The Pre-Instrumental Enrichment program (PIE) by Leoni & Pavan

Abstract

A growing body of evidence from clinical, educational, and basic research supports the idea of neuroplasticity and highlights the opportunity for early intervention. While some therapeutic approaches and rehabilitation methods are available in specific pathological areas, no structured program allows for early intervention in the case of intellectual disability.
The Pre-Instrumental Enrichment (PIE) by Leoni & Pavan offers a structured educational habilitation program designed to be used starting from 18-month-old children with intellectual and learning disabilities. It builds on the concepts of the pedagogy of mediation and of the Feuerstein approach, and particularly on the importance of Mediated Learning Experience for cognitive development and learning. However, it reinvents in a completely new and original way theoretical, conceptual, and methodological constructs in order to allow for very early intervention. The activities, which are presented with a ludic and playful approach, are graded in complexity and abstraction. Central to the program is the construction of Primary Cognitive Activities, which are the earliest cognitive abilities emerging during child development and represent general prerequisites for subsequent learning. A co-essential target for intervention is a group of
basic concepts, which have been chosen because they contribute to organizing perceptual processes and in order to systematically expose children to model learning experiences.