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I am a freelance teacher and translator with a 15-year experience, passionate about inventing new approaches and developing original lesson plans and study programs. I have a BA in Psychology and English (literature and language) and an MA in Special Education, which allows me to work with an especially wide range of students, including those with LDs. I use versatile interdisciplinary materials to expand my students' vocabulary and adjust the study program to the interests and professional needs of students. Motivation is the key to success, and I consider that one of my strongest sides: I know how to encourage active participation. This blog is a space for sharing materials, ideas and tips for English teachers and learners.

Saturday 13 November 2010

Education Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow.


Some Features of Education in the 21st Century

Josef Feigenberg; Tatiana Olevsky

Over the period of several thousand years the humankind has become stronger. Its strength is in the knowledge of man about the surrounding world, his ability to influence and change it. The power that people have today can be compared to the strong geological planet-forming forces (V.I. Vernardsky) [1] . The huge power possession demands a greater responsibility and care in the way it is applied. People are facing new problems that involve, among all, some educational questions. For many centuries, only a minor part of society, a.k.a. its elite, had the privilege of being educated. Uneducated peasants fed the nation, uneducated soldiers defended the country, and just a small group of educated people, was in charge of them. Elite reproduced itself in the following generations. Children followed the steps of their parents, acquiring knowledge and profession in the early years. A peasant boy would become a full member of a working team in his parents' household by the age of 13 years, and would grow to lead a similar lifestyle. There were few changes in the lifestyle of one or two generations. These changes didn't take place evenly, but rather with an accelerating rate. The 20th century is characterized by an unprecedented quick and significant technological and scientific development. Nowadays, in the beginning of the 21st century, the changes occur so fast that within the lifespan of one generation life conditions can change dramatically, therefore the demand for knowledge and skills necessary for survival steadily grows. Technologically-complemented man is powerful[2], but this power is dangerous in the hands of someone who can not manage it reasonably.


Once a part of fantastic novels, such things as flights to the Moon  described by Jules Vern, or the amazing Captain Nemo's submarine by Jules Verne, or Aleksey Tolstoy's powerful weapon called "hyperboloid", today become reality. Moreover, reality sometimes outranges fiction: what about the Moon landing of a man, remote-controlled powerful submarines capable of overcoming huge distances without going on surface? Getting control over nuclear energy has provided people with a practically infinite source of energy, disease control means, and an earlier unknown destruction tool, the nuclear weapon. Today we can call a person from home at their mobile phone without even knowing where on the planet they are. Life changes so fast that the science fiction can't compete with it.
The situation, described above is new to the history of the humankind, and it should set some new goals in the field of education.
While until now the goal of education has been to prepare the next generation to living in the same conditions its parents and teachers used to live, in the present it is to prepare the next generation to live in different conditions, thanks to the fast civilization development. Moreover, teachers and educators are not capable of imagining clearly enough what exactly these conditions will be. Hence, everyone should get serious education. Jobs that can be performed by illiterates quickly disappear. The hand of a modern farmer tilling the land, the hand of a soldier, the hand of a housekeeper, is "complemented" by sophisticated technologies (these are examples of activities that could be performed by illiterates in the past). Nowadays even a child is surrounded with sophisticated technology at home, which safe and effective operation requires knowledge and skills. Computers and mobile phones have become an integral part of everyday routine. A reasonable usage of all these “completions” requires knowledge and skills. Therefore, everybody needs knowledge. On the one hand, sophisticated technology and computers liberate a man from simple operations processing, but on the other hand, it leaves him facing the solution of complex intellectual challenges that cannot be handled by a computer. This is the reason why a person needs to get a good education.

Information overflow. The impossibility of basic education extention.

Looking back it is easy to see that an individual's life was divided into two large parts. One was a learning period. It consisted of a child's learning in a family, as well as his/her primary, secondary and higher education. Their forms were different. Nowadays these are different educational institutions, whereas in the past it was training with elderly people that had already got a certain workmanship or skill (learning “amongst people” in Russia, "Wanderjahre" in Germany etc.). This period of life used to finish when a person would become a mature individual, a specialist in a certain area: a craftsman, an artist, a doctor, etc. Then the next life period would start. The period of maturity.
At this period an individual earns for himself and his family, helps other people, sometimes creates something new. As the knowledge of the humankind has been increasing, so has the learning period. It has reached almost three decades until now. As the science and technology have been developing and the new knowledge added to the old one, the learning period has been expanding distancing the moment when a person becomes "mature". This "maturity" has been certified by a certain document, such as a matriculation certificate, a medical or an engineer diploma.
The period of basic learning cannot be extended anymore – some time for maturity has to be left. The amount of knowledge at the same time, continues to grow and the speed of its growth increases gradually. Until now the education system has faced a contradiction: the time available for basic learning does not leave space in the old school curriculum for the new scientifically acquired knowledge. Therefore, a significant transformation of school programs has to be made instead of the traditional practice of expanding them.
It is important to exclude the information that has lost actuality form the school program, more compact teaching techniques should be developed, while highlighting the main ideas and omitting unnecessary details. Thus, for example, a math teacher should realize that his/her main goal is to form the thinking process of the students instead of making them remember all the steps of Pythagorean theorem described in the book by heart. Already in the primary and secondary school it is necessary to prepare the mental abilities of the students in a way that they would be able to perceive the new scientific achievements in the future.
Physics teaching can serve a demonstrative example of this situation. Secondary education resulting in getting a matriculation certificate in most of the educational institutions forms a world outlook in pupils that is significantly outdated compared to the one suggested by the modern science. The rapid development of science in the twentieth century, however, has totally changed the world outlook, thanks to the invention of quantum physics, the theory of relativity, etc.
The situation with mathematics teaching is similar to the one mentioned above. When Euclidean geometry appeared, a man tilling the land knew well enough only a minor part of the Earth's surface, and the measurement on land (geometry) fit his perception of it as a part of flat surface spreading endlessly in all directions. This is how planimetrics emerged. A modern man, in contrast, is used to flying on a plane to remote destinations and can find the shortest way between two distant points on the world map. To his surprise he discovers that the shortest distance on the globe does not look as a straight line, contradicting the paradigm that he has acquired on a geometry lesson. Being familiar with the school geometry course, a man discovers to his own amazement that the sum of angles of a big triangle on the Earth surface is far from being equal to 180 degrees in contrast to what is taught in a geometry studybook. Some understanding of geometry, which varies from the planimetrics geometry should be introduced to the children early enough rather then added after they have already got accustomed to the Euclid's planimetrics. This educational move, quite easy to grasp for a schoolchild (learning geometry using a globe) would facilitate his further understanding of non-Euclidean geometry, which is quite complicated. It was only in the 19th century when the science recognized the non-Euclidean geometry (Lobachevsky, Bolyai), and it shocked the contemporaries with its seeming incongruity with the real world.

Unity of the world in a person's perception. Interdisciplinary relations.
Sages of the ancient world knew little about the world that surrounded them. Despite that, they looked at the world as at a whole entity, an integral system. The amount of knowledge about the world has been growing with time. It has become difficult for one person to deal with this huge material. Therefore, everyone has started to concentrate their attention at a particular aspect of general knowledge, that is, to get a specialization. To facilitate better orientation in the existing amount of material people have divided the knowledge about the world into specific fields. Thus some separate disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, biology, history, literature etc. emerged. It gave a chance to each person to focus on any particular subject and study it in-depth. But such focusing made it difficult to keep the perception of the world as of a whole entity. The amount of these specific fields increased along with the increase in the knowledge about the world. Some even narrower specialists, such as specialists in inorganic chemistry, biochemistry, geochemistry etc. appeared.
Besides, narrow specialists sometimes could ignore something that the science had already known before, but referred to another field. A school chemistry teacher sometimes could had an insufficient knowledge about the culture history of the humankind, whereas a teacher of history or language could have a very limited understanding of natural sciences. The understanding of the world as of a unified system started to disappear in education.
Geometry (“land-measuring”) formed a “flat thinking” contradictory to the perception of the spherical surface of the Earth introduced by geography (“land description”). A student's understanding of geology came separate from his knowledge about the life of live organisms (as it was taught on biology lessons), and moreover, from history of human culture evolution (as it was taught on the lessons of history and literature).
It is necessary to build the school program in a way that a pupil would be able to clearly grasp the relation between all these processes. Geological, biological, cultural processes are not independent from each other; they have never replaced one other, but rather compose a solid process of the Earth history. On a certain stage, biological processes joined the geological ones, then cultural and historical the biological ones. On each new stage new relationships came into effect. Biological processes progressed much faster than the biological ones; cultural and historical – much faster than the biological ones. But despite that, the slower and older processes did not stop. Biological evolution is the continuation of geological evolution, while the evolution of the civilized humankind is the continuation of the biological evolution.
Most of the contemporary pupils have stereotyped perception of the huge gap between studying a language (native or foreign) and math. However, it is necessary to let the pupils see mathematics not only as an arithmetical science, but also as a language, which helps to describe certain natural phenomena better (and in some cases mathematics is the only possible means of description of a phenomenon). While the humankind is discovering some new categories of phenomena in the world, new areas of mathematics are emerging in order to provide the adequate description, understanding and research of these phenomena.
School history studies forms a pupil’s perception of the key figures in history as conquerors, revolutionists, reformers, and discoverers of the new lands. Pupils learn about Alexander the Great, Marat, Napoleon, Columbus, whereas they associate the names of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Darwin, Einstein and many other scientists and thinkers only with physics, mathematics, biology, rather than with the general history of the humankind. However, the deeds of Alexander the Great were in many ways the result of the fact that Aristotle was his teacher. Napoleon would do much more if he had listened for scientists’ advice to equip the fleet with steam engines, but the progressive transition from sailing fleet to steamers was made by the humankind later. The influence of discoveries made by physicists in the 20th century (starting from Einstein formula E = mc2) dramatically shifted the course of human development to the stage of the usage of atomic energy.
It is necessary to constantly link the history of the humankind with the works of scientists and thinkers throughout the teaching process. In senior classes of the school when the courses of history and natural sciences are completed, it is reasonable to give a course (it can be optional) named “The role of scientists and thinkers in the world history”.

Knowledge and ability to solve problems.

Sometimes a teacher considers giving knowledge to the pupils being his main goal. Therefore, the pupils are presented with problem solving tasks only in order to solidify their knowledge. However, as the main task of teaching is actually preparation for life, rather than preparation for exams, it is important, first and foremost, to train the pupils for problem solving. We would like to specify, that under "problem solving" we mean making reasonable decisions (adequate to a clearly realized goal) about the actions necessary to be done in the present available conditions. Everyone solves problems, both professional and everyday ones, on a daily basis. The most important events depend on the correctness of a timely solution of a problem, i.e. the fate of a patient depends on a doctor's problem solution, the future of a child depends on his mother's solution of a given problem.
If we look from this perspective, it becomes clear that not the problem solving is necessary for solidification of knowledge, but rather knowledge is necessary for problem solving. The extent of knowledge in the modern world is huge. There lies a dilemma: what should be selected for this stage of basic teaching? Besides, the extent of knowledge is growing quickly, therefore, no matter how much information we give a person during the period of basic training, still some new problems will arise before him/her in their adulthood that can be solved only with the help of a new knowledge that did not exist in the period of their basic training. Thus, no matter what the extent of knowledge acquired during the basic training is, it will be certainly insufficient for their ability to solve problems that are likely to arise in several years, in their adulthood. This causes the importance of not only transferring information to the students' memory, but to teach them how to perform an active search for the information that is crucial and sufficient for solving a specific problem.
The above is a source of some serious considerations about the types of problems that should be introduced to the pupils as a part of their basic training. A conventional problem usually contains the problem statement which includes the given data, while this data usually consists of the relevant information only, and is sufficient for finding a solution. It is usually followed by a question statement. It is different in real life though. When a certain problem arises in real life, usually the data necessary for finding the answer, is lacking. We need to understand clearly what pieces of information are crucial for finding an answer to the question and perform an active search for them. Therefore, students should be introduced to the tasks with lacking data already during the period of their basic training. They should learn how to realize clearly what is necessary for answering the question and try to actively obtain this data. Therefore, as early as in the early learning period it is necessary to give pupils tasks with lacking data. This data should become an object for the pupil's active search.
In the attempt to narrow the gap between problem solving and real life, tasks with redundant, unnecessary data should be included into curricula.
In addition to the case described above, in which the necessary data is lacking, there can be a situation when the available information is useless for the purpose of solving the problem. Available data could be inaccurate and even invalid. The data in real life, contrary to the study books, is a result of somebody's observations and measurements, made using different methods in different conditions. Various measurement methods are unequal in precision and allow different measurement accuracy levels. Introducing the tasks with conflicting data may help to prepare the pupils to such kind of a problem in real life. A pupil should be ready to recognize this conflict and make a decision about which of the two conflicting parameters should be chosen for the purpose of solving the problem. For this purpose, naturally, the methods and conditions of getting each of these parameters should be mentioned in the problem statement. The goal of the pupils would be to choose only the relevant information from all the given data, and to solve the problem using it. Unfortunately, the parameters of the current article do not allow us to elaborate about the numerous attributes of real life problems as opposed to the conventional study problems. Some extra information on the topic could be gained from the previously published sources[3]. We would like to dedicate the next chapter of the present paper to one of the categories of real life problems - the probabilistic tasks.

Determinism and probabilistic thinking.
The secondary school curriculum forms a strictly deterministic thinking in the pupils: according to it, any event has a cause, and there is an univocal connection between them. If a student, presented with a task, replies that the answer is "most probably" such and such, it usually is perceived as his inability or unwillingness to solve the problem. Traditionally, we expect a student to be able to give an exact answer rather than a probable answer.
It is different in the real life. Problems with a lacking or unavailable data are rather common. Sometimes finding an exact answer can be too time-consuming, therefore a prompt approximate response, given on time could be much more valuable than an exact one that came up to late. This type of situation is most common in medicine when a doctor faces the necessity of making probabilistic decisions in cases when patients have a severe problem and the causes of their condition are not totally clear. Sometimes an urgent operation might be necessary, whereas sometimes there could be another solution. A similar complex dilemma can occur to a judge: the details of a crime most probably look a certain way, but if the attorney disagrees with this, it is not always possible to fully decline his statement. In such cases a man (in the above examples a doctor and a judge) has to make a non-probabilistic decision about his future actions based only on probabilistic characteristics of the actual situation. It is impossible to avoid or to postpone making a decision, because “doing nothing” is an equally responsible choice as any other possible decision. The importance of such decision is obvious, especially when it is made by a military commander when a certain element of uncertainty is left in his understanding of the existing situation. In real life such situations occur quite often.
Considering all the above, among tasks introduced to the pupils there must be also those having a probabilistic solution only. Those include time limited tasks as well.
The use of such problems should start in the elementary school, where the pupils would learn to formulate their answer as “most likely” or “most probably”. In high school it is possible to introduce the understanding of the quantitative expressions of probabilities.
       Such type of problems forms a probabilistic thinking in a student. The importance of probabilistic thinking for a modern man is not confined by the examples given above, in which the lack of information or time makes him accept a probabilistic solution. Modern science has defined categories of phenomena, in which probability constitutes an inseparable part of a natural process rather than a way of describing phenomena in case of information deficit (as in the case of thermodynamics). Probabilistic determinism is a characteristic attribute of nature rather than a human invention. 
Quantum mechanics demonstrates great examples of the stated above, such as, for instance, the elementary particle movement trajectory. This trajectory is probabilistic by definition and depends on the observation technique as well. Similar probabilistic processes can exist in the functioning of the nervous system of both humans and animals[4].
The "causal" determinism of natural phenomena turned out to be probabilistic.

Demonstrative training.

Since the days of Yan Amos Kamensky (the 17th century) it has been a requirement in pedagogy to make the education process "hands-on". The reason for this requirement was unarguable. Indeed, the sides of the world that a man was capable of understanding at that times, were only those visible to a man's organs of perception. In the 19th century mathematics has reached the emergence of non-Euclidean geometry. Its objects were hard for a visual representation and seemed "unnatural", so that even its creators were reluctant to publish their discoveries. A tremendous development of the science in the XXth century has led to the discovery of such areas that are impossible to present in a hands-on form by definition, Besides, any attempt to present the study object in a visual form turns out to be not only incomplete (which is still tolerable!), but also wrong. It contains wrong data, which misleads students. A good example of this is the planetary model of the atom, which is often given in study books. The picture forms a wrong understanding of the locality of the electron: a student might think that it can be found in a certain place on its orbit at any certain time, whereas in reality electron is vague in the sense that at any moment it can be found anywhere on its orbit with a certain probability. Double wave-corpuscle nature of light cannot be expressed by a drawing. 
In the modern science there are many areas in which a visual representation is impossible or unacceptable. Such concepts of the modern science as the uncertainty principle, the complementarity principle, or the distortion of the three-dimensional space in vicinity of large-scale objects characterized by an extremely high weight do not satisfy the human reasoning, a.k.a. the human ability for visual representation. The "healthy reasoning" of a man has been evolutionally influenced by a man's natural ability to perceive using his sense organs. The development of various devices that expand the human ability to perceive has allowed to the modern man to reach those "corners" of the surrounding environment that he was deprived from seeing earlier. The processes occurring there are different from those that had been visible to a man earlier, when his "healthy reasoning" had been forming. These include the microcosm, studied by the quantum mechanics, and macrocosm, which secrets people are approaching using modern technologies, such as telescopes that are placed beyond the atmosphere of the Earth, which interrupts the observations.   
The present state of affairs in the world of science does not allow us to follow the old principle of trying to make everything "hands-on". We should avoid the situation of creating a wrong understanding of the students by trying to make the study material easier to visualize. Instead, we need to show the students some specific examples, in order to illustrate the phenomena that exist in the world, but cannot be visually represented by definition.

Matriculation certificate and diploma with an expiry period

No matter how much information do pupils acquire during the basic learning period, their knowledge will still be insufficient to solve the problems they might face in their adulthood. As it was already discussed above, this is one of the problems that the humankind has faced recently. The expiry date of the matriculation certificate is now shorter than one's lifespan. Dividing a person's life into the learning period and the maturity period does not make sense in our times. In order to keep a proper level in one's profession and to keep up with the fast developing science and technology, one should continue learning throughout all his life.
It seems that the area, in which the above was first applied, was medicine; in some countries professional development courses became an obligatory (!) and recurrent routine. A system of professional development institutions was first established for medical specialists, and later also for the school teachers.
A specialist wishing to remain professional in his/her area should be able follow the new discoveries in the area, using special literature (journals). These journals should learn how to perform their educational role in the best way. Learning is an active process, therefore a person wouldn't benefit from mere reading about the new scientific achievements, and wouldn't integrate them into his/her everyday practice of solving professional dilemmas. Poya[5], an outstanding educator, mentioned in his writings that the only way to learn how to solve problems is by solving them.
Journals for specialists, such as engineers, medical practitioners, parents, etc., should not only give the information about something new, but also to suggest that the readers take part in the active problem solving, and reveal to them what was the best solution only after they have chosen their own way. It should also provide some arguments proving that a certain solution is the best possible one. We believe that the presence of such section in a journal would increase the interest of readers, as well as stimulate the professional development of the readers in their areas of specialization.    

The use of early childhood benefits. The influence of the family

In early childhood one readily absorbs impressions from everything he/she gets in contact with. The intensity of knowledge acquirement, the curiosity, and the amount of the "how?" and "why?" questions that a child asks at this period is unique for this age. However, this period can be specifically difficult for the family. The parents can be busy with their work, and their care for the child is expressed only in their will to keep him/her well fed, well dressed and healthy. They hope that the school will give the child all the necessary education, and in the meanwhile if the kid is healthy, it's all good. They believe that the child's education would become a matter of their concern later. In fact, what happens is they miss the crucial time when a child is capable of acquiring his mother tongue, the basics of interpersonal relationships, and the ability of logical thinking.
What was missed in the early childhood is difficult, and sometimes impossible to compensate later. The only source of a child's education in the early childhood is the family. The family is responsible for the future of a child and in a certain way for the future of a future generation, a part of which the child is going to become. The role of parents as educators is highly important both in the child's personal interests and in the interests of the society as a whole.
    
In reality, the parents are often incapable of playing this role, they are just not ready for it. Educational institutions prepare people for various professions, such as teachers, medical specialists, engineers, etc., whereas there is no institution that prepares for the most required and widespread "profession", which is important for the entire society, the "profession" of parents and educators. The preparation needs to start already in the middle school.  A course, preparing one to family life, including a preparation to parenthood is essential to the teenagers.
       Elementary arithmetic and logical thinking can be taught to a child using a game approach, which is attractive to a child, whereas classification6 principles can be taught on the examples from the surrounding world. It is necessary to establish a professional development and mass production of the educational games.
Historical events can be learned using the examples from the lives of family members that took part in those events that are interesting to the child. This is something that can be done only in a family. Later, when the children learn a history course in school, their familiarity with the history of their families can help them to feel themselves a part of the history of their people and, in perspective, active creators of the future history[6].

Early language learning

While there are certain subjects that require some basic knowledge as a pre-requisite for their study, such as, for example, algebra and geometry that cannot be comprehended without a good command of elementary school arithmetic, foreign languages do not fall in this category. They do benefit from an early start and should not be postponed to the higher grades. Strictly, a foreign language is not a subject at all. In the following several paragraphs we would like to clarify this statement, as well as another statement that can be logically deduced from the former: a foreign language should provide another communication means for the students, parallel to their mother tongue, therefore it should support their general intellectual development, thus an early start of language learning is recommended. There is no need in expanding the school program, but there is a need in a structural change.

Indeed, what is a school lesson of a foreign language? Usually, various topics of interest as well as grammar topics are presented to the students. The choice of topics is totally arbitrary, as the real point of learning them is to expand one's vocabulary following certain guidelines based on word frequency. Most frequent words are learned earlier, and considered "easy", whereas others are learned in the 11th and 12th grades and are considered "hard" or "very hard". Before expressing any point of view in this respect, let us perform a short outlook to the nature of language in general.
Language development in humans happens thanks to the special feature of the human brain that allows encoding sounds into electrical impulses and vice versa, as well as memory storage that can be activated by these impulses in order to retrieve various meanings.  Multiple perspectives on this process have been suggested and are still being developed in the present. (De Saussure, Chomsky, etc) Early activation of this feature is crucial for its healthy functioning, otherwise irreversible changes take place leaving an individual inarticulate. There are several cases of this kind described in literature.[7] Maria Montessori defined the concept of a "sensitive period"[8], a period of development when certain abilities are developed best. This concept was invented by the Dutch geneticist Hugo de Vrie, and described by the Russian psychologist Lev Vygostsky. The sensitive period for a language development is usually until the age of 4. Some researchers even pointed out that some language abilities disappear in infancy. [9]
It is customary to distinguish between a mother tongue and a foreign language, and that's how the school system of language learning is organized. We suggest a different distinction: language acquisition can be either spontaneous (natural) or intended (artificial). The natural acquisition includes the deduction of the grammar rules and learning words from experience, whereas the artificial acquisition is learning the rules formulated by someone else like constant structures and learning words provided with their translation using various memorizing techniques. Both processes exist in acquisition of the first and the second language, and both should be supported by the school program.
Thus, any language study is only a subject in its "artificial" part in which a well structured knowledge is necessary. When it comes to its "natural" part, it doesn't need to be limited by any subject area or a type of activity whatsoever. To the contrary, the closer it is to the learner's interest (be it hockey or Shakespeare), more chances are he or she would increase their practice, hence the experience, hence the general level of language understanding and command.
Our ideas about language teaching, mentioned above are strongly incorporated in practice and experience of a number of teachers. Examples of such projects are described in other papers, such as Lavrik et al. (2008[10], 2010[11]).

Look out - school!
      The present article has discussed some of the aspects of the educational system that require a significant change. However, we should keep in mind that the educational system, despite being very important for the existence of a society, is very fragile. Gross interventions into its functioning might lead to disorganization, even if they are done with the best intentions. Changes in the educational system should be done evolutionally, rather than by a revolution. The new ideas should be tested and checked in particular schools, and introduced to the other schools only after the pilot experiment. They can be accepted only in those schools where the teacher staff is ready for them and is positive about integrating them into their practice.
Having said all that, we strongly hope that our educational system, despite all the restructuring that it goes through in the present, has a positive potential for the future success.


[1]  Вернадский В.И. Философские мысли натуралиста. Москва, изд. "Наука", 1988.
 [2] Фейгенберг И.М. Человек Достроенный и биосфера. «Вопросы философии», 2006, № 2, стр. 151 – 161.
[3] Feigenberg J.M. Learning all the life. «Smysl», Moscow,2008; Feigenberg J.M., Lavrik V.V. Probabilistic forecasting and memory in teaching activity. «Mir psihologii», 2001, № 1,pages.174—182.
[4] Фейгенберг И.М. Вероятностное прогнозирование в деятельности человека и поведении животных. Изд. НЬЮДИАМЕД, Москва, 2008; Feigenberg, Josef. Wahrscheinlichkeitsprognostizierung im System der zielgerichteten Aktivität. AFRA-Verlag. 2000.
[5] Poya D. Mathematical finding. Moscow, 1976.
[6] Feigenberg J. Auf welche Weise beginnt die Geschichte. „Behindertenpädagogik“, 2001, № 2, S.190-193
[8]  Montessori, Maria. 1967. The Absorbent Mind. Trans. Claude A. Claremont. New York: Holt.          

[9]  Marshall, Brad. (2000). 'Is there a 'child advantage' in learning foreign languages?' Education Week 19(22): 39–41
[10] Lavrik V.L, Bograchev L.,Olevsky T., Shuniakov V.M., Feigenberg I. M. (2007), Workshop: Interdisciplinary Classroom. Physics Hands-on Experiments as Motivation Stimulating Agents. In: “Frontiers in physics education”, GIREP-EPEC Conference, 26-31. August 2007, Opatija, Croatia.

[11] Lavrik V.L, ShunyakovV.M., Feigenberg J., (2010).Active physics learning using probabilistic prognosis.
GIREP conference”Modelling in Physics and Physics Education”  Reims, France