Description
Book SynopsisThis compelling book provides one of the most comprehensive and detailed evaluations of a very popular cognitive skills course -- Reuven Feuerstein''s Instrumental Enrichment Programme. Feuerstein claims that his program, a model for diagnosing and remedying cognitive deficiencies in poor attainers, can equip pupils with the basic prerequisites of thinking, thereby enabling them to become more effective learners. Combining innovative and traditional experimental techniques, this text analyzes both teacher and pupil outcomes on a wide range of issues including abilities, accomplishments, and behavioral characteristics. The implications of the study are set against theoretical and practical issues involved in other popular intellectual skills training programs. Real world concerns that have been largely ignored by research literature are addressed, as are their effects on the teaching of thinking skills.
Trade Review"...the detail with which Blagg describes the subjects, teachers, teacher training, criterion instruments, and data gives this book a unique place in the broadening array of evaluative studies of IE."
—Contemporary Psychology
"It is not only rich with data but also with interpretations and implications for cognitive theorists, curriculum developers and project evaluators....Blagg is to be commended for providing us with one of the very few 'warts-and-all' evaluations of a real-life curriculum innovation that has potentially great significance to psychologists and educators....In presenting us with an up-to- date summary of the state of the art, he has provided an invaluable launching pad for future research and speculation in the area of children's cognitive development."
—The Psychologist
"I commend the book to all researchers undertaking intervention studies in schools..."
—Special Education Perspectives
"...probably the best evaluation of a thinking skills program I have seen...a model of what an evaluation can be...a real-world one, with all the problems of real-world schools...the evaluation is amazingly comprehensive, looking at both pupil and teacher performance, and using a variety of different kinds of methodologies, including paper-and-pencil tests, observations, checklists, questionnaires, and the like. This is really a class piece of work."
—Robert Sternberg,
Yale University, Department of Psychology
Table of ContentsContents: Introduction. Teaching Cognitive Skills -- Issues Past and Present. Feuerstein's Beliefs, Theories, Assessment Model and Intervention Programme. Instrumental Enrichment Evaluation Design. The Pupils. The Teachers. Review and Discussion of Main Findings. Wider Implications.
