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Instrumental Enrichment

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WHAT IS INSTRUMENTAL ENRICHMENT

Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) is a cognitive intervention program that enhances the cognitive skills necessary for independent thinking and learning. It focuses on developing the cognitive tools necessary for success in the 21st century. FIE has been used both individually and in the classroom framework with people of all challenges and strengths.

FIE is based on the theories and research of Reuven Feuerstein, Professor of Cognitive Psychology. Feuerstein studied at the University of Geneva under Jean Piaget, Andre Rey, Barbel Inhelder, and Marguerite Loosli Uster, he then went on to earn his Ph.D. in Developmental Psychology at the Sorbonne. He is currently the director of the Center for Development of Human Potential in Jerusalem. From 1970 until the present Dr. Feuerstein has served as Professor in the School of Education at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel; he is also the Director of the Hadassah-Wizo-Canada Research Institute, in Jerusalem, Israel.

FIE programs are built on the idea that intelligence is dynamic and modifiable, not static or fixed. The FIE program seeks to correct deficiencies in fundamental thinking skills and provide students with the concepts, skills, strategies, operations and techniques necessary to function as independent learners. FIE increases motivation, develops students’ metacognition, and it helps the student learn how to learn more efficiently.

Instrumental Enrichment materials and manuals have received worldwide recognition and have been translated into all the major languages including Braille.

The main goal of FIE is to improve ALL learning capabilities in ALL individuals.

INSTRUMENTAL ENRICHMENT

  • Increases each student’s confidence as an active learner.
  • Increases the student’s responsibility for learning.
  • Increases the abilities of ALL students to learn.
  • Provides students with learning and thinking strategies.
  • Develops intrinsic motivation for learning, academic work, and challenging problem solving in all areas (school and the social world).
  • Produces higher standardized test scores in mathematics and literacy.
  • Matches standards of teaching and learning.
  • Has unmatched results in changing student performance.
  • Creates more efficient learners that allow for faster and deeper learning in the curriculum.
  • Enables students to accept greater responsibility for their learning and behaviour.
  • Generates an academic advantage that shows up throughout a student’s education and beyond.

TO DATE, THE FIE PROGRAM HAS BEEN SUCCESSFULLY USED IN THE FOLLOWING FRAMEWORKS

  • Remedial programs for special needs children.
  • Cognitive rehabilitation of brain injured individuals and psychiatric patients.
  • Learning enhancement programs for immigrant and cultural minority students.
  • Enrichment programs for underachieving, regular and gifted children.
  • Professional training and retraining programs in the industrial, military, and business sectors.

OUR SUCCESS

Trinity Christian has found success with students of all abilities and all types of backgrounds; including those with cerebral palsy, autism, dyslexia and dysgraphia, as well as those who are simply unorganized and/or unmotivated. We have found success both in a traditional school setting and in home based programs.

Deliberately free of specific subject matter, the FIE tasks avoid the traditional problems of blocking and are intended to be more readily transferable to all educational and everyday life situations through bridging. Unlike traditional methods many of the tools are not culturally biased allowing them to be used with ESL and others struggling with language based tasks. For those tasks that do require words the tools are available various languages.

The pace of FIE is contingent upon the setting and regulated by the individual’s mastery. When FIE is used in a tutorial setting, the pace is individualized and flexible. FIE provides every child, regardless of past learning history, with the keys for passage through the gateways of higher achievement.

INSTRUMENTS AND APPLICATION

FIE materials are organized into 14 Standard IE Instruments that comprise paper-and- pencil tasks aimed at such specific cognitive domains as analytic perception, orientation in space and time, comparison, numerical progression, classification, and more. Then there are also 7 BASIC IE Instruments which are aimed at learning to read emotions, foster empathy and curb aggression.

THE STANDARD IE INSTRUMENTS

THE BASIC IE INSTRUMENTS

  • Organisation of Dots
  • Orientation in Space I
  • Illustrations
  • Comparisons
  • Analytic Perception
  • Orientation in Space II
  • Categorization
  • Physical Relations
  • Temporal Relations
  • Numerical Progressions,
  • Instructions
  • Syllogisms
  • Transitive Relations
  • Representational Designs
  • Unit to Group
  • Organisation of Dots – Basic
  • Tri-Channel Attentional Learning
  • Orientation in Space – Basic
  • Identifying Emotions
  • From Empathy to Action
  • Compare and Discover the Absurd

While BASIC is typically for younger children, although we have on occasion used it with our Middle School and Sr. High students and generated much discussion.

 

When the student is appropriately guided through the exercises in a particular instrument, he or she develops the capacity and ability to apply the principles learned to other problems or situations where it is appropriate. As a result of the cognitive and motivational growth stimulated by Instrumental Enrichment, students change from passive recipients of information to confident, active learners eager to master increasingly challenging academic tasks.

 

The instruments are available in different levels dependant on the students’ initial ability and need.

INSTRUMENTAL ENRICHMENT ASSESSORS

Educators, psychologists, and even parents may become certified as FIE assessors after appropriate training. Experienced FIE teachers may receive further certification as FIE Trainers and eventually open their own Authorized Training Center (ATC).

Trinity’s FIE program is headed by a FIE Level 2 Trainer who is fully qualified to train other certified Instrumental Enrichment assessors and operate a training center. Four other in-school staff members also hold diplomas in FIE from the Hadassah-Wizo-Canada Research Institute.

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