“Just a minute…let me think”

Feuerstein’s Educational Programmes are acknowledged and promoted worldwide. Read more about Professor Reuven Feuerstein.

Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment Program
Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment Program Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) is a cognitive intervention program that can be used both individually and in the classroom framework. The FIE program has been successfully used all over the world as a tool for the enhancement of learning potential and cognitive functioning of children and adults. For individuals with special needs, FIE is used as a remediation program, for higher functioning learners FIE is a tool of cognitive enrichment. To date 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.

FIE was included into the package of educational reform programs recommended by the US Department of Education (see Bibliography and Publications).

FIE as a classroom curriculum is aimed at enhancing the students’ cognitive functions necessary for academic learning and achievement. The fundamental assumption of the program, based on Feuerstein’s theory of Structural Cognitive Modifiability and Mediated Learning Experience is that intelligence is dynamic and modifiable, not static or fixed. Thus, the FIE program seeks to correct deficiencies in fundamental thinking skills, provides students with the concepts, skills, strategies, operations and techniques necessary to function as independent learners, increases their motivation, develops students’ metacognition, and in a word helps students learn how to learn.

FIE materials are organized into 14 instruments that comprise paper-and- pencil tasks aimed at such specific cognitive domains as analytic perception, orientation in space and time, comparison, classification, and more. Deliberately free of specific subject matter, the FIE tasks are intended to be more readily transferable to all educational and everyday life situations. The FIE program is mediated by a certified FIE teacher and can be implemented in the classroom setting or as an individual tutoring and remedial teaching device. The FIE materials and teacher manuals have received worldwide recognition and have been translated into 17 languages including all major European and some Asian languages. In addition, there is a Braille version of FIE tools for the blind learners.

Educators, psychologists, but also parents may become certified as FIE teachers after appropriate training.

The Role of Tapestry

In 2004, members of Tapestry and Billy O’Neill, a Feuerstein Trainer, at the invitation of Professor Reuven Feuerstein made a visit to the International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential in Jerusalem. 

This started the Feuerstein/Tapestry initiative which to date has involved the large scale Scottish Borders Council pilot and the on-going training of Scottish teachers in Feuerstein’s methodologies. 

Tapestry proposed the Feuerstein initiative to the Director of Education in Scottish Borders Council and approaches were made to the Scottish Executive with regards funding for the pilot.  The Scottish Borders pilot was successfully launched in September 2005 and has recently been evaluated by the University of Strathclyde. 

“While Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment programme (FIE) is one of many approaches to enhancing learning, all of them expensive if they are implemented properly, it is one that seems to make sense to Scottish Borders teachers, and one that has a particularly sound research base.  The evaluation evidence suggests that the pilot project has had a positive impact on pupils and staff, particularly in equipping teachers to help some of the most vulnerable young people in society”.

In April/May 2007, 14 Local Authorities, 3 Universities, Royal Hospital for Sick Children and the Scottish Further Education Unit took part in the first block of Tapestry/Feuerstein’s training in Instrumental Enrichment.  Professor Alex Kozulin led a team of experienced Feuerstein trainers, which comprised, 1 trainer from Scotland and 4 from Israel. 

There has been a great demand from Scottish teachers for this training and discussions are taking place with regards developments.