Mediation and Thinking Development in Schools

Heidi Flavian is senior lecturer, researcher and Head of Special Education department at Achva Academic College, Israel, and has served as senior lecturer in the International Team in the Feuerstein Institute since 2002. Her main areas of research and publishing are teacher training, mediation, thinking processes among students, and teaching students with special needs.

Education theoreticians developed mediation theory for many years to emphasize society's responsibility towards the success of learning among all children, says Flavian, though they usually did not use the term mediation. From the several 20th-century learning theories, she has chosen five who approach learning from different perspectives at different times and in different cultures, and shows how mediation links them. The theorists are John Dewey (1859-1952), Jean Piaget (1861-1980), Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934), Reuven Feuerstein (1921-2014), and Howard Earl Gardner (1943-).

• Introduction Chapter 1. Thinking development Chapter 2. Mediation: A unique educational process Chapter 3. School students; learning differentiation teachers need to recognize Chapter 4. Mediation and teaching for students' thinking development