Feuerstein’s Instrumental Enrichment program in Roma settlements in Slovakia!

At ETP we are all excited, as long awaited project Let’s learn how to learn, has just started. In partnership with the renowned Feuerstein Institute (FI) in Jerusalem and Private Special Educational Center in Košice, two Israeli psychologists Lea Yosef and Larissa Ben Yehuda, accompanied by two Slovak psychologists Simona Šimková and Simona Bugošová are testing this week 25 first-graders from Veľká Ida and Košice-Šaca using the LPAD, developed by the FI.

The LPAD – Learning Potential Assessment Device – is a dynamic assessment method, which, unlike typically used psychometric IQ tests providing only static information on current cognitive level of an individual, offers dynamic information on children´s ability to learn, their potential.

Before the school starts on September 2nd 2013, the experienced Israeli psychologists will, based on LPAD results, provide detailed information on tested children to their teachers, special pedagogues and ETP Slovakia’s community centers’ workers. The educators of the children will then better understand what are the gaps in children’s cognitive functions to be tackled during the course of this school year.

This extraordinary ETP Slovakia’s initiative, supported by the EEA, Swiss grants and other donors will apply the Feuerstein Instrumental Enrichment (FIE) method into a daily work with children from two marginalized Roma communities to enhance their learning potential.

Educational institutions, two elementary schools and two community centers in Košice-Šaca and Veľká Ida will use the FIE Mediated Learning method to enhance thinking skills as a support for lesson plans and after-school activities with approximately 40 children from socially deprived environment. The method will be similarly employed in at least 6 other community centers operated by ETP, where pre-school clubs work systematically on a daily basis with approximately 100 Roma children. As a result, children will gain the knowledge and tools to reach beyond their manifested abilities.

The FIE is based on principals of developmental and cognitive psychology and it has been successfully applied in more than 40 countries worldwide. The FIE has proved its effectiveness, described in many research studies, in dealing with children, youngsters and/or adults, whose ability to learn and study have been slowed down or impaired for various reasons.

The long-term vision of the project is to provide policy makers and stakeholders in Slovakia with this effective tool for education of children from marginalized Roma communities, whose abilities to be educated in standard schools using standard pedagogic methods are dramatically limited taking into consideration their deficiencies caused by social environment in which they live.

Projekt bol podporený Islandom, Lichtenštajnskom a Nórskom prostredníctvom Programu Aktívne občianstvo a inklúzia, ktorý realizuje Nadácia Ekopolis v spolupráci s Nadáciou pre deti Slovenska a SOCIA – nadácia pre sociálne zmeny.

Aktivity sú tiež podporované prostredníctvom projektu Komunita na ceste k prosperite, súčasti Programu švajčiarsko-slovenskej spolupráce v rámci rozšírenej Európskej únie v rámci Výzvy 2010-03 „Iniciatívy regionálneho rozvoja v okrajových a znevýhodnených regiónoch“.B_90x30mm.indd

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