Written by: Mrs. P. V. Ananthalakshmi, Principal, Helikx Open School
Learning is a continuous process that commences at birth and continues until death; it is the process through which we use our experience to deal with new situations and to develop relationships.
Mediated Learning Experience is a process focused on helping the individual understands:
• what is or has happened
• what this means
• how to deal with the event
Mediated Learning Experience is mediated by teacher, parent and professionals.
Core Points:
1. Intentionality and Reciprocity is a mutual interaction
• The mediator should have the intention
• In the MLE inter actionist model, the mediator not only has a clear intention of what to teach, but also shares intentions to the learner
• Reciprocity refers to the teacher’s alertness and awareness of how the learner responds to the intention.
2. Transcendence is linking from the immediate learning experience to related activities.
• Bridges from here and now to underlying principles and values.
• It is making generalisations.
• Parents encourage the child to link the present with the past experience.
• They should show the links between every day events.
• Teachers focus the process of learning (how to) rather than the content of learning.
• Should connect today's lesson to yesterday and tomorrows and to other curriculum areas.
3. Mediation of Meaning
• Meaning is investing significance and purpose in an activity. It answers why questions. It involves the cognitive, affective and cultural.
• Teachers convey the purpose of the activity and subject matter.
• Makes explicit the hidden agendas.
• Encourage deep learning.
• Giving values of classroom and school learning.
Situational or Reinforcing Parameters:
1. Mediation of a feeling of competence • Competence – The mediator instils a belief in their own ability to succeed,a sense of I can do it which results in increased motivation to attempt tasks. • Parents focus the positive and celebrate success. • Provide opportunities for success and feedback why the learner successful. • Teachers adapts the curriculum to allow for successful learning. • Teachers give formative feedback.
2. Mediation of self-regulation and control of behaviour • Encourages waiting for a moment and thinking before responding or acting. • This helps the learner to monitor their response to react appropriately taking responsibility. • Parents encourage their children to take responsibility for their actions and be countable. • Be the model and encourage reflective thinking. • Teachers encourage thinking about thinking, problem solving and self-discipline.
3. Mediation of sharing behaviour • Sharing behaviour relates to the interdependence of all individuals need of cooperation for empathy , mutual support for interconnectedness. • Learners work together to achieve a common goal. • Parents encourage turn taking and working together as a team. • Help to solve problem solving and talk through problems. • Teachers use team work co-operative learning, peer tutoring. • Discourage destructive competition and work towards a community of learners.
4. Mediation of individuation and psychological differentiation • Acknowledgement and celebration of uniqueness and individuality. • It is when the mediator encourages to recognize and enjoy what makes them different from others. • Parents allow children to be free to be. • Encourages the child’s strengths and weakness, • Teachers accept divergent responses, open ended answers and insist on conformity.
5. Mediation of goal seeking, goal setting goal achieving, and goal monitoring behaviour
• The mediator helps the learner to set ,plan and achieve goals. • Both short goals and long term goals. • Patents delay immediate gratification. • Set goals which can be achievable, believable and conceivable. • Teachers provide an overview of the goals for the year. • Encourage the perseverance and patience in meeting goals.
6. Mediation of challenge—the search for novelty and complexity
• Challenge the mediator instils the motivation to confront new and difficult tasks. • Novelty is there to be learned complexity is there to be mastered. • Parents encourage children’s natural curiosity to explore new territory to move out of their comfort zone. • Teachers normalise difficulty. • Provide examples of role models who overcome challenges tasks and achieve, • Extend thinking by providing challenging complex original tasks. • Awareness of the potential for change
7. Mediation of the awareness of the human being as a changing entity • When the mediator instils a desire to change and to value and monitor that change journey towards independent and autonomous learning. • Parents refrain from using put downs that children can’t change, but focus on how they might act differently. Share with children how they have grown and learnt new things reflect on the past and compare with the present. • Teachers de-emphasise labelling and ranking.
8. Mediation of the search for optimistic alternatives • The search of optimistic alternatives by exploring. • As long as the educator believes that his pupils are capable of accomplishing any task, he will continue to seek effective and efficient ways and actions of helping them to achieve the learning goals.
9. Mediation of the feeling of belongingness • While pupils feel unique and different, they also need to feel they are a recognised part of a work team, a group, an educational institution, a society, and a culture. • What the mediator can do at this point is to promote team work (more than group work) with specific and meaningful purposes for the students • The atmosphere in which a learning process takes place and the nature of the personal and group interactions through which it is carried out, have a powerful influence on what, how and why a child learns. Influence of a teacher as a mediator. • Given the necessary and sufficient conditions (criteria) to carry out a mediation process, it seems to be the characterisation of what is and has been a good teacher’s work. • Furthermore, it is the mediator who is and should be the main stimulus that propels his learners towards learning, being whole people and knowing how to exist side by side with others. • It is the teacher who is in charge of giving validity to the mediation experience purpose that is none other than to provide the learners with a wide range of stimuli, strategies and processes that lead them towards the development of intelligent behaviour, which is a prerequisite for effective cognitive functioning. • As language teachers we can enrich and qualify our teaching process by facilitating the learning processes of our pupils with all the tools and strategies provided by the mediation.
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