Reuven Feuerstein - Beyond Smarter: Mediated Learning and the Brain’s Capacity for Change

Reading this beautifully written book on theory and practice brought up a flood of warm and vivid memories from the mid-1970s, when I first met Professor Reuven Feuerstein and several members of his team. I was in the College of Arts and Sciences at Vanderbilt University and had heard that he was giving a talk at the John F. Kennedy Center, a major research institution at George Peabody College, Vanderbilts esteemed school of education. Along with several students and colleagues, I decided to attend.

The talk was riveting. The preface to this book captures two of the major reasons why I was so moved by the talk. (The preface is in Professor Feuersteins own words and they are much more eloquent than mine, so be sure to read it.) To foreshadow the discussion, youll see that he emphasizes two major influences on his lifes work: (1) Opportunities to work closely with major scholarsespecially Jean Piaget and Andre Reyand (2) the end of World War II and the subsequent challenge of helping child Holocaust survivors from across the world who were immigrating to Palestine, soon to become Israel.

Many of these youth seemed far less sophisticated developmentally than the youth who participated in studies that Professor Feuerstein had observed and conducted while working with Piaget and Rey, and this was often correlated with low scores. For example, on tests such as the Ravens Progressive Matrices (described later in this book). A natural and humanistic response to these low levels of performanceand many of Feuersteins colleagues argued for this response with the best of intentionswas to carve out a set of societal niches where these people could be comfortable and become able to support themselves. But what kinds of societal niches? Many argued that they should require only menial skills. Feuerstein disagreed.

The question Feuerstein asked was: Does the possibility exist for a kind of cognitive modifiability that goes beyond helping people simply learn a particular set of facts and manual procedures and, instead, develops strategic context-sensitive skills, knowledge, identities, and habits of mind that transform their abilities to interact with others; to identify problems and turn them into opportunities for new learning; and to shape their environments when needed in order to make learning more effective? Could sensitive approaches to assessment, intervention (mediation), and opportunities for continued engagement in socially supportive environments allow people to continue to accelerate and expand their learning abilities over a lifetime? Feuersteins answer to these questions was yes, and his commitment to this answer prompted his theory of structural cognitive modifiability and the development of a suite of assessments and interventions for helping people succeed.

If you read the preface, youll see that the idea of cognitive modifiability has been, and still is, often met with great resistance. Part of the reason, I think, is that it has been interpreted differently by various groups of people. Does it mean that ones goal should be to produce large changes in intelligence test scores for individuals? Does it mean that people can be helped to overcome self-doubts and impulsive, non-strategic habits of mind in order to free them to persist and experience more successful future learning? From what I saw, a focus on changes in intelligence test scores was not Feuersteins major metric for success. One reason for this is that critics could say that he simply taught to the test.

The second idea of cognitive modifiability that I discussed earlier is one that resonates with me personally and I think also with Professor Feuerstein. It fits numerous cases I have seen of Professor Feuerstein interacting with students and helping them change their confidence and strategies while also getting feedback from parents about encouraging changes in their children that fit more closely with this second perspective. Since modern researchers continue to find evidence that behavior affects brain development and not only vice versa, this second interpretation of cognitive modifiability is not simply a statement that, with practice, people can learn more knowledge and skills yet still remain at a fixed level of development. It is a much more powerful statement that supports the need for continued research on social support for modifiability and what it means and how it works.