INFORMATION AND AUTONOMY:
Mediation According to Feuerstein
Aida Varela Varela
Salvador – Bahia
2003

INFORMATION AND AUTONOMY: Mediation According to Feuerstein[1]

Aida Varela[2]

"What the ICELP – Jerusalem has been missing throughout the years was the opportunity of learning about the modifiability of large systems, and the kinds of conditions which have to be produced in order to change not only a child, a school, but to change the societal network, to permeate its various educational, technological and social structures. The work done in this field in Bahia, Brazil, is definitely a unique experience in our world, and it is very seldom that one comes across such a far-reaching initiative by the State Government, combined with such effective organizational powers"

(REUVEN FEUERSTEIN, 2001.)

Is it possible to know how the world will be tomorrow? What reader's profile can be outlined based on the: education level; evasion dynamics; repetition; transference of acquired knowledge; selection; organization; roll of arguments, facts, and opinions to defend points of view; and elaboration of proposals to solve problems? Will the tomorrow be a reflection of the mediators' actions?

The more we master the act of knowing or understanding, integrating, elaborating, and expressing information, better will be the solutions found to solve problems.

Brazil, as well as the other Latin American countries, is engaged in fostering reforms in education that enable us to overcome the situation of extreme disadvantage in relation to the education and knowledge level present in developed countries.

The so called "computer science revolution" furthers radical changes in the knowledge field, which becomes a central issue in the development process. We can say that, in the next decades, education will be transformed at a much greater speed than in many others, due to a new theoretical understanding of the school's role stimulated by the incorporation of new technologies.

Presently, in Brazil, the High School is part of the Basic Education; education level every young Brazilian must have to face adult life assuredly. For that reason, a reform with a curriculum focused on the mastering of basic competencies and not only information gathering was proposed for the High School, a curriculum linked to diverse contexts of the students' life. Not a list of subject areas and obligatory contents any more, but, composing each area, a set of competencies and abilities to be built by the educators during the three High School years. The assembly of diverse contents in areas along with the definition of competencies and abilities imply an inversion of the traditional curriculum organization perspective. Opposite to the knowledge fragmentation represented by shattering the school life into subject areas that do not communicate, the new curriculum concept is based on the dialog between specific subjects, underscoring the convergent points and similarities as well as the differences and singularities.

To understand phenomena, facts, and texts means to consider them as a structure or relative totality and submit them to mental operations that check the functionality of their internal components or of their constitutive parts and external relations. Text comprehension involves multiple cognitive processes, perception of relations with a bigger text, and inference of meaning and information by the use of more and more flexible and original strategies. It is a cognitive and social act between two subjects (the reader and the author), involving the comprehension of sentences and arguments among others.

How can we activate such a proposal? It was in Israel that Bahia, during cognitive development researches, discovered one of the most renowned researchers of the contemporaneous world concerned about studying the human cognitive modifiability, Professor Reuven Feuerstein. The Government of Bahia focused its attention on methodologies presently and successfully used in different countries throughout the world, firming then a contract with the ICELP – International Center for The Enhancement of Learning Potential –, with the objective of, by the means of a strategic program such as the IE Program – Instrumental Enrichment Program – to foster a revolution in the education in Bahia.

Disciple of Piaget, Reuven Feuerstein proposes revolutionary concepts in the field of human cognition or, more precisely, in the field of human learning abilities and development. According to Reuven, the Structural Cognitive Modifiability Theory (SCM) is based on the cognitive structure flexibility, and has, as one of its central concepts, the belief that the human being has a plastic, flexible mind, open to changes, as well as the potential and a natural tendency for learning.

According to Professor Reuven Feuerstein, we have more Internalized potential then we are able to show; therefore the learning capacity can be broadened, as long as we have not only good mediators but also proper tools. The capacity to learn emerges from the Structural Cognitive Modifiability concept that explains human intelligence as a dynamic, flexible and modifiable construction, based on the adaptability of human kind throughout its historical-social route, regardless age, social class, genetic factors, among others. This implies in a new way of considering formation and qualification of human beings.

The program Educate to Win, proposed by the Government of the State of Bahia / Education Department for the period of 1999/2002, implanted bases to reinforce Education. The IE Program is among the strategies that drive this proposal forward, integrating the High School Curriculum of the State Public Education of Bahia since 1999, aiming to restore, in the students and Education professionals, the belief in the continuous development of human potential.

The IE Program, organized by the Israeli psychologist Reuven Feuerstein, has its theoretical bases on the Structural Cognitive Modifiability and on the Mediated Learning Experience. It is a pedagogic program, an application of the theories that base it, promoting experiences, and is constituted by fourteen instruments, each of them dedicated to exercise different cognitive functions making the use of a repertoire that goes from the basic to the most abstract operations, using verbal and non verbal language, feasible.

IE is not a tool with the unique goal of helping students understand the subject areas or other contents, but to help them achieve a more radical and global change, a flexibility for him/her to change at his/her own will, or even to follow to the formula that became renowned ­ learn to learn. It is therefore clear that the goal is to build transversal capacities and a general capacity, a matrix that allows the subject to access all other capacities.

Why IE? The Instrumental Enrichment Program corresponds to the renewing intentions of Law no. 9.394/96 – Law of National Education Guide Lines and Bases – LDB – and to the educational goals of High School present in the Resolution of June 01, 1998. When using the Mediated Learning Experience to optimize teaching and learning potentials, update teachers, and develop cognitive functions and mental operations of individuals regardless age and condition, we underscore the fact that, when using coherent methodologies with current demands, we reach educational quality. IE corresponds also to the needs of the several different subject areas, detected in the Carlos Chagas Foundation research, 2000, for the Program Educate to Win. Research accomplished with students at the end of the Fundamental School – 8th Grade.

In the above-mentioned research, it was observed that, in studying Portuguese, the students had difficulties with global inferences regarding the text as a whole and also local inferences regarding the meaning of a word, and finding explicit information, among other difficulties. It was also noticed that the students had need of structural knowledge of specific types of text, as in the case of an Instructional text. The results allow us to say that the difficulties presented by the students in this test were basically due to the reading of fragmented units, and to a reading attitude restricted to decoding graphic signs. Since this was an 8th grade group, we expected these difficulties to be overcome towards a more global, interpretative, and contextualized understanding.

In Mathematics, the test evidenced unsatisfactory results regarding questions that involved rational numbers, direct and inversely proportional amounts, and questions on measurements, especially on calculation of areas. Generally speaking, the students knew how to solve the more traditional problems, those more frequently presented in schoolbooks. Nevertheless the results were not satisfactory. Few were the questions where the correct answers were equal or above 30%. Students' difficulties refer also to understanding instructions, i.e., to dealing with the language of these instructions and translating them into mathematical language.

These problems point towards the reflection of methodological strategies used for transmitting contents in the classroom. The students seem to be presented with a closed content, without the proper instruments to analyze problems, understand instructions, establish relations, formulate hypothesis, interpret results under the light of the problem, and face all this in new and varied situations.

In terms of pedagogy, IE is the "backbone" of the curriculum integrating the basic principles proposed by the High School educational reform. With the Mediated Learning Experience it aims to increase the human organism's capacity to be modified, and specifically, to develop the individual's cognitive functions during the learning process, giving him/her: basic vocabulary; a good repertoire of learning strategies and studying techniques; motivating him/her to enjoy the success of the built task; increase the level of reflexive thought; and develop self-awareness, self-confidence, and autonomy at work. The specific IE goals are consistent to develop the preconditions necessary for a good cognitive function. The management of each Instrument implies on efficiency by the teacher, as it demands capacity to mediate the tasks.

The student is exposed to a variety of tasks and language modalities in IE presented to develop/exercise cognitive functions. The concepts are built by mastering the precise word, and the students awareness is built by his/her dedication to the tasks, understanding that his/her motivation to work cognitively does not depend on the external world, but on him/herself (intrinsic motivation).

The principals and strategies extracted or used in the IE tasks are assimilated to be transferred to life situations such as studying school subjects, social and labor life. Here we enter the field of metacognition. Insight helps us to understand what functions must be activated to perform a task, solve a problem, and identify the demands to accomplish something in a satisfactory way. IE focuses the modification of attitudes and behaviors - active, organized, and aware - which correspond to the goals and volitive nature of the cognitive process. For Feuerstein, this is the energetic component of the cognitive behavior.

The ATC Bahia – So that the activities demanded by the IE Program could be developed, the ATC Bahia – Authorized Training Center of Bahia – was created, which, integrated to the Luís Eduardo Magalhães Foundation, and with the authorization of the Hadassah-WIZO Canada Research Institute, Jerusalem, and ICELP – International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential/ Israel –, disseminates the Structural Cognitive Modifiability Theory – SCM – and the Mediated Learning Experience – MLE –, being responsible for the Coordination and the IE Training, Supervision, Assessment, and Administration Management. The Training Management prepares teachers to mediate their students with IE; the Supervision Management provides the IE teachers with continuous orientation, making them autonomous and independent granting the proper application of the IE methodological strategies; the Assessment Management follows the IE implantation/implementation effectiveness in the State Public High S - In 1999, the IE was implemented in 18 High Schools, located in 17 municipalities of the State of Bahia, being offered to approximately 15,580 students, by 472 education professionals, trained by the ATC Bahia to work as IE mediators. In 2002, these numbers grew to 320,895 students, 4,852 teachers, and 419 school managers, distributed in 268 schools and 90 municipalities of the State of Bahia, according to the following table:

School Census Base ­ SEC/2001 (except schools with H.S. implantation in 2002).
Total number of students benefited by the Program.
Total number of teachers trained by the Program.
Total number of Principals and Vice Principals that took part in the Application of the Program.

IE Implementation – Follow-up and Assessment – The assessment studies of governmental programs and policies allow formulators and implementers to make objective decisions optimizing public expenses in the several activities object of state intervention, when identifying and overcoming both strangling and success points of the programs. As a consequence we see emerge rational perspectives to implement public policies with more capacity to reach the results desired by the formulators in the programs' operation plans in any government competence area. The IE implementation, as a political action had to be assessed so the benefits brought by the program's application with High School students from the State Public Schools would be acknowledged.

An investigation, by sample, of High Schools both from the capital as from interior municipalities, is taking place to follow the IE implementation process. It involves teachers and classes of the morning, afternoon, and night shifts, using data collection instruments that provide a qualitative and quantitative assessment in experimental groups - constituted by students from school with IE – and control groups – constituted by students from school without IE.

The goal of the assessment research studies regarding the IE implementation has been to answer the following question: Does the Instrumental Enrichment Program ­ IE –, methodological strategy embraced by the Education Department of the State of Bahia, based on the force of the document, integrated to the Program Educate to Win, concentrate attributes to improve the understanding process of information – information apprehension, meaning, and transference – of High School teachers and students from the State Public Schools, causing a cognitive modification?

The assessment proposed by the research comprises basically three school segments: the teacher, observing his/her efficiency in mediating tasks, the use of rules, and the understanding of the strategies proposed be the IE; the student, by the means of varied assessment instruments – psychological, pedagogic, and of specific content – where his/her precision, perfection, speed, and capacity to transcend and transfer the cognitive strategies, and control impulsivity, besides the diagnosis of his/her teachers were taken into consideration; and finally, the Program itself, its role in overcoming the students learning difficulties, its effects on the social-emotional adaptation of these students and on his/her attitude in all ambits of his/her interpersonal relations.

The IE implementation has been taking place by the means of a systematic model, seeing to the following phases: awareness building, where the disclosure of the project at schools and other society segments, by the means of lectures, communication by letters, folders, and releases to generate interest for the project and provide novelties regarding its implementation, besides also disclosing results, and progresses, occurs. The second phase was the training of teachers from the State Public High Schools by thirty teachers who had recently arrived from the ICELP – Jerusalem. These first professionals were capacitated as trainers for the Instrumental Enrichment Program; in other words, they were authorized to train teachers to mediate the IE Instruments.

In 1999 the research project assessed the impact of the new methodological strategy arrival to support the teaching / learning process. At the beginning of 2000, evaluations were made to assess the modifiability rate following the application of the initial IE instruments, level I (Organization of Dots, Orientation in Space, and Analytical Perception). In 2000 and 2001 the IE implementation was formally followed and assessed during all its process, and we observed that, in order to offer IE, with the option of four hours/week, two school years are necessary, and that IE level II can only be offered by education professionals with experience in IE I during one school year.

Due to the cognitive nature of the IE Project, for the person to compare, classify, generalize, and interpret information, we assume the need of certain competencies related to inherent characteristics and determined mental operations, such as: conservation of determined "wholes" that allow reversible operations (addition, subtraction, potentiation, square root etc.); division of the whole into parts (fraction, decimal numbers); diversified relations between the parts and the whole of a text (reproduction of the paragraphs' order, inference of the text's central idea); apprehensions of common characteristics and attributes (classification of bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional figures, identification of thesis and arguments, scene and character). We had to elaborate data gathering instruments that covered psychological, pedagogic, and management fields of a project with a cognitive nature, extensively used.

Presenting and exercising competencies and abilities, cognitive functions and mental operations, besides fulfilling the principles of the High School Reform foreseen by the LDB 9.394/96, the IE activates the rupture of a methodological paradigm with the following characteristics: student generating information (critical, reflexive, capable of solving problems, autonomous); teacher mediator with meaningful, contextualized, and universal knowledge, linking different subject areas, checking the learning process focused on the learn to learn idea; school capable of building pedagogic proposals and methodological routes, constituting a Modifying Environment. All this is reflected on the capacity of the student to understand, transform, and transcend information.

According to Reuven Feuerstein, the Cognitive Modifiability Theory, which basis the IE Program, has as its basic postulate the certainty and every human being is modifiable and all individuals interested in getting involved in a process of cultural transmission (parents, teachers, educators etc.) must always consider that: a) all human beings, even those with severe learning deficiencies, are modifiable; b) the mediators attitude can produce these modifications; c) the mediator also has to modify him/herself, and persist in a continuous self-modification process; d) both the society and the public opinion are modifiable. Based on these statements, Feuerstein proposes the Mediated Learning Experiences (MLE).

To check the problem outlined by the researches, data collection instruments were selected: Social-economic and Cultural Questionnaire; Progressive Matrixes ­ General Scale – Series A, B, C, D, and E (J.C. Raven); IE Test; and Transference of Solution Strategies from the Problem-Situation used in the IE to school subject areas such as Portuguese, Mathematics, Geography, and History, just to mention some.

Social-economic and Cultural Questionnaire – The data presented by this instrument outlined the profile of the High School day and night shift students, in the schools observed by the Research: students, basically around 16 and 17 years of age, consider themselves to be mulattos, with 1 to 3 brothers and sisters, presenting learning difficulties in the several subject areas. Both the day and the night shift students explained the problem was that they had trouble understanding and interpreting texts, understanding problems, reasoning while searching for a solution for those problems, and memorizing Information. Regarding the school level of the parents of the day shift students, the greater percentage was registered in Middle School and Complete High School, while with the parents of the night shift students, the greater percentages was registered between 1st and 4th grade. The mother's occupation was housewife and self-employee, and the father's self-employee, employee of the public sector, service rendering, and the answer "I don't know" had a meaningful percentage. In average the students take from 8 to 11 years to finish the fundamental school, come from public schools (56.5%) and dedicate 0.5 to 2 hours to reading, having as extracurricular activity foreign language and computer science.

Progressive Matrixes ­ General Scale – Series A, B, C, D, and E (J. C. Raven) – This instrument assessed the students' cognitive potential, displaying the cognitive functions that needed to be worked on, providing basis to plan the pedagogic interventions. The test administered in 2000 to some students that were integrating the school units (experimental and control groups), at two different moments (pre and post test) indicated a higher rate of correct answers after the IE intervention during 8 (eight) months. The data demonstrated a greater discrimination capacity, a greater capacity of generating new information through synthesis, permutation and categorization; a greater efficiency in the inductive and deductive reasoning both in the experimental as in the control group, with distinction for some night shift classes.

During the year of 2001, the percentage of correct answer in Raven Test increased in 1st year classes of the experimental group both in the day and night shift. The day shift students presented a higher and more meaningful growth in the capacity of analyses, synthesis, and comparative behavior. The night shift students had the greatest percentage of correct answers in abstractions, overlapping, building new concepts using two sources of information simultaneously, establishing relations, and activating the hypothetical-inferential reasoning to build a new answer.

In the 2nd year experimental group classes, the positive change occurred in all Raven Test series, observing that, in the day shift the modification referred to the analogical reasoning, and in the night shift classes the modification of the hypothetical-inferential reasoning was outstanding.

IE Test – Aiming to know the individual's cognitive potential when facing problem-situations, this test used parts of the IE Instruments to detect cognitive functions in need of development, the degree of retention and strategy transference from the IE exercises to other more complex cognitive exercises and knowledge areas, the students awareness regarding the cognitive strategies performed mentally to solve problem-situations, and to detect also the quality of the mediation this student received.

The IE Test has been used since 2000, and with its help we are able to understand the difficulty students face when trying to solve problem-situations where comparison and analytical perception are needed. The need to exercise analysis and synthesis, articulation of the whole and its parts, enumeration, and the use of two or more sources of information became evident. We also detected: some cognitive dysfunction and little use of IE strategies for more complex activities, low awareness by the student regarding the cognitive strategies that were used, and non existence of habit formation in the mental act route when facing problem-situations. With this we can infer problems in the quality of the mediation received.

During 2001, after analyzing the IE Test data, problems became evident in Classifications, Family Relations, and Analytical Perceptions. As observed in previous experiences, when more complex mental operations were not necessary there was a high rate of correct answers (above 70.0%). When problems from these same instruments worked with cognitive functions of the type encode/decode, and several simultaneous sources of information, the percentage of correct answers was below 70.0%. With problems where it was necessary to restructure a fractionated whole demanding change in the perceptive field, resulting in an analysis and synthesis process, the students presented difficulties due to the incapacity of gathering units and working with them simultaneously presenting a fairly low percentage of correct answers. Comparison problems requiring precision, discrimination, determination of similarities and differences, determination of relations, and justification of the answer, all this to reach a comparative behavior, presented a low percentage of correct answers. Orientation in Space problems demanding the use of the universal system of Orientation is Space and the relative personal system of reference, needing a reversibility of the movement in space also presented a low percentage of correct answers. Problems that assess transference potential of cognitive abilities to new situations (Family Relations, Temporal Relations, Orientation in Space, and Organizer) presented little variation in the result, especially considering the day shift, demonstrating that there is still not self-confidence in transferring abilities to - By Portuguese, Math, Geography, and History tests, we tried to link contents to the cognitive competencies used in the construction of knowledge, understanding cognitive competencies as different structural intelligence modalities that comprise certain operations used by the subject to establish relations with and between physical objects, concepts, situations, phenomena, and people.

Competencies / describers were used to build the items of the test that assessed the students performance in the different subject areas. We held the epistemological assumption that the scientific, mathematical, linguistic, historical contents and others, constitute principles, concepts, and information connected by intellectual operations (classification, categorization, correspondence, cause and effect, correlation, implication etc.) prioritizing, therefore, the assessment of the contents under the perspective of the competencies and abilities there existent. The reasoning act is implicit in this concept, in other words, to list the information and produce them in a more meaningful manner, making inferences when necessary. According to the ENEM ­ Exame Nacional do Ensino Médio –, the competencies are characterized in three distinct action and mental operation levels: basic, operational, and global. Analyzing the data collected from the subject area tests, we observed that, when comparing the results of the pre and posttests:

* the operational competencies had improved (classify, categorize, order, compose, decompose, conserve proprieties, anticipate, estimate, interpret, justify, etc.);

* the global competencies also improved (analyze, apply, evaluate, criticize, judge, explain cause and effect, present conclusions, suppose, make prognosis, make generalizations, etc.), although not as much as the operational competencies;

* we must practice, some competencies / abilities in the Portuguese Language, such as relate information, establish articulations among terms of different lexical families, and compare paraphrase evaluating its higher or lower fidelity to the original text;

* in Mathematics, we must exercise competencies / abilities such as to build expressions, use procedures, analyze information presented in tables and graphs, calculate natural numbers involving multiplication and division, apply proprieties etc.);

* in History and Geography we must exercise competencies / abilities such as explain past facts relating them to the present, deduct information from remarkable traces, relate information from different sources, establish cause and effect relation associating information, interpret plot charts, geographic anamorphosis, isoline maps, etc.

The content tests elaborated for 2001 were characterized by the integration of abilities relative to IE and ENEM, and we already noticed, even if at a low proportion, in students of the experimental group, transference of IE abilities to solve problem-situations in other knowledge areas in questions that assessed:

* perception of differentiated parts, articulation of the whole-part relations, division of the whole into parts / gathering the parts of the whole, structural analysis, clear and precise perception, logic inference, active relation reorientation;

* awareness of the existence of a problem, identification of the problem, global vision, encoding/decoding, comparative behavior, use of relevant clues;

* orientation in space, mastering representation and internalized behavior in the space articulation, projection of virtual relations, flexibility and plasticity in orientation in space;

* sequence, ordering, systematic work, comparative behavior, planning behavior, coordination and integration of symbolic encoding systems, reference.

An Essay, part of the Portuguese test, targeted the transference of abilities exercised in IE to the written expression as, for instance, the organization of ideas and reasoning, and the argument quality. The essay was analyzed under the light of the basic IE competencies / parameters, although not very deeply, for the students had not yet received enough IE classes and the quality of the mediation did not support consistent results in written language, considering that the argument, the organization of ideas, the justification of alternative solutions to solve problems are effective IE goals. For means of assessment the following parameters and competencies were chosen: language mastery, understanding of the phenomena, facing a problem-situation, building arguments, and elaborating proposal to interfere in reality.

While analyzing the data related to the essay, we observed the students felt difficult understanding the proposal for the essay, which interferes immediately with the generation of ideas to be defended in its development and conclusion. Among the five assessed competencies, we notice that the participants did not yet reach the desired standard of mastery of the written language in any of them. For the text, grammar, orthography, selection of ideas, relations, organization, interpretation of information, facts, and arguments to defend the point of view were not adequate.

The present results can be explained by cultural deprivation, which can be responsible for the slow adaptation movement of the individual to situations, contexts, and innovations. The cultural deprivation syndrome occurs when the individual, for a number of internal and external reasons, is deprived of his own culture. It is not a specific culture that deprives the individual, but internal and external reasons that keep him/her from establishing identification with a determined culture. Frequently culturally deprived individuals are born in a dominant culture, live close to social and educational agents of this same culture but stay totally distant from it, needing, therefore, intensive mediation.

To broaden the information regarding the IE implementation, IE teachers were submitted to a test to assess the variable quality of mediation, diagnosing the vision the teacher had of the world and education before IE and registering the changes the teacher went through after offering IE to his/her students.

Analyzing the gathered data, we observed the strengthening of the teacher's belief in students' modifiability.

Teachers registered facilities and difficulties when mediating IE, which interferes in the students' modifiability degree following the IE.

The following items were enrolled as facilities: solution of exercises, use of strategies and challenge (Organization of Dots); average abstraction rate, accessible language modality (Orientation in Space I); identifying similarities and differences, and familiarity with concrete objects (Comparisons); identification of the whole, the parts and its relations, identifying and establishing new objects (Analytical Perception); elaboration and transcendence, choice of criteria (Classification); practice of orientation in space, task elaboration (Orientation in Space II); establishing relations between illustrations and real facts, pictorial and figurative language, and transcendence (Illustrations).

The following items were enrolled as difficulties: short time for supervision, students' impulsivity, the awakening to the needs, students resistance (Organization of Dots); mental representation / positioning, personal reference system, mediation, elaboration of principles (Orientation in Space I); comparison of abstract concepts, generalizations, definition of differentiation criteria (Comparisons); repetitive exercises, perception of the parts of a whole (Analytical Perception); encoding and decoding data end elements, establishing classification criteria and categories (Classifications); high degree of complexity, definition of the sense of direction of external reference systems, stable and absolute (Orientation in Space II); lack of meaning of the instrument for the students, of engagement of the students in the tasks, and student's impulsivity (Illustrations).

Instrumental Enrichment was outlined by the need of facing the students with stimuli, experiences, and tasks that correct their specific cognitive functions; systematically and intentionally preparing them with information preconditions: verbal standards, types of relations and modes of operation the apprentices need to complete the exercises. All the same, operations such as analogical reasoning, logic multiplication, permutations, substitutions, and elisions will have to become active and explicit components of an operation repertoire in the mind of an individual. This is acquired by the means of active interventions by the teachers/mediators that position themselves between the apprentice and the task, and according to the need of individual knowledge introduce the necessary vocabulary, operations, and strategies to master the mental diagrams.

Due to the fact some school segments did not quite understand the meaning of this methodological strategy, or sometimes due to political and management reasons, resistance against the IE implementation has been detected, and during an intensive supervision work alternatives were being created to minimize this resistance and enlighten the meaning of the choice for this pedagogic resource.

Resistance of teachers and students and the range of IE goals and subgoals­ One of the resistance factors against the IE application by the teacher refers to planning – cognitive map that describes the tasks in class and their requisites, helping the teacher understand the different answers in the several tasks in the varied information universes and mental dominion diagrams. Through these parameters it is possible to analyze, ahead of time, the sources of difficulties inherent to the nature and characteristics of specific tasks end think about them. With this information, a teacher or mediator is able to foresee strategies and techniques to overcome the difficulties the individual may find.

Another resistance factor is that some teachers are reluctant about giving in a percentage of their hour load in their subject area/content to dedicate themselves to formal aspects of learning. This is due to the fact the teachers frequently reserve most of their hour load to "teach" content, even knowing that few are the students who are actually learning. When interviewed about not only disseminating information, but also learning basic diagrams to teach formal reasoning elements, these teachers consider this an absolute waste of time, especially when they don't believe in the student's modifiability.

Regarding the students resistance, we infer that when they are involved in learning, and are acquiring new units of information of any nature, they usually show little cognitive readiness to elaborate relations between units of information to which they are exposed or to master certain molecular components of the mental act. The result of the focus deviation from the content to more formal thinking aspects can be considered a final product of mediation and capacity building.

Some contents resist against the imposition of a learning structure that is alien to its nature. To use, for example, a written poem, and from it, in an associative manner, create a cognitive dimension of organization and succession, trying to create sets of events that are totally inadequate to learn to categorize or classify. That can make the content learning extremely difficult if not impossible.

The teacher's resistance is more difficult to deal with than the student's resistance because the teacher demonstrates little knowledge of the thinking preconditions responsible for the proper cognitive processes. At some moments they state that certain thinking conditions don't necessarily exist in every student or, that even if they do exist, he/she does not use them efficiently. The conclusion is that these teachers base their instructional strategies on false preconceptions.

Therefore, one of the critical issues for the IE implementation is the preparation of the teachers. Those who did not receive the proper training do not understand the IE and its theoretical postulates, and hence easily smooth away in the absence of immediate results, withdrawing to the traditional methods. However, when the teacher actually understands Feuerstein's theory and its applications, they see long-lasting results. So the key of success in the IE method is in preparing the teachers.

The research has, to the moment, been making evident: the social-economic and cultural profile of its clientele and its cognitive potential; the development rate of the cognitive functions (subjects with and without IE intervention); the phase where the IE strategy transference is used for other knowledge fields; the mediation quality; the student's, teacher's and principal's belief in modifiability; the student's, teacher's and principal's resistance; the IE implementation in school units; the range extension of the IE goals and subgoals; and the modifiability rate in teachers and students following IE levels I and II.

During the IE implementation in Bahia, we have overcome possible dilemmas with political will, technical planning and feasible budget, and permanent capacity building of professionals (trainers, coordinators, supervisors, teachers, directive body). The ATC Bahia grows in strength day by day, entitling itself as a valid institution in Bahia to offer IE to different segments of society, disseminating the Structural Cognitive Modifiability / Mediated Learning Experience Theory; and we have come to the conclusion that the effects of the IE expansion in Bahia are irreversible.

It is fundamental for this study, where the focus is information, autonomy, and mediation based on a document, to understand that school is by excellence a transforming center of readers. However, some education professionals have still not requested reading production activities that would contribute to the formation of a subject-reader, capable of identifying, in a text, its plural meanings, or make of the reader not just another consumer, but a producer of texts as he/she fulfills the gaps existent in the literary essay, diving in the ambiguous texts in search of deeper meanings.

The lack of success in forming readers, according to some authors, is responsible for the students' general failure in the fundamental and high school, once the reading is a demand present in all academic subject areas. However, the school context does not always favor work with meaningful reading, as we can observe in the data collected focused on competencies and abilities. We can notice that at times, not even goals and objectives are established to be reached by reading.

By the means of organized documents, as the IE for example, that activate cognitive operations on individuals when mediated with intentionality, reciprocity, meaning, and transcendence, we will have critical readers, capable of understanding, analyzing, reflecting, and arguing in favor of his/her rights and duties towards thinking autonomy.

The IE presents, therefore, characteristic that can assure thinking autonomy as the individual develops cognitive and cultural competencies necessary for the full human development according the demands of the work market. The cognitive growth and increase of knowledge facilitate the understanding of the world, and the development of intellectual curiosity, stimulating the critical sense and allowing the understanding of reality by acquiring autonomy to judge, creating people who are more apt to assimilate changes, more solidary, accepting and respecting changes. The IE also develops competence in personal relations, considering the multiplicity of aspects which make the being possible, acknowledging the others identity, associating to build identities and incorporate responsibilities and solidarity.

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