ABSTRACT
Professor Reuven Feuerstein was born in Romania in 1921 to Jewish parents. Following the Holocaust he played a role in the rehabilitation of Jewish youth in Israel. In broad terms, Mediated Learning Experience can be defined as ‘an interaction of the organism [the individual] with its environment via a human mediator’. Feuerstein sees Mediated Learning Experience as parallel to – but qualitatively different from – direct exposure to stimulation from the environment. The Piaget school of thought placed importance on direct learning in response to stimuli, with the developmental stage of the learner an important consideration. With the development of functional magnetic resonance imaging, and increasing methodologies for non-invasive study of the brain, researchers are seeing as never before the way that the brain works, and are noting its capacity for modification. A publication by Feuerstein and his team, called Beyond Smarter: Mediated Learning and the Brain’s Capacity for Change draws attention to these developments.
