mediatedlearningexperienceparadigminteachertrainin.docVIP

Mediated Learning Experience Paradigm in Teacher Training Alex Kozulin, Rafi Feuerstein Reuven Feuerstein International Center for the Enhancement of Learning Potential, Jerusalem In the context of the current awareness of the problems experienced by educational systems worldwide the following issues seem to be particularly relevant to teacher training: Rapid changes in the field of high-tech industries require from the school graduates much greater vocational flexibility, readiness to retrain and commitment to life-long learning. School graduates should first of all learn how to learn new material and new methods. Teachers thus should be more focused then even on the process of learning rather than its specific product. The current trend of integration of special needs students in regular classrooms presents a serious challenge to traditionally trained teachers. Traditional training takes for granted a certain level of cognitive and behavioral functioning of students and focuses on the selection and delivery of content materials. In the integrated classroom the issue of how to engage students in learning activity comes to the forefront and becomes even more important than what material to deliver. Though the contemporary teacher is expected to work in the integrated classroom she is often disempowered to do this. The growing fashion of a medical, rather than an educational interpretation of students’ learning problems leads to the teacher’s estrangement from the task of remediation of existent problems. Students’ problems with reading, writing and mathematics are interpreted as a reflection of psychological or neurological (dyslexia, dysgraphia, dyscalculia, ADD/ADHD, etc.) rather than learning conditions and remediation is sought through psychologists, educational counselors, assessment specialists, and so on, but not through the teacher. Education is rarely perceived as capable of leading to the radical improvement of the child’s cognitive and behavioral fu