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About mediation
Mediation overlaps and complements scaffolding in that
- Vygotsky's theory of scaffolding describes the assistance that a teacher gives a student to help him/her safely take risks and reach higher than would be possible by the
student's efforts alone. Bloom's taxonomy helps identify the target skills, and
Vygotsky's theory of scaffolding helps teachers assist their students in achieving those skills.
Scaffolding is provision that makes
the specific learning tasks and activities easier for the learner and thus more
likely to be successful, whereas,
- Mediation of the
learning experience is a form of intervention (in the form of auxiliary
stimulus) by focusing on experience during the processes of thinking and learning
(metacognition) and has as its
aims facilitating effective learning behaviour
- expansion of the learner's zone of proximal development and
- providing the learner with insights into him/herself as a learner
- providing the learner with insights into the effectiveness of the
learner's present capabilities, processes and strategies
- enhancing the transference of learning into new situations which the
learner will encounter
- increasing the capacity of the learner to scaffold and mediate their own
learning in future,
and thus, is largely about
- learning how to learn
Thus mediation reduces the need for scaffolding by increasing
the capacity of learners to provide their own scaffolding. The locus of control
is moved to the learner who is able to accept responsibility for more
independent learning & problem solving. See also habits
of the mind.
Mediation and parenting
Two mothers take their sons to the science museum. One of the
mothers encourages her son to go on his own. He goes to various work stations,
punches buttons, gets lights and noises and then runs to another station where
he punches more buttons. He has a good time, exploring on his own.
The other Mother goes with here son to a work station and before
they push any keys asks him, "What do you think will happen if we push
this key?" Then they push it and discuss the result. She encourages him
to form hypotheses as to why one result or another is obtained. They try to
improve their predictive ability, together. Together they monitor the child's
improving capacity to predict.
Mediation as intervention
A number of frameworks exist, for example, Greenberg
working with Feuerstein
has identified
- 8 Tools Of Independent Learning and
- 10 Building Blocks Of Thinking
which provide a framework for focusing and enhancing learning both now
and in the future.
8 Tools Of Independent Learning
These tools are needed if a person is going to be an active generator of
information and not just a passive recipient. The teacher intervenes in ways
that assist the learner to develop and become aware of their use and valuing of:
- Inner Meaning: An awareness of significance to oneself that
provides intrinsic motivation for learning and remembering.
- Self Regulation: Controlling our approach to learning by using
metacognition (thinking about what you are thinking and how you are feeling)
to determine factors like readiness and speed.
- Feeling of Competence: Knowing we have the ability to do a
particular thing. Lack of this tool often results in laziness and other
avoidance behaviours; presence of it results in feeling confident and
motivated to learn.
- Goal Directed Behaviour: Taking initiative in setting, planning
for, and reaching objectives on a consistent basis.
- Self Development: Being aware of our uniqueness as an individual
and working toward becoming all we can be.
- Sharing Meaning: Communicating thoughts to ourself and others in a
manner that makes the implicit explicit.
- Acceptance of Challenge: Being aware of the effects emotions have
on novel, complex, and consequently difficult tasks; knowing how to deal
with challenge.
- Awareness of Self Change: Knowing that we change throughout life
and learning to expect, nurture, and benefit from it.
10 Building Blocks Of Thinking
These are prerequisite skills upon which thought processes are based. The
teacher evaluates the learner's level of competency and use of these Building
Blocks and seeks to help develop those that are underused.
- Approach to Task: Beginning, engaging with, and completing an
event, including gathering information, thinking about the task and
situation, and expressing thoughts, feelings and/or actions related to the
task and situation..
- Precision and Accuracy: Awareness of the need to automatically be
exact and correct in understanding and using words and ideas.
- Space and Time Concepts: Understanding basic ideas about how things
relate in size, shape, and distance to one another (space); and the ability
to understand measurement of the period between two or more events and/or
changes that occur due to these periods (time).
- Thought Integration: Pulling together and using at the same time
multiple sources of information which are a part of a given event.
- Selective Attention: Choosing relevant pieces of information when
considering thoughts or events.
- Making Comparisons: Awareness of the need to automatically examine
the relationship between events and ideas, especially in determining what is
the same and what is different.
- Connecting Events: Awareness of the need to automatically associate
one activity with another and use this association in a meaningful manner.
- Working Memory: Enlarging the thinking space in order to enter bits
of information from the mental act, retrieve information stored in the
brain, and make connections among the information gathered.
- Getting the Main Idea: Awareness of the need to automatically find
a fundamental element that related pieces of information have in common.
- Problem Identification: Awareness of the need to automatically
experience and define within a given situation what is causing a feeling of
imbalance
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