, P., KUHLTHAU, K. A., SIMMONS, J. M. & NEFF, J. M. 2012. Family-centered care: current applications

and future directions in pediatric health care. Matern Child Health J, 16, 297-305. ■ LOGUE, R. M. 2003. Maintaining family connectedness

in long-term care. An advanced practice approach to family-centered nursing homes. J Gerontol Nurs, 29, 24-31. ■ MATERNAL AND CHILD

HEALTH BUREAU 2004. Guidance and Performance Measures for Discretionary Grants. Bethesda, MD, USA: Health Resources and Services

Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. ■ MEDICAL HOME INITIATIVES PROJECT ADVISORY COMMITTEE 2002. The

medical home. Pediatrics, 110, 184-6. ■ MOELLER, M. P., CARR, G., SEAVER, L., STREDLER-BROWN, A. & HOLZINGER, D. 2013. Best practices in

family-centered early intervention for children who are deaf or hard of hearing: an international consensus statement. J Deaf Stud Deaf

Educ, 18, 429-45. ■ PORTOWITZ, A. & KLEIN, P. S. 2007. MISC-MUSIC: a music program to enhance cognitive processing among children with

learning difficulties. International Journal of Music Education, 25, 259-271. ■ SCHOR, E. L. 2003. Family pediatrics: report of the Task Force on

the Family. Pediatrics, 111, 1541-71. ■ SKUY, M. 1997. Cross cultural and Interdimensional Implications of Feuerstein’s Construct of Mediated

Learning Experience. School Psychology International, 18, 119-135 ■ SUDIA-ROBINSON, T. 2011. Neonatal ethical issues: viability, advance

directives, family centered care. MCN Am J Matern Child Nurs, 36, 180-5; quiz 186-7. ■ TUMBLIN, A. 2013. A family-centered cesarean birth

story. J Perinat Educ, 22, 130-2. ■ TZURIEL, D. 1999. Parent-child mediated learning interactions as determinants of cognitive modifiability:

recent research and future directions. Genet Soc Gen Psychol Monogr, 125, 109-56. ■ TZURIEL, D. 2012. Mediated Learning Experience (MLE)

and Cognitive Modifiability. In: SEEL, N. (ed.) Encyclopedia of the Sciences of Learning. Springer US. ■ TZURIEL, D. & SHAMIR, A. 2007. The

effects of Peer Mediation with Young Children (PMYC) on children’s cognitive modifiability. Br J Educ Psychol, 77, 143-65.

of Feuerstein’s theories for the improvement of family-centered outcomes.

Abraham Salinas-Miranda, Shawna Green and Martha

Coulter work with the USF Center of Excellence in

Maternal and Child Health, Dept. of Community and

Family Health, College of Public Health, University of

South Florida, Tampa, FL and The Harrell Center for the

Study of Family Violence.

Corresponding author: Martha L. Coulter, Dr.PH,

Department of Community and Family Health, College

of Public Health, University of South Florida / 13201

Bruce B. Downs Blvd. MDC 56, Tampa, FL 33612-

3807. Phone: (813)974-7829 / Fax: (813) 974-7830.

Email: [email protected]


Learning to Look and Looking to Learn ■■■■■

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Learning to Look and Looking to LearnCynthia Pelman describes a cognitive

education programme for young children

in deprived township communities in

South Africa, drawing on Feuerstein’s ideas

for cognitive development.

The contribution of Feuerstein to our understanding of children’s thinking and in particular their cognitive development has been profound. In this article I give a

picture of how this has been applied in practice with preschool children in a township characterised by severe levels of ongoing educational disadvantage, economic deprivation and violence.

■■■ The South African cultural context

The importance of early intervention was emphasized by Feuerstein in many of his writings. He stated that human beings need to have more than a direct encounter with the world around them in order to develop cognitive functions. For very young children, a mediated exposure is crucial if the child is to bridge from sensation to perception, and from perception to thinking.

We take for granted that most children will be provided with mediated exposure from their very birth. Most parents, if they are not living in conditions of severe deprivation and disadvantage, naturally interact with their babies and toddlers in such a way as to mediate these basic cognitive functions. However, for children growing up in conditions of socio-economic deprivation and ongoing violence, such mediated exposure on the part of parents is often not available. Parents are under severe stress both socially and economically, and many parents are themselves products of the Apartheid education philosophy in which intentionally and rigorously acted to prevent Black people from gaining even the most basic education.

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Following the end of the Apartheid era, the new politics of South Africa since the 1990s have been attempting to redress the historic disadvantage and discrimination enforced against the Black population in the country. The new policy’s ideals for the development

of children’s thinking skills and potential intelligence have much in common with the fundamental goals of Feuerstein’s approach, and a number of research projects have been conducted using Feuerstein’s practical methods in schools.

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The following gives a step by step description of how insights gained from Feuerstein’s methods for cognitive development led me to devise an education approach focussed on enabling these children to begin their learning journey in readiness for school by acquiring the most basic of learning skills such as focussed attention, turn-taking, labelling, and relationships of cause and effect. The aim of the programme was to help preschool children learn how to perceive, to notice what was going on around them, and to gather and use information in an efficient way. Skills which are normally taken for granted in young children, such as looking, noticing and asking, were shockingly absent in these children when I first met them. For this reason I named this programme Learning to Look and Looking to Learn.

■■■ Making sense of information

Information processing depends on gathering relevant information, and organising it: that is, linking similar data together to make sense of the task in hand, finding patterns in the information to enable matching and comparing new information with old information, and using this to make decisions or solve problems. Clear perception involves knowing where information is to be found and how to gather it. Attention needs to be sustained for long enough to gather salient information, to be focused in order to select relevant information in a planned and efficient manner to gather additional relevant facts; and to distinguish between the main points and irrelevant details.

Having the ability to apply clear and focused perception is one of the basic cognitive functions and prerequisites of learning. Feuerstein describes children who have only an “episodic grasp of reality”, and “blurred and sweeping perception”, and how this cognitive weakness prevents them from performing the data-gathering activities necessary for learning (Feuerstein, 2004.)

■■■ Meeting children’s needs

Who are these children who have this kind of difficulty? Children deemed to have Attention Deficit Disorder, by definition, lack the kind of attention skills needed in order to gather information efficiently, but we also

see this kind of difficulty in many children with autistic spectrum disorder, children growing up in communities of extreme poverty and deprivation, children suffering abuse and neglect, as well as children with visual impairment, hearing loss or auditory perception difficulties, and children with developmental or language delay.

The settings in which I worked were communities suffering from the long-lasting effects of apartheid education policies, extreme poverty and deprivation of every kind, and ongoing violence related to social breakdown, unemployment, substance abuse and crime (Dawes and Donald 1994, Wilson and Ramphele 1989.) These children could see but did not know how to look. Their drawings, even at age 4 and 5, were simply marks on a page. When they took a coloured pencil to draw, they didn’t look at the container with the pencils but simply stretched out their hands and took whatever came to hand. Sometimes nothing came to hand because there were not enough crayons, so they just sat; and when they did draw, they seldom looked at their page while doing so. They were having a lovely time, safe in their preschool, warm, well-fed because of the breakfast donated by the local branch of the Salvation Army, and happy to chat to each other. But they gave no attention to the task at hand, the drawing. It seemed as if they were not even aware that the task required them to look at something. So their drawings were more like what you would expect from a 2 or 3 year old than a 4 or 5 year old. And these children were expected, in a few months’ time, to start learning to read.

■■■ From sensation to perception, and

from perception to thinking

Another important effect of the way in which these children were not looking was demonstrated when I asked them to look at a picture book. If I asked ‘what can you see?’ they would notice perhaps only one or two salient features. If I asked ‘what is this?’ and pointed to something specific, they could name a few items. But without these direct questions, they could not describe the actions in the picture, and they could not make a story of what they were seeing. It seemed as if two-dimensional information made no sense to them.

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THE DRAWING PROGRAMME: Before and after

April 2008 July 2008

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They were not really seeing at all. I found this discovery profoundly shocking, because while I knew from my own experience that children sometimes need help to learn to read and to do maths, I hadn’t known that children sometimes need help to learn how to look. I had always assumed that looking was something that developed biologically, like sitting up, standing and walking. We do not teach children to walk; they just get to a stage when they can do it. But looking carefully, overcoming blurred and sweeping perception, and seeing reality as a series of connected experiences, needs to be actively mediated.

With Feuerstein’s principles of cognitive education in mind, I set up a very basic programme for these children. I was aware of the risks of creating a ‘recipe’ for teachers, because you cannot mediate by recipe, and children don’t learn cognitive functions by recipe. But it was clear that something was urgently needed here. The programme needed to be free of jargon, something which didn’t require these teachers to spend precious time on long and expensive training courses, and it needed to be built around materials which were already available, because there was absolutely no money to buy anything, let alone the wonderful Instruments which are part of Feuerstein’s programmes. I want to make it clear that these ideas were not designed as a full or comprehensive programme as such, but simply as a way in: a way to show teachers who had not heard of cognitive education what their children could achieve with sufficient and targeted mediation and with a focus on developing a few essential cognitive skills.

We started with a few basic ideas around what we use our ‘looking’ for, the purpose of looking. For example, “LOOK AT.” Look at this, look at what that person is doing, look at the sun setting behind the mountain. This most basic of mediations, which parents do with their very little babies the minute they open their eyes, is ‘joint attention’: two people sharing a moment to both look at the same thing, and to think together about that thing. Sadly, some of the children living in extreme poverty did not experience this, perhaps due to their parents having to leave before dawn to travel long distances to find work, or perhaps due to their parents being emotionally absent. Another crucial factor was

a result of poor medical services, with many children suffering from long-standing and untreated visual or hearing difficulties.

■■■ Developing vocabulary

This kind of focused looking also involved developing vocabulary: giving names to, and describing, the things we see. The mediating adult uses words not only to direct the child’s gaze towards stimuli but also to transform the stimulus, to make the stimulus more salient and meaningful in terms of their function or other attributes. Vygotsky refers to basic vocabulary as ‘spontaneous concepts’ (Vygotsky 1986): words which describe, or name, the here-and-now, the child’s daily, immediate experience. Cummins refers to this kind of language as ‘basic interpersonal communicative skills’ (Cummins 1981).

Vocabulary and cognitive development are inseparably linked; there is a reciprocal relationship between them (Kozulin 1998). The child’s experience of an adult pointing things out and naming them enables the child to move from a world of immediate, undifferentiated sensory experience, to a world in which sensory experience can be named, described, and thought about. The children in these townships were shockingly lacking in the most basic words for concepts of colour, size, shape, feelings, number and quantity and orientation in space.

With cognitive development, the child moves from basic words to what Vygotsky terms ‘scientific concepts’. Cummins refers to this as “cognitive academic language proficiency”. This is the kind of vocabulary which is needed to communicate abstract ideas. The word ‘friendship’ for example, includes many aspects, all contained in the one concept. The knowledge and use of concepts is critical if the child is to transcend the perception of the present context and go beyond the information given (Bruner 1974). Concepts enable one to think about the past, and to plan for the future; to think about how satisfied one is with the present situation and how to go about changing it. In other words, without ‘scientific concepts’ it is not possible to de-contextualise, to rise above the present moment and the present situation. In the context of South African

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poverty and social breakdown, it seems that nothing could be more important.

■■■ On the look out

After ‘look at’, the next task was “LOOK FOR.” We did exercises such as ‘look for what’s hidden’; looking under, above, or behind something. At that early stage the tasks were very concrete: the children followed the pointing finger and the eye was led to a place where they would find the object. The level of abstraction was then raised. One way to do this was to ask the children to look for a named thing which was not immediately in the vicinity, and not easily found; this required a sustained search. Another way was to describe the item to be found but not name it explicitly: ‘Look for the animal which has a long neck and has spots on his coat’ or ‘look for something that is not round.’

Stepping up the level of complexity, we would ask the children to look for two things, or to look for something described by a string of adjectives: ‘look for a big red ball and a small blue car.’ In this way we added to the number of information-carrying words the children needed to recall. At a higher level of abstraction for older children, understanding inference is also a form

Looking and comparing: collecting leaves and making leaf rubbings. comparing shape, size, colour, texture, outline

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of ‘looking’: looking between the lines, looking for relevant information that is not directly given. One can see therefore how a good early experience of looking is critical in building the essential skills for school readiness and preparing the small child for reading comprehension.

■■■ Near and far visual transfer

Another form of looking was LOOK AND MATCH. At this very early level I would cut out two small squares of coloured paper, and stick one piece next to another, on a small rectangle of card (the back of cereal boxes, which we asked parents to bring to us instead of throwing away, provided a free source of cardboard.) The children were asked to copy my collage. We worked on matching sequences of colours, and then sequences of shapes.

We carried out ‘look and match’ activities involving both near transfer, copying something which is right in front of you, and far transfer, referring to the model stuck on the wall, where the children had to look at the

model, then look away and down at the table to copy it, sustaining the visual memory of what was seen. This kind of visual transfer developed remarkably quickly once the children had been sufficiently mediated and understood the purpose of the task. All this was preparation for developing two crucial cognitive functions identified in Feuerstein’s theory: Comparison and Categorisation.

■■■ Comparison and categorisation

LOOK AND COMPARE: The ability to compare two items, or two situations, or two ideas, involves being able to examine each one in detail, sustain attention to it, analyse all its relevant parameters, and ignore the irrelevant ones. Words such as ‘identical’, ‘similar’ and ‘different’ need to be carefully mediated.

Comparison requires holding in mind several pieces of information at once: another of the important cognitive functions identified in Feuerstein’s theory. Through careful mediation, the children started to apply comparison spontaneously, to objects and items

Looking at a process: the sequence of actions, the plan of a room, the reasons for choosing this plan, the movement of people through the process.

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.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................outside the classroom. For example, we would take a walk and collect sea shells and compare them; we would compare leaves and stones, and the way the light changed during the day, from the blinding light of noon to the softer and pinker light of twilight. This led to many discussions about change, and we were able to bridge to the children’s own rather disrupted lives and how things might change for the better.

We used ‘look and compare’ to consider things important in a child’s daily life: if you have only a few pence to buy a snack, which one will you buy? The biggest one or the healthy one? If your parents have to buy you new shoes, which ones should they choose: the pretty canvas ones which won’t last very long, or tough leather ones which cost the same but will protect your feet from broken glass? These children could be led into some serious discussions about important ideas, once they had grasped how comparison works.

Categorisation (LOOK WHERE IT BELONGS) followed naturally after comparison: things which are similar can go in a single group and we can name that group. It was a very exciting day when a teacher and I overheard a small group of boys, who were normally to be found running wildly around the playground trying to catch each other, sitting with a box of miniature animals and grouping them into those that can fly, those that can walk, and those that can swim. The children started to solve problems: The elephant can both walk and swim; penguins (which we had visited on our school trip a few weeks earlier) are birds that cannot fly, so a new category had to be created. This was made understandable for the children by drawing Venn diagrams on the floor and placing the toy animals in their positions.

■■■ Finding the anomaly

LOOK FOR WHAT’S MISSING and LOOK FOR WHAT’S WRONG involved knowing what things usually look like (which in itself requires careful observation) and finding the anomaly or making aninference, as well as being a way to include humour and fun in the day’s teaching. Look for what is wrong also led us comfortably into discussions using hypothetical thinking: if a car really had square wheels, would it be able to move? If we left our school gate open and the goats came in, would they make a mess in our playground? Problem-solving discussions became more frequent once the children could look at a situation carefully, gather the data efficiently, apply hypothetical thinking logically, and think about the consequences.

■■■ Sequencing

LOOK WHAT COMES NEXT helped us to develop sequencing skills and to develop an awareness of the order in time in which things happen. It enabled discussion about sequences of actions and their consequences. Showing the children the day’s timetable helped them learn how to allocate time, and become more active planners in their day, instead of being passively led from one activity to the next.

Working on order and sequencing also led the children to learn how to sequence a story. We created stories using pictures drawn on cards; the children had to rearrange them in the correct order and re-tell the story. This activity led to children starting to create their own narratives, using either pre-drawn pictures, or their own pictures, and the older children created stories with pictures and script. We spent a lot of time playing hopscotch, which like many of

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the other activities did not require a budget for purchase of materials. This involved working on how to look carefully before throwing or jumping, looking at whose turn was next, looking to make sure nobody’s feet touched a line, looking which number came next in the sequence, and sustaining their looking even when it was someone else’s turn. The cognitive functions which could be mediated through hopscotch were many: reducing impulsivity, orientation in space, following rules, using symbolic tools (numbering), planning, hypothetical thinking and many others.

The older children were given tasks such as drawing and then studying the plan of their school library and noting the direction of traffic flow to and from the different areas, and deciding whether the route for choosing and returning books was efficient or not. Gradually, the children became noticeably more aware of their surroundings, more thoughtful and reflective, and more able to make sensible choices. For the older children, a highlight was the creation of a garden, carried out after weeks of careful planning, which involved a great deal of debate and hypothetical thinking. For the younger children, we held an art exhibition in the local supermarket, displaying ‘before and after’ pairs of drawings: we showed drawings done 3 months prior to the implementation of this programme (a few scratchings in a corner of a page, in perhaps one colour only) displayed adjacent to more recent drawings, which were colourful and representative.

■■■ Actively teaching to look

I have to say that we came in for a fair amount of criticism from other teachers at the time, and we were accused of destroying the creativity of the children by intervening too much, especially when we showed them how to look at and then to draw what they could see. It was only when I went back to Feuerstein’s theories, re-reading his work, that I felt justified in persevering with the basic

premise of the programme. What we were doing in the art programme was not imposing a right or a wrong way on the children, and not suggesting that only figurative drawing is the ‘right way’. Indeed, if they had been doing abstract drawing out of choice, consciously choosing materials, choosing colours, and looking at what was emerging on the page, I would have been happy. The problem which needed to be addressed was that they were not looking at what they were drawing

■■■ Summing up

In looking back on the programme and its effects on both these children and their teachers, I am convinced of the need to actively intervene in the lives of very young children, in order to ensure that they experience what, in a different setting with a different history, their parents would have been able to provide: a mediating guide to interpret the world around them and to help them move from sensation to perception and thence to cognition. Without this early active intervention, these children are unlikely to go on to become active and successful learners.

Whatever the reason, whether the cause is genetic, medical, developmental or due to the circumstances in which they live, children who have not acquired the basic cognitive skills of looking, noticing and naming the world around them should not be deprived of the right to look and see.

The programme is described more fully in my book Voices from the Sand (Pelman 2014) which provides a fictional account of events in a township but is based on the ‘Learning to Look and Looking to Learn’ programme which we ran at that time.

References: Bruner, J. 1974. Beyond the Information Given: Studies in the Psychology of Knowing. UK, Allen & Unwin. ■ Dawes, A. and Donald,

D. Childhood and Adversity: Psychological Perspectives from South African Research. 1994. David Philip, South Africa. ■ Feuerstein, R. Rand, Y.,

Hoffman, M.B., & Miller, R. (1980; 2004). Instrumental enrichment: An intervention program for cognitive modifiability. Baltimore, MD. University

Park Press. ■ Kozulin, A. 1998. Psychological Tools: A Sociocultural Approach to Education. Harvard University Press. ■ Pelman, C. 2013. Joshy

Finds his Voice. Grosvenor House Publishing, UK ■ Pelman, C. 2014. Voices from the Sand. Grosvenor House Publishing, UK ■ Skuy, M. 2001.

Instrumental Enrichment as a vehicle for teachers in implementing outcomes based education in South Africa. International Journal of Special

Education 2001, Vol 16, No.2 ■ Wilson, F. and Ramphele, M. 1989. Uprooting Poverty: the South African Challenge. David Philip, South Africa.

Cynthia Pelman is a Speech Therapist in London.

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No natural limits! -Enhancing language development in children with Down SyndromeSari Alony and Alex Kozulin explain that the potential of children with Down’s Syndrome is being

severely underestimated. They describe their research in using Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning

Experience (MLE) and how this led to significant progress in the children’s language development.

They reflect on what this can mean particularly in the context of mainstream classrooms and on

the implications for professional development.

■■■ Introduction – missed learning

opportunities

Children with Down syndrome (DS) face serious challenges in cognitive, behavioral and language areas. Their performance with standard IQ tests places the majority of DS children and young adults into the mild to moderate range of intellectual disabilities. At the same time it has been shown by Feuerstein and his colleagues that the learning potential of DS children is often much stronger than their manifest level of functioning

(Feuerstein, Rand, & Rynders, 1988). This suggests that the often-reported flat developmental profile of DS children reflects the missed learning opportunities rather than the “natural” limits of DS children. This issue becomes particularly important in the context of on-going discussion regarding the inclusion of children with DS and other intellectual disabilities into regular classrooms. In this article we report about the development of language in children with DS who receive “extra” support, i.e. children integrated into

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the mainstream classrooms who in addition receive intensive cognitive after-school intervention. The article concludes with a reflection on the professional development implications for practitioners wishing to learn from this approach and to apply it in their work with children, particularly in the context of mainstream classrooms.

■■■ Speech and language in children with

DS

The problems of speech and language development in children with DS are often closely intertwined with their anatomical and medical problems. Anatomical features of the mouth and tongue, frequent nose, ear and throat infection, a weak muscle tonus and poor motor control all contribute to considerable problems of speech development. Because the above features impact first of all on articulation and communication, the predominant interest in DS language studies was on expressive rather than receptive language skills. It was demonstrated that while receptive language development of DS children, more or less corresponds to their non-verbal intellectual development, expressive language is falling behind (Chapman, 2003). The meta-analytic study of Naess et al (2011) demonstrated that receptive vocabulary is actually less impaired of all language functions of children and young adults with DS.

One of the questions that particularly interested researchers is the developmental trajectory of language development in DS children. In other words what characterises their learning journey? Fowler (1990) argued that while non-DS children show a linear pattern of language development, the DS children demonstrate a period of relatively fast development at the age 3-4 followed by the long plateau. Miller (1995) claimed that the vocabulary learning rate of DS children is significantly slower than that of non-DS peers matched by the mental age. At the same time this phenomenon is far from being uniform. Thirty five percent of children involved in the Miller’s research demonstrated vocabulary growth consistent with their mental age expectations.

The problem is that these “mental age expectations” are not only lower than in typically developing children, but

the intellectual gaps appear to grow with age (Patterson, Rapsey, & Glue, 2013). In other words the developmental trajectory of children with DS is “flatter” than that of non-DS children. One may argue, however, that the observed flat developmental profile reflects only the independent performance of children with DS but tells us nothing about their learning potential.

Dynamic assessment of receptive language in children with DS (Alony & Kozulin, 2007) showed that when only a static measure of receptive language (PPVT-R) is taken into account the language development curve is indeed rather flat. However, the developmental curve generated by the data of dynamic language assessment is much closer to that of children with typical development. This finding may indicate that the gap between language learning potential of children with DS and their actual language performance is particularly wide.

Integration of children and adolescents with DS in mainstream classrooms appears to be an important factor in the enhancement of their language and communication skills. The comparison of children and adolescents with DS educated in special education vs. mainstream classrooms demonstrated that the main advantage of the latter group was exactly in the area of speech and language (Buckley, Bird, Sacks & Archer, 2006). However, this advantage showed itself in expressive language and writing, while no significant effects of school placement were observed in receptive language performance. Moreover, according to the cross-sectional data presented by Buckley et al (2006) the total progress in the receptive language between the ages 12.5 and 19 was about 1.1 months in age equivalents. On average the receptive language performance of 18 to 20 year old students with DS studying in mainstream classrooms corresponded to age equivalent level of 6.8. One may thus conclude that even in the mainstream classes the receptive language development trend of DS students is “flat”.

So, from the above review it transpires that it would be of a considerable interest to see to what extent the receptive language development of children with DS (and some other special needs) can be enhanced via systematic cognitive intervention based on the principles

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of mediated learning (Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman, & Miller, 1980).

■■■ MLE-Based intervention

The concept of Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) identifies a special quality of interaction between a child and an adult mediator. Feuerstein’s theory of MLE stipulates the existence of two basic forms of learning: direct learning and mediated learning. Direct learning includes unmediated exposure of the child to environmental stimuli, including objects, events, texts, pictures, and so on. The human mediator intervenes in the learning process by placing him or herself between the child and the stimulus and between the child and his

or her response. The mediator selects, changes, amplifies and interprets both the stimuli that come to the learner and the learner’s responses.

According to Feuerstein the absence of the necessary type or/and amount of MLE leads to the underdevelopment of the child’s cognitive functions and direct learning strategies. On the other hand massive infusion of MLE may improve the situation of cognitive deficiency and turn the child into more independent and self-regulating learner. According to MLE theory, genetic and organic factors, such as DS, constitute distal determinants of the cognitive development. As such they cannot be changed. However, the type and amount of MLE that according to Feuerstein constitute

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the proximal determinant of cognitive development can substantially moderate the impact of genetic and organic factors. In other words, two children with the same type of organic or genetic impairment may have a very different developmental trajectory depending on the MLE they receive.

Not every interaction that includes a task, a child and a mediator has a quality of MLE. To distinguish MLE from other interactions Feuerstein developed a system of the MLE criteria. The first three criteria, Intentionality/reciprocity, Transcendence and Mediation of meaning are universal – all three of them should be present for an interaction to have the quality of MLE. Intentionality refers to the mediator’s ability to focus on the learner’s needs and to shape the task according to these needs. Reciprocity refers to the mediator’s willingness to “meet children at their level” and be attentive to their responses. MLE interaction should have a Transcendent character going beyond the here and now given task. The criterion of Transcendence ensures that what the child is gaining is a general strategy or approach rather than a narrow skill. Through Mediation of Meaning the mediator conveys to the learner the reason for the learning activity, the significance of the task and interprets the learner’s accomplishment. There are additional criteria of MLE, such as mediation of feeling of competence, that are context and task specific.

The principles of MLE were incorporated into several cognitive intervention programmes developed by Feuerstein and his colleagues: Instrumental Enrichment programme for school age children and Instrumental Enrichment Basic programme for younger children (Feuerstein, Rand, Falik, Feuerstein, 2006). In addition, the principles of MLE can be used as a guiding principle in occupational therapy, speech therapy, and in parental training (Klein & Alony, 1993).

■■■ Participants in our study

Ten children participated in the current study, 4 boys and 6 girls. Eight of the children had DS, one child was diagnosed with pervasive developmental disorder and one with severe learning disabilities. The age at the pre-test ranged from 47 to 105 months. Socio-economic level of 6 families is medium, and of 4 families is below

medium, mostly because fathers study full-time in ultra-religious colleges. In 7 out of 10 families the parents’ mother tongue was other than Hebrew (English or French).

■■■ Intervention programme

The intervention programme was conducted in the afternoon hours, three times a week, for a total of 15 hours per week. The programme included cognitive enrichment, speech therapy and occupational therapy. The cognitive enrichment was based on the use of Feuerstein et al (2006) Instrumental Enrichment Basic programme. The programme focus on the development of perception, comparison, classification, orientation in space, identification of emotions and other cognitive functions and operations. The programme was taught by teachers specially trained in the theory of MLE and the Instrumental Enrichment Basic techniques.

Older children received speech therapy in small groups, focusing on auditory awareness, phonological awareness, opening and closing syllables, categories, classification, superordinar concepts, generalization, etc. The grammatical aspects of language included increasing children’s awareness to correct sentence structure, precision in the use of tenses, pronouns, adjectives, singular-plural etc. Special attention was given also to the pragmatic aspects of speech, developing communication skills, turn taking in games and conversation, exercising more effective ways of self-expression, etc. Younger children, whose speech development was at the lower stages received speech therapy mainly individually, or in pairs. Much attention was given to articulation and speech intelligibility, correct use of the voice (as some children had nasal, whispering, “choked” voices). The young children had to learn, for example, how to listen to one another, follow basic instruction, deal with a sequence of instructions.

Occupational therapy focused on developing better sensory-motor and coordination skills and becoming efficient during educational activities (e.g. copying from the blackboard, forming letters and improving handwriting), adopting scanning strategies, refining their auditory-motor connections, developing orientation in space, improving gross motor skills,

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working on crossing the midline, coordinating and integrating movements etc.

In addition to the direct therapy with children the programme also included support for children’s integration in regular classrooms and consultations to their parents. The programme staff established and maintained contacts with children’s class teacher at school/kindergarten, giving advice, discussing their progress, etc. The work with parents included a monthly parent’s group meeting with programme staff and psycho-educational counselors on the programme.

■■■ Tools and Procedures

The results of two sub-groups of students are presented here. The first sub-group (N=5) received MLE-based intervention for three years. The time difference between pre-test and post-test for this group is 36 months. The second sub-group (N=5) received intervention for one academic year, the time difference between pre-test and post-test for this group is 10 months. In addition to a standard receptive language post-test, children in both groups also received dynamic post-test.

Children’s receptive language was tested using PPVT-R test (Dunn & Dunn, 1981). The PPVT-R is a wide range vocabulary test designed for evaluating receptive language for English speaking subjects in the age range 2.5 to 40 years. Each plate of PPVT-R shows four simple black-and-white pictures. The child is asked to point to the picture that corresponds to the word said by the examiner; for example, an ambulance, an engine, a bus and a tractor. The examiner says ‘ambulance’, and the child must point to the corresponding picture. Though PPVT-R has not been standardized in Israel for Hebrew speaking children, it is widely used in this country.

In addition to the pre-tests and post-tests conducted in a standard way, children were also given post-tests in a dynamic way. The use of PPVT-R as a DA test necessitated certain procedural changes. Under both standard and DA administration of PPVT-R the test started with the first item irrespective of the child’s age. Under standard conditions if the child made a mistake it was recorded and the new item was then presented, under the DA conditions the assessor either presented a

child with a new item, or provided ‘focusing’, or started verbal mediation. In each case the decision was made by the assessor based on her evaluation of the dynamics of the assessment process. Under standard condition the assessment was terminated after the child had made 6 errors in 8 consecutive items. Under the DA conditions children often received mediation after they made 6 errors and the assessment procedure continued when they made a correct response after mediation.

Two major types of mediation were used under the DA conditions – ‘focusing’ and ‘verbal mediation’. Focusing was used whenever the child failed to pay attention to the target word or failed to look at the pictures presented on the page. Focusing was achieved by either non-verbal mediation gesturing in the direction of the pictures, or by verbal comments such as ‘Are you sure’ or ‘First look at the pictures, think carefully and only then point to the right picture’. Verbal mediation was initiated when the assessor felt that the child was attentive to the word and the picture, but nevertheless gave a wrong answer. It should be noted that the examiners choose the type of mediation based on their observations of the children’s level of understanding. As a general rule, mediation starts with the more general, abstract explanation, using more concrete examples only when they are necessary, in other words – moving on a scale from the more abstract level of mediation towards the more concrete.

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Fig. 1 shows the 9-month language development trends of all 10 children. One can see that the developmental trends of the majority of children are close to that of the normative trend, while for some children from the one-year group the development is even faster than in the norm.

■■■ Professional development implications

The above results may have some implications for professional training and development especially under conditions of inclusive education for children with special educational needs (SEN). Firstly it would be advisable for pre-service teachers to become familiar with the notion of MLE and its possible moderating effect on developmental trajectory of children with SEN. Secondly, not only psychologists, but also teachers should become aware of dynamic assessment as a possible alternative to typical static assessments of cognitive and language functions (see Camilleri & Botting, 2013). Finally, MLE-based intervention programmes for children of different ages and different SEN have been developed and the relevant training is available for both classroom teachers and SEN specialists. Additional information about these programmes can be accessed at the following website: www.feuerstein-global.org.

■■■ Conclusion – revealing the potential

In the last two decades significant progress has been made in developing higher educational and social expectations for children and adults with DS and other

■■■ Results

Table 1 shows the PPVT-R pre- and post-test results for two groups of children, one that received intervention for three school years and the second one that received intervention for one school year.

Pre-test Post- test DA post-test

Three-year group

56.8 (SD 5.7) 80.2 (SD 5.5)* 117.6 (SD 12.6)#

One-year group 58 (SD 18.8) 76 (SD 15.3)** 104.2 (SD 20.3)##

Table 1. Average age equivalent PPVT-R standard pre- and post-test, and dynamic post-test scores. Standard deviations in parenthesis. (* t =7.1, p < 0.05; ** t = 8.9, p < 0.05; # t = 9.5; p <0.05; ## t = 7.9; p < 0.05 )

For both one-year and three year group the receptive language improvement was significant. The effect size of one-year intervention is 1.05, the effect size of three- year intervention is 4.2, that is 1.4 per year. In other words children in the one-year group gained on average 18 months of language development during the 10 months of intervention. Children in the three-year group gained 23.4 months equivalent in receptive language during the 36 months.

The difference between standard assessment and DA results at the post-test was also significant for both groups. The effect size of DA vs. standard post-test assessment ranges from d= 1.6 for one-year group to d=4.1 for three-year group.

Fig 1

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intellectual disabilities. These expectations, however, should be supported by appropriate intervention programmes aimed at significantly enhancing cognitive and learning skills of these clients. One of the apparent barriers for such an enhancement is the so-called “flat” developmental profile of children with DS: these children not only lag behind their non-DS peers in cognitive and language development but instead of diminishing this gap is becoming only wider with

age. It is possible, however, that the above-mentioned “flat” profile reflects the missing learning opportunities of children with DS rather than their natural and unchangeable limits of development. In the study reported here we presented a case of children with DS who in addition to being placed into regular educational settings also received intensive afternoon intervention based on the principles of mediated learning. There are three main conclusions of this study:

1) Given an intensive intervention, children with DS are capable in making a significant progress in the development of their receptive language. The rate of receptive language development of these children is close to that of children with typical development (though in absolute terms they still lag behind).

2) The comparison of the results of static and dynamic assessment of receptive language indicates that children with DS have a considerable learning potential. In other words, their performance in standard language tests reveals only a small fraction of their language abilities.

3) The methodology of mediated learning developed by Feuerstein appears to be effective in enhancing not only cognitive, but also language functions.

Sari Alony & Alex Kozulin work at the Feuerstein

Institute; 47 Narkis St., Jerusalem 91077. Tel: +972-2-

5693344. Email: [email protected]

References: Alony, S. & Kozulin, A. (2007). Dynamic assessment of receptive language in children with Down syndrome. Advances in Speech-

Language Pathology, 9: 323-331. ■ Buckley, S., Bird, G., Sacks, B., & Archer, T. (2006). A comparison of mainstream and special education for

teenagers with Down syndrome. Down Syndrome Research and Practice, 9: 54-67. ■ Camilleri, B. & Botting, N. (2013). Beyond static assessment

of children’s receptive vocabulary. International Journal of Language & Communication Disorders, 48 (5), 1460-6984. ■ Chapman, R.S.

(2003). Language and communication in individuals with Down syndrome. In L.Abbeduto (Ed.), International review of research in mental

retardation, vol. 27, pp.1-34. New York: Academic Press. ■ Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, L. M. (1981). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised. Circle

Pines, MN: American Guidance Service. ■ Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y., Hoffman, M., & Miller, R. (1980). Instrumental Enrichment. Baltimore, MD:

University Park Press. ■ Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y. & Rynders, J. (1988). Don’t accept me as I am. New York: Plenum Press. ■ Feuerstein, R., Falik,

L., Rand, Y., & Feuerstein, R.S. (2006). Creating and enhancing cognitive modifiability: The Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment programme.

Jerusalem: ICELP Press. ■ Fowler, A. (1990). Language abilities of children with Down syndrome. In D. Cicchetti & M.Beeghly (Eds.), Children

with Down syndrome: A developmental perspective (pp. 302-328). New York: Cambridge University Press. ■ Klein, P. & Alony, S. (1993).

Immediate and sustained effects of maternal mediating behaviors on young children. Journal of Early Intervention, 17(2): 177-193 ■ Miller,

J.F. (1995). Individual differences in vocabulary acquisition in children with Down syndrome. Progress in Clinical Biology Research, 393, 93-

103. ■ Næss, K. A. B., Lyster, S. A. H., Hulme, C., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2011). Language and verbal short-term memory skills in children with

Down syndrome: A meta-analytic review. Research in Developmental Disabilities, 32(6), 2225-2234. ■ Patterson, T., Rapsey, C.M., & Glue, P.

(2013). Systematic review of cognitive development across childhood in Down syndrome: implications for treatment interventions. Journal

of Intellectual Disability Research, 57(4), 306–318.


This book is a companion volume to the popular Key Stage 2 Poetry Pack. It includes a selection of exciting and enjoyable poems that can be used to develop enthusiasm for poetry reading and writing in both the foundation stage and key stage 1. Each poem is specifically linked to one of the National Literacy Strategy objectives and an accompanying ‘Teachers’ notes’ section includes a broad range of practical suggestions for use with a class or a group of children.

All of the poems in this book have been used successfully in school workshops with KS1 pupils – most are written by Alan Peat, but the collection also includes poems by Wes Magee and Andrew Taylor. A broad range of poetry styles is included, and related ‘language play’ activities are discussed.

Price: £17.95 plus postage and packing ISBN: 1-84190-100-8 Format: A4 56pp

Many teachers are devoting substantial amounts of time to searching for resources to meet the objectives for teaching poetry as specified in the National Literacy Strategy. The Key Stage 2 Poetry Pack has been specially developed to include a selection of poems which can be used to meet all of the key stage 2 requirements for poetry writing. As a teaching aid it will save valuable time by explicitly linking each poem to one or more of the objectives. A ‘notes for teachers’ section accompanies each poem and includes both suggestions for using the poem with either a whole class or a group, and extension activities.

All of the poems in the pack have been used in school workshops with KS2 children – most are written by Alan Peat, but the collection also includes poems by Colin McNaughton and Michael Rosen. All poetry styles are covered, including rhyming and non-rhyming, haiku, expanding/contracting poems, shape poems, rap and free verse. Alan Peat also provides five writing frames to help children to structure their responses to poems effectively.

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Liberating all children to gain a deeper understanding of the world ■■■■■

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Liberating all children to gain a deeper understanding of the worldRoman Gouzman and Judy Silver describe how Feuerstein’s methods can be applied

not just to the blind and visually impaired but also to other learners. Through the use of a

tactile-kinesthetic approach cognitive functions are enhanced, guiding learners towards a

clear and ordered perception of the world.

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This article describes Feuerstein’s methods, his programme of intervention called Instrumental Enrichment programme (FIE) and in particular, Gouzman’s

enhanced tactile cognitive intervention programme FIE T-K, the next and enhanced step of Feuerstein’s cognitive intervention programme FIE, and designed specifically for the population of the blind and visually impaired, uses tactile-kinaesthetic materials so that cognitive functions are enhanced and learners are guided towards a clear and ordered perception of the world. In both individual and group settings, a welcome benefit of FIE T-K is that it is also highly effective for children with Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder. It would seem therefore that the application of the FIE T-K programme could have implications for the professional development of mainstream teachers wishing to adopt Feuerstein’s methods for these and other groups of learners.

■■■ Feuerstein’s worldwide influence

For more than four decades, training in Feuerstein’s methods of cognitive education has had a powerful impact on the professional development of teachers, psychologists and therapists around the world. Over many years, the Feuerstein Institute in Jerusalem has conducted international workshops, each summer hosted in a different European city. These workshops are testament not only to the many teachers around the world seeking an understanding of these methods for their own professional development, but testament to its wide application across diverse educational and therapeutic settings, from Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore to the UK, Europe and Scandinavia. There is a huge body of international research which clearly demonstrates the impact that Feuerstein’s work has had on both teaching and learning; and research shows that mainstream teachers trained in these methods become more reflective and effective practitioners, and children develop a greater understanding of curricular subjects, and are motivated to become independent and creative thinkers.

Despite this success, when Roman Gouzman first met Reuven Feuerstein in Jerusalem more than twenty years ago, Feuerstein had for a long time been concerned about the many blind and partially sighted individuals who could not access the paper and pencil tasks of his standard programme for intervention, Instrumental Enrichment. Working together, Feuerstein and Roman Gouzman conceived tasks to enhance cognitive skills which could be presented kinaesthetically to blind and partially sighted individuals. These tasks and tools were subsequently executed by Roman Gouzman on to tactile embossed paper and especially designed three-dimensional materials. This programme is described in the article, together with a description of Feuerstein’s methods.

■■■ Feuerstein’s Methods

The diversity of FIE’s application for a wide range of populations is well documented. The two key works by Feuerstein and his collaborators, ‘The Dynamic Assessment of Retarded Performers’ (1979), and

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‘Instrumental Enrichment’ (1980), describe Feuerstein’s methods for both assessment and intervention which have inspired so many practitioners in the field. What is significant about Feuerstein’s methods is that his work provides the teaching practitioner with a conceptual framework to guide his or her action, together with a number of essential tools first to explore what the learner knows and what the learner needs to know, and then plan and apply appropriate intervention. The selected task or the programme itself is one vital part of this complex and dynamic approach.

Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) programme is made up of more than 200 pages offered in fourteen booklets or topics called Instruments which contain paper and pencil tasks of increasing abstraction and complexity. The diversity of the FIE’s application for a wide range of populations is well documented (Feuerstein and Rand, 1997; Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman and Miller, 1980). However, FIE T-K has a distinct set of tactile tools specifically designed for the specific groups it serves.

Table 1 below illustrates how Feuerstein’s major theories and standard tools for intervention work together in this approach. In the context of both the blind and visually impaired and ADD and ADHD populations, Gouzman’s FIE T-K replaces FIE and so contributes a unique additional value in comparison to more traditional tools for both assessment and intervention. However, the theoretical basis for both the FIE and the tactile FIE T-K remain largely the same.

Table 1: Feuerstein’s major theories

In Feuerstein’s approach, a dynamic assessment process, applicable to all children, operates quite differently from a static psychometric approach in that it is interactive. Conducted either individually or in groups, a dynamic assessment centres on the relationship between the examiner (the mediator), the examinee (the learner), and the task. Its prime purpose is to explore the learner’s needs given ideal learning conditions. This is achieved by establishing the individual’s current level of functioning prior to the application of specifically targeted mediation (intervention) to enhance that functioning. An appropriate set of tools for both dynamic assessment and the consequent intervention programme are therefore essential in all interactions using this approach. The selected tools must reflect the learner’s interests and needs, and provoke curiosity in the learner. This is one of the cornerstones of dynamic assessment and reflects Vygotsky’s notion of teaching to the zone of proximal development. FIE T-K, and its theoretical basis devised by Roman Gouzman and inspired by Reuven Feuerstein, was developed with these principles in mind.

In all mediated interactions, the first task of the practitioner or mediator is to discover what kind of sense the learner is making of the assessment process and the intervention which develops out of it. For example, does the learner understand why s/he is being assessed, its relevance to his/her learning, and how the outcome of intervention might be important to his/her life? What is happening here is the mediation of intentionality and reciprocity, meaning and transcendence, the

three essential aspects of the theory of mediated learning experience. In this sense, the role of the mediator is multi-faceted: to ensure that the learner understands the significance of the assessment and motivates him/her to engage in the process (Silver and Burden, 2005). Together, the Learning Potential Assessment Device (LPAD) (Feuerstein and Rand, 1979) and Feuerstein’s programme for intervention, Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) (Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman and Miller, 1980), are designed to address a wide range of complex abilities and disabilities in human development. The application of both LPAD and FIE are underpinned

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by a passionate belief in the capacity of human ability to change and the role of the mediator in that process (Feuerstein, Klein and Tannenbaum, 1994).

■■■ Do we see with our eyes or our brain? -

understanding the basis of the programme

Human beings depend on visual perception. The mind of sighted individuals contains a massive store of mental images collected throughout our lives. A comparison and discrimination between what we know and what we see in front of us starts in infancy. Because of this when we look at something we see a picture that can be matched by two images: perceptual (what we see) and mental (what we know). Blind individuals rely on gathering information aurally, tactually and kinaesthetically. They are unable to build up a ‘bank’ or repertoire of visual images in the usual way to aid understanding. For example, take the old story of the blind man and the elephant.

It is said that if a blind man approaches an elephant, his perception of the animal with be determined by what part of the animal he approaches and touches, given its enormous size. If he touches and explores the trunk, he will conclude that an elephant is like a large long tube, similar to the pipes that bring water to peoples’ houses. If he touches the elephant’s leg he will perceive the elephant as a tree trunk. If he places his hands on the side of the body he will conclude that an elephant is like a house, with large flat sides. The tail is like a snake, the ears like leaves and so on.

The goal for intervention here would be to transform and synthesise these separate tactile experiences into a clear mental ‘image’ or concept of the idea of an elephant. Such a process requires specific mediation and careful verbal analysis of the structure and characteristics of the elephant, its attributes and meaning. The moment we have a goal therefore, or direction, we see a different picture, a more meaningful whole. One of the main goals of intervention for the blind learner is therefore to explore appropriate ways in which to formulate meaningful images through the process of first understanding the whole concept and then analysing part/whole relationships and representation. In this, the development of a rich vocabulary is essential.

■■■ Application of FIE T-K for all children

An important extension of this work has been the successful application of FIE T-K to individuals exhibiting ADHD, a group that is of increasing concern around the world. Here, it is assumed that children with ADHD do not have efficient visual perception and/or use his/her sight systematically. It is interesting that whilst recognising important differences between these two distinct groups, in practice, the authors found that strategies applied to address the diverse needs of both these groups shared many similarities. Moreover, extensive experience over a number of years clearly demonstrates that the application of FIE T-K is expanding, and its application now includes not only learners with ADHD and ADDand blind and partially sighted learners, but also unmotivated learners; sensory deprived learners; learners with problems of verbalisation; and learners with difficulties with organisation and/or memory problems. It would seem therefore that the full impact of this programme is still to be explored.

The prime feature of FIE T-K is ‘touch’. Here, a tactile approach is used to develop cognitive differentiation (i.e. being able to distinguish between different concepts) in those individuals who, because of their disability, are unable to build a bank of stored images and concepts through visual channels. Using the development of haptic perception i.e. perception achieved through active exploration of surfaces and objects by a moving subject as opposed to passive contact of a static subject during tactile perception. - (see Lederman & Klatsky, 1987: Hand Movements: A Window into Haptic Object Recognition) and exploratory procedures, concepts such as time and space, sequencing, comparison and discrimination are developed by moving the fingers over the raised surfaces and embossed lines of the two-dimensional figures presented in the paper tasks, and over the three-dimensional objects of the FIE T-K instruments. In this manner, the vocabulary and understanding of an expanding cognitive repertoire can be developed and manipulated.

■■■ The Materials

The tactile nature of FIE T-K requires specially designed qualities that include:

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■ Two dimensional tasks graphically presented on tactile embossed paper (see Illustrations 1 and 2 below) provide optimal tactile-kinaesthetic surface for scanning and exploration experiences

■ Manipulative objects that offer specific forms of tactile-kinesthetic experiences. The set includes a magnetic board, embossed pages, a variety of magnets and tactile drawing kit.

■ Set of three dimensional objects to compare with objects represented in the 2D graphics on embossed pages, and

■ Blindfolds and a specially constructed box in which the learner can put his/her hands and manipulate objects without visual input.

Using these specific materials, concepts of part/whole; facial expressions; orientation in space; and comparison are addressed. Here are two pages from two of the topics in FIE T-K, Tactile Orientation in Space here below and Tactile Comparisons here on the right.

Tactile Orientation in Space

The two pictures on the page here below present the same items, with one important different – namely, the orientation of the feet. Therefore, what is in front of the person in the first picture (the chair) is on the right of the person in the second picture, where the two flowers are in front of the person and so on. Concepts of house, chair, feet, tree, flowers and left, right, front and back are applied. Such a simple task requires a precise use of language and a clear understanding of the objects in space relative to the person’s position.

Tactile Comparison

The two pictures here present similar items but with some subtle differences. To discover these differences, a systematic search of all the information presented is required prior to a verbal comparison and explanation of their similarities and differences. Concepts of direction, weather, seasons, building materials (brick, wood strips) are applied. Developing appropriate vocabulary and logical verbal reasoning is an essential aspect of the programme.

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■ recognise and make use of information offered in a tactile/kinaesthetic manner

■ discover and make use of part-whole relationships ■ develop an awareness of relationships implied in information presented

■ learn how to become more precise and accurate in data gathering

■ develop expressive language and the vocabulary needed to describe what is perceived, analyse what it means, and plan effective action.

■ develop an understanding of symbolic meaning of objects and events in time. That is, flags representing countries; prizes representing achievement and hard work; celebrations representing events of particular meaning, anniversaries, birthdays, and so on.

■■■ The challenge for professional

development

The goals of this tactile programme, originally conceived for a specific group of learners, are now being successfully applied to a broadening range of learner contexts and its impact is still growing. Moreover, it would seem that this tactile programme addresses many of the challenges faced every day by practitioners in mainstream as well as specialist settings. Indeed, there is an identified need to close the gap between developing cognitive skills in our students and enriching their understanding of curricular subjects. Therefore, teachers and therapists seeking innovative methods to encourage concentration, motivation, focussing, planning and sequencing, may well want to explore this tactile approach for their own professional development.

Roman Gouzman is seen here on the next page with a blind student (name unknown) working on page 7 from the Instrument: Tactile Facial Expressions. The task, seen here seen here below presents presents six different facial expressions. Learning to ‘read’ each other’s faces is an essential aspect of our humanity and aids our ability to communicate and share each other’s emotions and experiences. A blind person is not born with this ability which in most of the sighted population develops naturally. However, using a tactile/ kinesthetic approach, this ability can be taught. Roman is helping this student understand the subtle variations in human

■■■ Becoming a more adept learner

The primary goal for all Feuerstein’s programmes including FIE T-K is, ‘To enhance the learner’s cognitive modifiablity by developing the cognitive tools needed to become an active and independent learner’.

In other words, if the human brain is a living, breathing muscle capable of change throughout our lifetime, then it is the role of the educator and society itself to ensure that all individuals become the very best they can become: independent and creative members of society. Implicit in all Feuerstein’s work therefore are the parallel aims of education – the transmission of culture from one generation to the next, and the development of cognitive skills and problem solving strategies to prepare the next generation for a rapidly changing world.

This tactile programme provides a multi-sensory approach (touch-motion-sound) that uses tactile-kinaesthetic strategies whereby the learner is encouraged to systematically search all the information presented in the task. In this manner, the learner is encouraged to focus and organise all the information presented into a meaningful whole, which leads to a deeper understanding and mastery of its significance. Using a process called ‘bridging’, the learner is then helped to reflect on their experience of completing the task and the implications of how this experience could be applied in other contexts.

For example, a simple generalisation gleaned from such an experience could be, ‘when I am impulsive, I make mistakes’ and, ‘If I ‘search’ (touch) part of the page, I only have some of the information and might jump to the wrong conclusion. But if I ‘search’ (touch) the whole page systematically from top to bottom, and left to right, I have all the information I need and will be able to understand its meaning’. This reflective process develops new insights in the learner, which are then applied in differing situations and contexts, such as curricular studies and life-skills.

Specific goals of FIE T-K include helping the learner to:

■ focus accurately using tactile and verbal comparison ■ search for information in a systematic and organised manner

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expressions, as illustrated on the page. The goal for this intervention is to help the student learn how to ‘read’ facial expressions and so develop a deeper empathy with and understanding of his friends and loved ones.

■■■ Dynamic potential

In Feuerstein’s approach, the prime function of a good mediator is to help the child become aware of his/her own cognitive development throughout the process of both assessment and intervention, thus fostering a more optimistic and proactive approach to learning. As we have indicated here this process needs to be a dynamic one involving a vibrant interaction between the child and the assessor. In order to be dynamic, an evolving cognitive process over time is required, and ultimately, this should be the function of all dynamic interventions. A suitable framework is therefore required in which to present appropriately chosen concepts and vocabulary. FIE T-K, carefully designed to meet the specific needs of blind and partially sighted students, has proved to be instrumental in helping not only the blind and partially sighted, but other learners, particularly

Tactile Facial Expressions

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References: Feuerstein, R., Gouzman, R., Falik, L., & Feuerstein, R.F., Tactile-Kinesthetic Programme. ISBN 978-965-7666-14-2 The Feuerstein

Institute, Jerusalem, Israel ■ Feuerstein, R. and Rand, Y. (1979), The dynamic assessment of retarded performers, Baltimore University Park

Press. ■ Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y. (1997), Don’t accept me as I am, Skylight Training and Publication Inc. ■ Feuerstein, R., Rand, Y. & Hoffman,

M., and Miller, R. (1980), Instrumental Enrichment, Scott, Foresman and Co., Illinois. ■ Feuerstein, R., Klein, P. and Tannenbaum, A. J. (1994),

Mediated Learning Experience (MLE): Theoretical, psychological and learning implications, (2nd Edit.), Freund Publishing House, Ltd. ■

Gouzman R., Instrumental Enrichment Program in Tactile Form. New Technologies in the Education. Paris. (1996) ■ Gouzman R., Enhancing

Cognitive Skills in Blind Learners, Annual Conference on Cognitive Modifiability. Exeter University, UK.(1998) ■ Gouzman R., Tactile Graphics

and Cognitive Functioning. International conference on Youth at Risk. Shoresh, Israel. (1998) ■ Gouzman R., The Instrumental Enrichment

Program for Blind Learners. Educator, ICELV (2000) ■ Gouzman, R. and Kozulin, A., Enhancing cognitive skills in blind learners. Educator, ICELV,

12(1) 2000 ■ Silver, J. & Burden, R.L. (2005), Building Blocks of Learning: Dynamic assessment and cognitive mediation with children. In Tan

and Seng (Eds.), Enhancing Cognitive Functions, McGraw Hill (Eds.).

those with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder. Moreover, extensive experience of the programme has demonstrated that this tactile programme has also had an impact on learners with a range of weaknesses commonly found in mainstream classrooms as well as specialist settings,. Consequently, the potential of the application of FIE T-K is yet to be fully realised. What is clear is that it makes an important and lasting contribution to Feuerstein’s legacy.

If you are interested in finding out more about FIE T-K,

please contact Professor Roman Gouzman by email on

[email protected]






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6 ways Climbing Frames helps you track pupil progress

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“

The What is Good Leadership? tools provide an excellent basis for professional development, accountability, job descriptions and appraisal targets. The framework works well for me and undoubtedly the improved clarity around attributes of outstanding leadership have contributed to our recent outstanding inspection judgement.

Headteacher - Upton Cross School - Newham

“ “A toolkit designed to support the development of leadership in primary schools, clearly linked to Ofsted criteria for leadership and managementThe ‘What is Good Leadership?’ toolkit provides a holistic approach to developing the essential leadership skills within a school. It has been developed over 5 years working with schools in a wide range of contexts and drawing on national and international research.

WIGL? is written by Heather Clements and Ann O’Hara, both highly experienced educational consultants, who have worked with experts within specific areas to ensure that the descriptors in the toolkit truly represent the best practice nationally for each role identified.

The accessible matrix format outlines a progression in the key skills of leadership, which can be used to identify and support potential leaders and new leaders, as well as to evaluate and guide the progressive development of experienced leaders. It is positive, cumulative and builds on strengths.

Users are quickly able to assess where performance sits either individually or collectively, noting strengths, and where there are gaps or aspects to improve in current practice. The WIGL supports the planning to improve practice as an individual and leadership team.

What is Good Leadership?

We have used the What is Good Leadership? toolkit to develop our middle leaders… We are now using it to inform performance management.

Headteacher – James Cambell Primary SchoolBarking and Dagenham

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To order please call 0121 224 2599Visit our website: www.teachingtimes.com

What is Good Leadership?

(WIGL)£175.00 + vat

Key features: • Constructive and developmental • Building skills and knowledge based on clear

descriptors• Supporting self evaluation and personal

development• Supporting whole school evaluation and

professional development planning• Informing performance management and job

descriptions• Enabling a 360° view of an individual or

whole school leadership team

PDT Issue 18.1 Full version SV (1)

Documents

Transcript of PDT Issue 18.1 Full version SV (1)