ES herramienta de mediación / CAT eina de mediació / FR outils de médiation / DE Vermittlungswerkzeug

Mediation tools are those devices that facilitate a person’s relationship with the world. They are one of the key constructs of sociocultural learning theory and its hypothesis of mediation. In scholar learning, as in all learning, the main mediating tool is language, but students are also assisted by other tools: the textbook, visual documents, discourse patterns in the classroom, chances to interact in the additional language, the portfolio, teacher’s explanations or their diverse ways to offer help. In the case of additional languages, a mediating tool may be using them for oneself or using the L1 to interact with others. All tools have in common their social and cultural nature–their use depending upon the social-historical context and the specific teaching-learning practices in which the learner is, who may in turn be more seasoned when it comes to one practice than to others, to use them to learn or even to think.

The concept originates from Vygotsky’s psychology (1994), who takes in turn from Hegel’s and Marx’s philosophy. Vygotsky states that human beings have used tools to control the world according to their needs and goals throughout history and that these tools have become mediating devices between mind and objects. There are three types of tools: 1) material tools (ranging from mallets to computers), whose invention has transformed human thinking (money, for instance, has configured thinking in modern societies, since it mediates in goods exchanges between people); 2) psychological tools, mediating between the mind and the abstract world (for instance, the knotted strings used by Incas to count), which become “symbolic tools” through perfection: the numbering system, music, art, and, above all of them, language; and, finally, 3) also other people who may exert mediation. Mediating tools presuppose collective use, interpersonal communication, and symbolic representation.

References

• Kozulin, Alex (2018). Mediation and Internalization. En Lantolf, J.; Poehner, M. E. and Swain, M. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Sociocultural Second Language Development. Nueva York: Routlegde, 487−504.
• Vygotsky, Lev (1994). Tool and symbol in child development. En van der Veer, R. & Valsiner, J. (Eds.), The Vygotsky Reader. Londres: Blackwell, 99-174.