ES mediación / CAT mediació / FR médiation / DE Vermittlung

Mediation is the intervention of a third element in the relationship between a person and their environment, thanks to which he or she can develop their abilities. Therefore, this relationship is not established directly but through the corresponding mediating tools elaborated by every culture in the course of its history. In learning (which is precisely the result of interaction between a person and their environment), mediation takes place through specailly designed symbolic tools, people, or learning activities (Kozulin 2018). These learning activities offer support structures, or modeling, to students, so as to help them on their way to building new knowledgethat is grounded on the activation of their previous knowledge, and the skills and strategies already embraced (Esteve & Martín Peris 2013). Some examples of mediating tools are didactic sequences and assessment tools.

The concept of mediation has its origins in Vygotsky’s theory of learning. According to this theory, cognitive development always comes from the outer (social) world towards the internal (mental) world. A person does not achieve self-regulation or intramental activity without a previous stage of regulation by others or intermental activity. In other words, the relationship between mind and environment is not immediate but mediated. According to Vygotsky (1994), a learner progresses gradually from a specific stage of development (in which thery are still unable to do anything by themselves) to another slightly more advanced stage (in which they are already able to do the same thing if helped by others). The distance between the two stages is called the “zone of proximal development” (ZPD). As a learning theory, it is social in nature: learning is precisely that kind of interaction with others, who either are at the same level of development or—like a teacher—have greater expertise. Therefore, in every teaching environment, including discourse competence teaching, efficient mediation will require taking the learner’s ZPD, not their current competence stage, as the starting point.

References

• Esteve, Olga y Martín Peris, Ernesto (2013). Cuestiones de autonomía en el aula de lenguas extranjeras. Barcelona: ICE-Horsori.
• Kozulin, Alexander (2018). Mediation and Internalization. En Lantolf, J.; Poehner, M. E. and Swain, M. (Eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Sociocultural Second Language Development, 487−504. Nueva York: Routlegde
• Vygotsky, Leo (1994). Tool and symbol in child development. En Van der Veer, R. & Valsiner, J. (Eds.). The Vygotsky Reader. Londres: Blackwell, 99-174.