[Xmca-l] Re: "Mediation" as Error Correction

[Alex Rosborough]

Hi David,

I¹m interested in hearing more about the [incongruent] relation between
³Dynamic Assessment² and classroom error correction. I suppose Jim Lantolf
and Matt Poehner¹s Dynamic Assessment (DA) work is not of this kind? I
don¹t think they speak to early childhood education. I¹m throwing their
names out because I¹m more familiar with their DA work and wondering how
others (what you¹re seeing) are defining DA. I agree with your simple
examples at the bottom - I don¹t see how directly/unilaterally giving an
answer is mediation.

Alex Rosborough

On 2/10/16, 2:38 PM,
"xmca-l-bounces+alex_rosborough=byu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu on behalf of
David Kellogg" <xmca-l-bounces+alex_rosborough=byu.edu@mailman.ucsd.edu on
behalf of dkellogg60@gmail.com> wrote:

>I am occasionally, out of deference to a few papers I once published in
>TESOL, sent articles to review on the use of Vygotskyan concepts in
>language learning. Time was that these articles were mostly about
>scaffolding and the ZPD; of late they have been mostly concerned with
>"internalization" and "mediation".
>
>The problem is that most of these articles have taken these concepts
>entirely out of child development and placed them in an alien
>context--classroom error correction, which is now referred to as "Dynamic
>Assessment".
>
>I am not sure what to do about this. It seems to me that one way to start
>to address the issue is to go back to the original Hegelian idea of
>"mediation" as using one force of nature against another: the force of air
>pressure against gravity in flying, or the friction of snow vs. the
>momentum of the fall line in skiing.
>
>When a teacher corrects an error in a classroom, e.g. when a teacher makes
>the student say "This is a book" instead of "This is book", what are the
>forces of nature that are being used against each other? Is this really an
>instance of mediation at all?
>
>David Kellogg
>Macquarie University