To provide the educational and mental health communities with services, training, and research in a revolutionary framework, that is accompanied by unique methods and practical tools, in order to facilitate cognitive and behavioral changes in individuals’ thinking and learning.
The National Center for Enriching Thinking & Learning (NCETL) was organized to promote the enrichment of critical thinking and learning skills – based on the work of world-renowned cognitive psychologist, Reuven Feuerstein – in children, parents, and educators throughout the United States and Canada. Feuerstein’s methods and programs have been effective in classrooms, homes, clinics, and tutorial centers around the globe for more than 60 years.
Our Purpose
The United States Internal Revenue Service has approved NCETL as a tax-exempt organization exclusively for charitable, educational, and scientific purposes. NCETL shall conduct and support such activities as clinical dynamic assessments and cognitive interventions for those in need – individuals and their family members – while increasing public knowledge and understanding of cognitive educational programs through sponsoring “experts” panel discussions, research, evaluations, and school implementation.
The Need
Parents, educators, psychologists, and other helping professionals around the world have been utilizing and implementing Feuerstein’s work for 60 years. Today, the Method is used in more than 80 countries – throughout most of Europe, the UK, Africa, Asia, South America, the Middle East, Australia, New Zealand, and North America. Due to the size of North America (United States and Canada), it is very difficult for sufficient families, educators, and schools to adopt the Method in order to address the needs of every individual.
The concept of human modifiability addresses not only those who are very low in functioning but a very broad and diverse range of individuals. It addresses a very wide variety of populations with diverse levels of functioning, and differences in cognitive, social, emotional, genetic, age, and other variables, which are in “need” of change but may not have the tools or cognitive processes in order to do so. It takes highly dedicated and trained personnel to enable the individual to become adaptable and malleable, and to enhance their ability to constructively increase the quantity and quality of their thinking and problem solving skills by means of direct and indirect learning experiences throughout life events.
In today’s world, the individual is faced with a high paced, high tech, high moving life style. But, to succeed, the individual needs to be equipped with specific concepts, processes, strategies, and operations. These great demands for enabling all individuals in becoming more productive, active, insightful members of society are applicable only in the Feuerstein Method.
Objectives
NCETL is planned as a dedicated, practical service center providing a custom-designed solution for a highly specific function. Our long-term objective is to construct a unique set of services for individual students, families, educators and schools for improving the quantity and quality of thinking and learning. It will be a dedicated facility designed specifically for enriching and enhancing thinking and learning for all individuals throughout the United States and Canada.
NCELT will seek funds in order to provide clinical services to assess and treat individuals in order to enrich their learning potential. The Feuerstein dynamic assessment of cognitive modifiability and cognitive intervention programs will be used with students who are diagnosed as developmentally disabled (ASD, PDD, PDD-NOS), emotionally disturbed, and those labeled as ADHD/ADD.
NCETL will identify schools that are committed to the full integration of the Feuerstein Method into their school community. Over a 5-year period, NCETL will assist each adopting school to build a program centered on clinical and school practices. NCETL will partner with organizations in order to prepare, manage, and evaluate the Enriched Learning Schools it creates. NCETL will provide financial assistance to charter schools, small public or private schools that elect to use the Feuerstein Method as the core program to improve the quality of student learning. Specifically, NCETL will coordinate the integration of the Feuerstein Method into the school’s curriculum, with a special emphasis on improving math and literacy scores.
NCETL will seek funds to research the best practices in cognitive intervention that not only effect student achievement, but also sustain programs. It is our goal to research the effectiveness of the Feuerstein method with targeted populations, and includes studying the effectiveness of clinical methodology, parental involvement, and the school.
About Me
- Kathleen Bellanca
- Bellanca earned her degrees in General and Developmental Psychology from DePaul University in Chicago, Illinois. Throughout her academic career, Kate became fully certified in all Feuerstein methods and programs. Kate has interned at Feuerstein’s acclaimed International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential (ICELP) in Israel under the direct guidance of Professor Reuven Feuerstein and Dr. Steven Gross, Director of International Programs. Spending the first seven years of her career, Bellanca has worked directly with schools, families, and other helping professionals throughout North America to assist them in affecting significant change in their children’s learning potential via International Renewal Institute (iRi) applications of Feuerstein’s work in the classroom, home, and clinical settings. Kate’s special interest is applying Feuerstein’s Mediated Learning Experience (MLE) and Learning Propensity Assessment Device (LPAD) to the Special Needs population. Her goal is to equip the Special Needs community, young and old, with the tools for cognitive modifiability and to provide families, schools, and clinics with the hope and tools to advance change.
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