Changing Children's Minds: Feuerstein's Revolution in the Teaching of Intelligence

By Howard Sharron and Martha Coulter

Book Overview

Discover how instrumental enrichment empowers all students, even those labeled "underachieving" or "at-risk." This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1898149240
• ISBN13: 9781898149248
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Questions Publishing Co
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Feurerstein IS ( I hope! )Feurerstien's work is NOW

The previous reviewer says at one stage that Feurerstein "was" I hope this does not give the wrong impression. The great man was still very much alive when I heard him speak several years ago at the University of New South Wales conference organized by Hawker Brownlow. If you ever get a chance to hear this man speak don't pass it up. The chance may not come again. What you get out of hearing him will depend on what you know of his work and reading this book beforehand would be a good strategy. Feurerstein is not a rev 'em up motivational speaker with a few clever tricks up his sleeve (of which there are a few on the conference circuit). He makes a sincere attempt to present his work in a serious way and the more you know of his work the more you will appreciate how difficult it is to do a short presentation on it. It is well worth spending a couple of thousand dollars to go to the International Conference of the Institute for the Enhancement of Learning Potential. This runs every year at Shoresh near Jerusalem. I went over and it was one of the best things I have ever done. Back to the book itself. The techniques described in it are not just applicable to "poor" students. They are applicable to all students up to the highest level of intellectual functioning. Doing a course in these techniques does not just give the instructor the tools to help struggling students,it changes the instructor themselves. The materials are a self developement course in themselves. There is no escape! This book does dwell upon the use of the techniques in low functioning students but other works on this topic give a broader perspective. One of the reasons Feurerstein has chosen to work with Down Syndrome children in particular, is because of frustration with attitudes which suggest you can't teach intelligence. When children improved markedly under his guidance then people would say "Well they could not have been so bad to begin with the original assessment must have been wrong". With Down Syndrome children no-one can deny that they have trisomia. I have seen some of these children and the way they function and the attitudes of the staff of the Institute. It is wonderful! I have seen the materials in this book being used at the school for gifted childrn in Tel Aviv, and have used them myself on a range of students of all abilities. It is time consuming, and it is difficult to persuade some parents that doing activities which are not reading and not calculation are really helpful and worth the time spent. There are worksheets dealing with teaching spatial orientation and Visual transport for instance which are pre-reading skills. The use of the word "retarded" in this book bothers some people extremely, but don't let it get to you. Feurerstein has a particular definition of this word in mind when he uses it and its not supposed to sound insulting. If you are not an academic just read in "b

An enormous step forward in Education for "poor" students.

BOOK REVIEWCHANGING CHILDREN'S MINDS: FEUERSTEIN'S REVOLUTION IN THE TEACHING OF INTELLIGENCE. An innocous title? Perhaps more correctly it could be titled Changing Children's Intelligence, which is specified in the rest of the title. But Intelligence has been largely viewed as relatively a fixed quantity. Perhaps not by all individuals, or all professionals, but institutionally, kids get classified as Slow, Retarded, Normal, Gifted,etc., and these labels condition teachers and become a self fulfilling prophecy. Feuerstein was an Israeli, working in Israel in the early 1950s, when Israel was taking Jewish children from many lands including lands where modern urban culture was totally unknown. Conventional testing indicated that these children were "unteachable". Feuerstein devised a new testing protocol. First, he used a conventional test in a very restricted area. Second, he provided brief but intensive instruction in a specific activity related to the area under study. Third, he repeated the initial test. The degree of difference between the results of the two tests was, he stated, a measure of the childs' intelligence. Of course! Perfectly obvious! Except that institutionally this was totally revolutionary. The concept was simple, but its' implementation was a new challenge. Educators no longer had the freedom to say "No use in expending effort on these kids, they are unteachable". The challenge was to create simple challenging activities that the students could do, yet activities that would provide "stepping stones" to activities of increasing complexity and importance. This is a miniscule outline of the book. It should be a bombshell in the Education community. Interestingly enough, the book is out of print! As one who has observed the Education community closely for a long time, it would be surprising if it were otherwise. The author has spent approximately the last ten years in a research project involving the teaching of Technology/Math/Science in the elementary grades. The present attitude is that we will teach the most rudimentary trivia in the elementary grades, with total disregard for the ability of the students. The book shows a procedure that can start very early and enable kids to learn important, complex concepts. Oddly enough, it places the responsibilty for education on the Educators instead of on the students! What a novel concept! This book is a powerful tool for anyone that considers the education of our disadvantaged children important.