• Mission & Program
• The Need
• 21st Century Skills
• Improving Education
• For Parents - A Special Guide
• Program Descriptions
• Outcomes
• Program Outcomes
• For Parents
• State Tests
• Cognitive Education Centers
• Teacher Education
• Trainer Qualifications
• Charter School Ideas
• Kabod Christian Academy, Puerto Rico
• Hillel Torah Implementation of FIE
• Collaborating Organization
• National Urban Alliance
• N.A.F.A.
• Open Announcements
• New Book on Mediated Learning!
• Training Photographs

 

21st Century Skills -- How Do We Prepare Today's Students?

Today’s school students in America will be entering adult life and the workplace in a few short years. Three huge questions now face us:

1. What skills will today's students need in order to survive and be competitive?
2. What strategies and techniques do today's teachers need now to enable students to be ready?
3. What should parents be doing now to enable their children to become effective problem-solvers on a high level?

A critically important answer to all 3 questions is the training and implementation of the instructional program known as “Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment” or “FIE” - a systematic and comprehensive program to teach higher-level problem-solving strategies within the context of the entire school curriculum. The program was developed by the Israeli psychologist, Dr. Reuven Feuerstein.

How does this program address these needs? Let’s look at answers to the 3 big questions:

Today’s students and tomorrow’s adults will need to be able to:

• Stay focused on the specific problems at hand
• Develop alternative strategies for solving problems of any kind (academic, social, economic, political, and more).
• Work collaboratively with others to develop solutions to problems
• Read with clear comprehension
• Write with clarity and detail
• Compute with accuracy and understand the big ideas of mathematics
• Understand relationships between events, people, and things
• Take responsibility pro-actively in solving problems
• Follow through with good ideas that have been started
• Critically evaluate their own actions as they work toward still better solutions
• Correct and later prevent their own errors.
• Succeed on mandated standardized achievement tests.
• Gather precise information.
• Make sense out of new materials.
• Learn how to learn.

The FIE Program is now published in 18 different languages and has been adopted in 70 countries around the world; it has been rigorously evaluated by more than 1500 research studies. The program addresses each of the above strategies through the intense use of unique materials and methods several times per week within the context of the regular curriculum, by specially-prepared teachers.

Today’s teachers of these students need to be able to:

1. Assume a special role of "mediator" when teaching students the special higher-order thinking strategies (a mediator is skilled at asking questions, probing, helping students to help each other, and providing various ways into problem-solving, rather than only as a giver of information).
2. Use the specially-designed FIE problem-solving materials to mediate such higher-order strategies as: comparing, analyzing, organizing, sequencing, categorizing, applying logic, and much more.
3. Enable students to focus directly on the problems at hand without concern for how her students are performing at the same time--in a non-competitive context.
4. Help their students to succeed on state-mandated examinations through proven test-taking techniques such as decision-making, selecting choices, formulating a constructed response, and reasoning through a posed problem.
5. Provide insight for students in the applications of these fundamental problem-solving strategies to all areas of the regular curriculum.
6. Facilitate students' reflection on their own thought processes (known as metacognition), so that students can gradually become independent thinkers.
7. Help students to develop intrinsic motivation in their academic work.

Today’s students’ parents need to be able to:

1. Keep their children focused on school achievement.
2. Maintain high expectations for their children in their schooling.
3. Assist their children with schoolwork through special techniques which are unique to the FIE program.
4. Help their children become effective problem-solvers by following up at home with FIE activities.

For information about how to learn more of this exciting program and to schedule a no-cost Decision-Making Workshop, contact: David S. Martin, Director of Training for IC&TA, at 508-527-0460 or through Email at davidchina_2000@yahoo.com.