Thanks for your e-mail. Your interests seem to be very close to mine.
I am also searching for the tools peers are using to mediate each
others learning or even broader for tools people use to mediate a
group thinking and problem solving process. I believe that the common
tacit cultural knowledge people have plays an important part in this
process. These cultural tools (values/schemata/etc.) are present
within the participants, but they also function beyond the capacities of each
of the individual members to
manipulate them. I hypothesised that it is these cultural tools,
alternately brought into the group process by different participants that
create zone's of
proximal development and mediate the learning. It is also the common
understanding of these
tools that enable other participants to make use of the zone of
proximal development. I suppose this is quite cryptic. As I already mention I
really feel that I am only
beginning to grapple with the notion of mediation between peers and I
have been very bad with networking. I therefore really endorse your idea of
setting up an informal group to
discuss those issues. I can foresee a range of issues we can work on.
Even try to make an inventiry of what exists in the field, identify
particular research questions, comparative work etc.
Hilde