Professional Development

Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment Programs:

INSTRUMENTAL ENRICHMENT, BASIC VERSION:   Reuven Feuerstein, a cognitive psychologist in Israel, developed a special program of cognitive education for young children and for functionally delayed adults, known as “Instrumental Enrichment Basic.” (A separate program, designed for learners of ages 9 through Adult is also available, known as “Instrumental Enrichment Standard”). The Basic program has ten separate segments—called “instruments”—which are targeted to early learning needs in mathematics, literacy, and social interaction. Teachers are trained to mediate the students’ use of the instruments and strengthen their processes toward readiness for mathematics and literacy.

1.Organization of Dots:

Students identify geometric shapes, comparing shapes to a model; figures rotate in space and become increasingly complex; emphasis is on finding and describing different kinds of patterns.

  2.Orientation in Space:

Students learn to recognize, differentiate, and label positions in space; learners also identify relative positions of objects and events.

  3.Identifying Emotions:

Students learn to identify feelings and emotions by interpreting facial expressions and understanding the appropriate use of emotions in various situations. The aim is reduce ego-centrism and initiate empathy.

  4.From Empathy to Action:

This instrument helps create a state of empathy by identifying a state of mind, deriving from the facial and bodily expression of a pictured person in some critical situation. Alternatives are presented, and students select options and their consequences.

  5.From Unit to Group:

The learner manipulates geometric shapes to discover the idea of units, groups of units, and units as groups. The instrument sets up operations which underlie mathematics, focusing on ways in which objects can be aggregated, separated, summarized, and described.

  6.Tri-Channel Attentional Learning:

Using touch, learners first form mental images of three dimensional objects hidden from view, focusing on number, orientation, size, types of sides, angles, etc., followed by then recognizing the object visually and reproducing it by drawing. Thus, tactile, visual, and verbal modalities are used.

  7.Compare and Discover the Absurd:

Students discover and understand the nature of an absurdity (or incongruity) between two situations. They analyze, control, and compare relationships between the situations. This instrument is divided into 2 levels.

  8.Know and Identify:

Students investigate how familiar objects are made and work as well as their properties, including structures and functions, using pictures and words. They name, define, identify common and different attributes of objects, and categorize them.

  9.Thinking to Learn and Prevent Violence:

The instrument presents pictured situations in a variety of types of conflicts; teachers ask a series of questions related to each situation, and the student then predicts the outcome from each of four alternatives, including the evidence available and the likely responses of people in the situation.

  10.Learning to Question for Reading Comprehension:

The instrument has a series of pictorial sentences, with questions to be answered about each one. The focus is on comprehending what is read, teaching that a sentence which is heard or read is a source of information leading to deeper information that is embedded.

EDUCATIONAL OUTCOMES FROM INSTRUMENTAL ENRICHMENT:   1.THINKING SKILLS AND YOUNG CHILDREN (PRE-K THROUGH GRADE 3): The Feuerstein program for children of ages 3-8 is known as Instrumental Enrichment Basic (FIE-Basic) and is also intended to be used with students of any age who have identified disabilities. The following results of the program have been reported in the research literature in several countries:   Significant improvement in students:

• Motor Development
• Reduction of Anti-Social Behaviour
• Language Development: Verbal Concepts, Visual Discrimination
• Logical Relationships
• Knowledge Acquisition
• General Reasoning
• On the WISC-R Intelligence Test: Picture Arrangement, Picture Completion and Similarities.

A newly published journal article provides elaboration on several of the above effects, and is entitled “Feuerstein’s New Program for the Facilitation of Cognitive Development in Young Children”, by Meir Ben-Hur and Rafi Feuerstein. It is published in the Journal of Cognitive Education and Psychology.

2. THINKING SKILLS AND OLDER STUDENTS-AGE 9 THROUGH HIGH SCHOOL:

A version of the program has also been designed for adults in business, industry, and senior centers. The Feuerstein program for older children through adults is known as Instrumental Enrichment Standard (FIE-Standard); the program has existed since the 1950’s and has been the subject of more than 1000 research studies in numerous countries. The effects of the program have been reported for students, teachers, and parents, as follows:

  For Students, significant improvement in:

• Reading Comprehension
• Mathematical Concepts
• Mathematical Computation
• Observed Thinking Behaviours
• General Reasoning
• Real-World Problem-Solving Situations
• Awareness of their own Thought Processes.

For Teachers, improvement in:

• Dialoguing with Students
• Asking Higher-Level Questions
• Using Reflective Thinking with Students
• Using the Thinking Prerequisites behind all curriculum subject matter.

For Parents, improvement in:

• Giving children more responsibility for problem-solving
• Using “thinking” language with children
• Understanding children’s thought processes
• Active engaging with their children’s learning.

FIE – Basic Level 1 and FIE – Basic Level 2:

The Basic course is designed to accelerate cognitive development and develop social competence. The program is appropriate for children 3 to 8 years of age, and for the older students who has a low performance level and needs a more systematic and developmentally based approach. Students learn to “think about their thinking” metacognition, by reflecting on the strategies learned and applying them to curriculum content and problem solving tasks.

The Basic program instruments which are targeted to early learning needs in mathematics, literacy and social interaction. Teachers are trained to mediate the students’ use of the instruments and strengthen their processes toward readiness for mathematics and literacy.

Each instrument involves the application of principles, thinking strategies, and application of discovered rules, in a variety of tasks; thus, the program enables students to better identify problems, form hypotheses, test hypotheses, make comparisons, and solve problems.

Each instrument focuses on one particular cognitive function that is prerequisite to successful school learning; the tasks become increasingly complex and abstract.

Educational Therapy courses are conducted for Non-verbal Learning Disability and Specific Learning Disability as following:   Educational Therapy for NLD Non-Verbal Learning Disability: What will you learn?

– What are learning disabilities? – What are NLD? – What causes NLD? – What are the symptoms of NLD? – What skills are affected by NLD? – How NLD diagnosed? – What conditions are related to NLD? – How can professionals help with NLD? – What can be done at home for NLD?

  Educational Therapy for SLD (Specific Learning Disability).

This program helps the students to extract the parameters of formal thinking from the study material for example Science and Maths or other subjects are taught the content is presented in a way that highlights the abstract principles on which the material is based. Whereby the abstracted principles receives an immediate illustrations that heightens its significance for the students. By exposure to challenging content material and contact with the thinking process imbedded in the discipline, the students do develop their thinking skills. Students can form the needed generalization for transferring the skills to deeper, more complex challenges. The students can learn the rule for Thinking and habits of mind, application to contents and application to life situations. Thinking demands skills processed at different phases of the mental act – at the stage of gathering data then processing and making meaningful the information that gathered, and at the point of formulating and communicating responses to that processed. This approach shapes the study of content, content, leading to the ability to organize process and understand-drawing implications to areas of increasingly expanded generalization, transfer, and transformation. Students can learn to transfer what they learn from their content tasks and become both faster and deeper learners. The student compares content with other contents, create the criteria required for comparison and uses higher concepts to create relationships between diverse content. The learner elaborates the content learned and applies it to the wider and more diverse contexts. The significance of what is learned about thinking is not confined to the context in which it is learned, but becomes a means of transferring the thinking skill to other areas of learning experience.

We conduct five day workshops on Psychodiagnostics for Educational Therapists, Educators, Special Educators, Psychologists, Allied Professionals and PG (Psychology) Students. The Participants will be familiarized with administration, scoring, interpretation, report writing and diagnosis of various Psychological Tests of Intelligence (IQ) and Learning Disabilities, Personality Tests, Career Guidance, Marital problems and Human Resource Development.

“A two day training program on Cognitive Skills Enhancement was organized by IAET for our staff at our mNemonic Centre for Learning Enrichment, Coimbatore in December, 2015. Mr. S.Manoharan, Psychologist as Trainer, he was dedicative in training us and the session was interactive. The program has given us the cognitive strategies to succeed and has helped us to understand the ways that we can use it in our lives and opened up our mind to become a better educator to our students.

We are thankful; we recommend that Professional Development Training Programs offered by IAET will be helpful to Professionals and Parents.”

        V.Sukumar         Director mNemonic Centre for Learning Enrichment, Coimbatore.

“The session gave clarity about various Psycho and Neuro diagnostics tests. It was useful to update my own knowledge on diagnostics. I would like to be part of more such training programs. Appreciate the effort made to organize the Psychodiagnostics Program.”

        Geetha S         February, 2017.

“I am very happy to be part of the Psychodiagnostics workshop, I could learn from the trainer. The program was very effective. I am thankful to the complete team for making the program successful.”

Kalpana

February, 2017.

•           “I am Vimalatharani, Psychotherapist, having my clinic at Annanagar, Chennai. I did Thinkspire-Cognitive Skills Enhancement Program from IAET. It was a five day workshop and it gave me an emotional  transformation in my personal self and also some positive insight to my professional practice.  We learnt a lot about emotions, how to identify it, interpret it and how to use those inputs in daya day events through an interesting exercise, bridging.  The course was of great help for my practice as a cognitive behaviour therapist.”

         M.Vimalatharani, Beautiful Mind Psychological Counseling Center, Anna Nagar, Chennai.          May, 2017.          

“Well organized, well executed training program. Staffs and Trainers were easily approachable and with pleasing personality. Though the schedule was very tight, it is very useful and we learned so many facts. The study material was simply superb and will be of very helpful. Special Thanks to the coordinator and the organizer.”

        Agnes S

August, 2017.

“The Training on Psychodiagnostics was really very informative as well as helpful for educational purposes, knowing our own self and it will also help to diagnose other people. Different types of tests we learnt in the program will really help us in our future and day to day life. My heartfelt thanks to Dr.V.Chandramohan sir, Mr. Manoharan Sir and the coordinator Ms. Parkavi for their tireless work.”

          Shakira Begum S         August, 2017.

“The program Psychodiagnostics is very useful program. It was conducted well by the resource persons.  It was also well organized and arrangements were good. Overall the program is good value for the cost involved and a very useful program.”

         Ganesan S V          August, 2017.