Our Cognitive Programs: Grade 4 to High School

Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment Program

What is FIE?

Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment Program Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) is a cognitive education program. The program began in the 1950s by Professor Reuven Feuerstein. Instrumental Enrichment consists of fourteen instruments that focus on specific cognitive functions. The program has been successfully used in seventy countries as a tool for the enhancement of learning potential in:

• ‘normal’ individuals;
• Executives with large corporations; and
• specially challenged individuals.

FIE is a classroom curriculum designed to enhance the cognitive functions necessary for academic learning and achievement. The fundamental assumption of the program (based on the theory and research pioneered by Professor Reuven Feuerstein) is that intelligence is dynamic and modifiable, not static or fixed. Thus the program seeks to:

• correct deficiencies in fundamental thinking skills,
• provide students with the concepts, skills, strategies, operations and techniques necessary to function as independent learners, and
• diagnose and to help students learn how to learn.

FIE Instruments

FIE materials are organized into instruments that comprise paper-and- pencil tasks aimed at such specific cognitive domains such as:

• analytic perception,
• orientation in space and time,
• comparative behavior,
• classification
• …and many more.

Instrumental Enrichment is never a matter of rote learning or mere reproduction of a learned skill. It always involves the:

• application of rules,
• principles, or
• strategies in a variety of tasks.

Thus, FIE systematically reinforces the cognitive functions that enable learners to:

• define problems,
• make connections and see relationships,
• motivate themselves,
• and improve their work habits.

FIE Instruments, Level 1:

• Organization of Dots
• Comparisons
• Orientation in Space I
• Analytic Perception

FIE Instruments, Level 2:

• Illustrations
• Family Relations
• Categorization
• Numerical Progressions
• Temporal Relations

FIE Instruments, Level 3:

• Instructions
• Orientation in Space II
• Syllogisms
• Transitive Relations
• Representational Stencil Design

A SAMPLE PAGE from Organization of Dots:

Connect the dots so that the geometric figures in the first frame appear in each of the following frames. The Orientations of the figures may be different from the first frame. Some of the figures overlap.