Intelligence and school based intervention
Can We Teach Intelligence? A comprehensive
Evaluation of Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment Programme. Author:
Nigel Blagg
Published
by Hillsdale, New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1991
Review by Robert Burden. Published
in The Psychologist. December 1991
Back in the heady days when the Secretary
of State showed signs of actually caring about what happened to
the less advantaged children in the edu-cation system, LEAs were
encouraged to bid for funds from the Low Attaining Pupils Project.
One authority, Somerset, gained support to train a number of teachers
using Feuerstein's Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) programme, and
subsequently introduced it to all four comprehensive schools in
Bridgwater. Nigel Blagg was seconded to carry out a DES-funded evaluation
while simulta-neously coordinating a team of teachers working on
bridging materials to foster IE skill-transfer to the mainstream
school curriculum. This fascinating book is the long-awaited outcome
of the Bridgwater experiment.
Feuerstein's work has echoed Vy-gotsky's emphasis on the social
inter-actionist nature of learning ('mediated learning experiences'),
and the import-ance of language as a basis for learning how to learn.
The FIE programme dif-fers from domain-specific approaches to learning
in claiming that the skills, strategies, vocabulary, and concepts
necessary for successful learning and problem-solving can be taught
independently of any particular subject area.
Readers of recent issues of The Psy-chologist will be well aware
of the disputed nature of such terms as "cogni-tion" and
"intelligence'. Thus, when Blagg asks, "Can we improve
intel-ligence?", the answer must be, "It all depends ...".
Moreover, such a fundamental question as "How will we know
if a cognitive development programme works?" is capable of
being answered in a multitude of different ways. For example, although
Feuerstein has never claimed that IE will affect IQ, most at-tempts
to assess it have used this measure. While Blagg's research found
no discernible effect of intervention on British Abilities Scale
performance, Savell et al. (1986), has provided generally positive
evidence on this score. Of far greater interest to my mind, however,
were the rating scales and interviews that Blagg devised. These
showed that a number of positive behavioural and atti-tudinal shifts
occurred in both IE students and their teachers.
Reviewing this book is not easy. It is not only rich with data
but also with inter-pretations and implications for cognitive theorists,
curriculum developers and pro-ject evaluators. Its very scope leaves
it open to criticism on a number of fronts, but to nit-pick would
be manifestly un-fair. Rather, 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 psycho-logists and educators. In doing so, he has
faced squarely a number of fun-damental issues about whether schools
can and should become more cognitively oriented, how we might measure
"suc-cess" in this endeavor, and what kind of evaluative
design is most likely to do justice to the complexity of the variables
involved. Whether or not I agree with Blagg's choice of measurement
techniques, or the conclusions that he draws from some of his data,
is in a sense neither here nor there. 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.
Reference
Savell, J M, Twohig, P T & Rackford D L (1986). Empirical status
of Feuerstein's Instrumental
Enrichment techniques as a method of teaching thinking skills. Review
of educational Research, 56, 381-409. Dr Burden is with the School
of Education, University of Exeter.
Can We Teach Intelligence is available from Nigel Blagg Associates