Decades before educators began to draw teaching and learning implications from neuroscientists’ groundbreaking findings on brain plasticiy, Reuven Feuerstein had already theorized it and developed practices for teaching and developing higher level cognition and learning for all students, even those with Down syndrome and other learning disabilities. His mediated learning, enrichment instruments, and dynamic assessment are used in urban districts in the United States and around the world to raise student achievement, success levels, and self-regulation. In this final work, Feuerstein provides a first-person reflective narrative of the implementation of mediated learning experience (MLE) past and present, including stories, new insights, observations, and newly formulated concepts on MLE and how it contributes to higher-level thinking and overcoming disability. Featuring both educational and clinical case examples, it offers a more detailed picture of the practical applications than any other publication to date. Those familiar with Feuerstein’s methods will find this book an important resource in deepening their knowledge. It is also essential reading for all educators looking for approaches that promote thinking skills that improve educational outcomes for diverse learners. Book Features: Provides stories of Feuerstein’s inspirational journey as a teacher and learner, often working with special needs children and youth. Relates mediated learning to contemporary learning environments Explores theory and research on whether spiritual and behavioral practices change the brain. Includes chapters devoted to questioning techniques and the effects of modern media access to the development of thinking skills. “Reuven Feuerstein’s concepts will continue to enrich cognitive developmental thinking and research and to bring a richer, fuller cognitive development to children, youth, and adults around the world.” —From the Foreword by H. Carl Haywood, Vanderbilt University “Educators who are devoted to enhancing the intellectual functioning of learners need this book. The principles, skills, and strategies of Mediated Learning should become a prerequisite for all teachers. Reuven Feuerstein has made the world a more thoughtful place.” —Arthur L. Costa, professor emeritus, California State University and co-founder, Institute for Habits of Mind International

Originally developed to help students overcome learning obstacles created by emotional trauma or neurobiological learning disabilities, Reuven Feuersteins work is now used in major cities around the world to support improved thinking and learning by all students. This book is the most up-to-date summary of his thinking and includes accessible descriptions of his tools and methods for cognitive modifiablilty and mediated learning. With dramatic case studies throughout the text, Feuerstein and his co-authors define intelligence as a dynamic force that drives the human organism to change the structure of thinking in order to answer the needs it encounters. They describe in detail the specific skills of the three stages of thinking: input or observation and data-gathering stage; development or processing stage; and output stage, including analysis, synthesis, and communication. They show how student thinking can stall in multiple ways at any of these stages and how intentional mediation can help students restructure their thinking and improve their ability to learn. Similarly to cognitive mediated learning, the authors address mediation of social and emotional skills that impact learning.

While self-talk like Now we are buckling you in the car seat so we can go to the store is common parental practice, this book shows how teachers, parents, and therapists can take this to higher levels to advance language cognitive development and learning potential. Based on neuroscience and their own innovative work, the authors provide the rationale and a step-by-step process for using intentional self-talk and think-aloud methods to improve both language and cognitive development in normal and language-delayed children, as well as in older individuals with disabilities. Stories are sprinkled throughout the text to demonstrate mediated self-talk in action and the remarkable results achieved with real children. With clear guidelines for delivery, content, and timing, the crucial core of the process is to narrate thinking, action, and emotion in the presence of children without requiring their response. Book Features: Addresses the growing numbers of children entering school with language poverty, describes the concept of mediated soliloquy (MSL), or self-talk, with individuals or classroomswho should use it and when, where and how it can be applied, and expected outcome, and illustrates the use of MSL for specific language disorders and to improve both language and interpersonal function with children exhibiting delays, disabilities, spectrum behavior, and social/emotional difficulties.

Since the turn of the century, the idea that intellectual capacity is fixed has been generally accepted. But increasingly, psychologists, educators, and others have come to challenge this premise. Outsmarting IQ reveals how earlier discoveries about IQ, together with recent research, show that intelligence is not genetically fixed. Intelligence can be taught. David Perkins, renowned for his research on thinking, learning, and education, identifies three distinct kinds of intelligence: the fixed neurological intelligence linked to IQ tests; the specialized knowledge and experience that individuals acquire over time; and reflective intelligence, the ability to become aware of one's mental habits and transcend limited patterns of thinking. Although all of these forms of intelligence function simultaneously, it is reflective intelligence, Perkins shows, that affords the best opportunity to amplify human intellect. This is the kind of intelligence that helps us to make wise personal decisions, solve challenging technical problems, find creative ideas, and learn complex topics in mathematics, the sciences, management, and other areas. It is the kind of intelligence most needed in an increasingly competitive and complicated world. Using his own pathbreaking research at Harvard and a rich array of other sources, Perkins paints a compelling picture of the skills and attitudes underlying learnable intelligence. He identifies typical pitfalls in multiple perspectives, and neglecting evidence. He reveals the underlying mechanisms of intelligent behavior. And he explores new frontiers in the development of intelligence in education, business, and other settings. This book will be of interest to people who have a personal or professional stake in increasing their intellectual skills, to those who look toward better education and a more thoughtful society, and not least to those who follow today's heated debates about the nature of intelligence.

Goes beyond popular exercises to counsel readers on how to maintain brain health regardless of age, challenging conventional wisdom to offer insight into how the brain works while providing real-world examples based on current scientific understandings. 25,000 first printing.

Research studies have examined the relationship between working memory, cognitive skills, and academic abilities. However, while some studies and scientific articles have demonstrated that working memory can be increased through direct intervention in either the clinical or classroom setting, other studies have failed to show any further transfer. These conflicting results are a key concern, as they suggest that generalization effects are elusive and inconclusive. Some research has utilized computer software programs to enhance cognitive skills with a focus on working memory training; however, an alternative approach on working memory is the use of a human mediator. In this book, we present results that demonstrate the idea that working memory training does not seem to have a causative effect in relation to verbal, nonverbal, and academic abilities when using The Equipping Minds Cognitive Development Curriculum for 30 hours of intervention. It removes this limitation for learners with a specific learning disorder. This finding adds to the importance of emphasizing deficient cognitive functions rather than deficient working memory alone.

Drawing from the author’s extensive clinical experience, this autism casebook offers stimulating reflections and a fresh perspective on how we assess, diagnose, and ultimately treat young children thought to be autistic. Challenging what she perceives as the rampant over-diagnosis and misdiagnosis of autism, and the commonly accepted status of autism as an unchangeable trait, Dr. Levin Fox illustrates how the developmental play strategies of DIRFloortime, combined with the creative psychological perspective of Reuven Feuerstein, create an effective way of identifying the child's strengths behind the autistic symptoms. The chapters are an accessible mix of clinical insights, theoretical reflections and vivid case stories that argue and illustrate that qualitative assessment methods based on play have the power to yield a more accurate clinical understanding of a child's difficulties—and strengths—than conventional symptom-focused autism assessment methods. This engaging casebook will stimulate practitioners, educators and students in the field of autism to question commonly held assumptions when assessing and treating autistic children, as it both urges and illustrates more reflective practice. Parents of children considered autistic will find renewed encouragement and hope in these enlightening case stories.