The criteria for Mediated Learning Experience

This chapter describes each of Reuven Feuerstein’s criteria for Mediated Learning Experience, giving examples from work carried out in New Zealand and internationally. At the 1993 International Workshop in Shoresh, Jerusalem, Professor Feuerstein presented a detailed exposition of the criteria for Mediated Learning Experience – the qualities one would hope to find in the adult/child learning interaction. Feuerstein considers certain criteria to be universal, in that they are found wherever mediation occurs no matter what the cultural context. These criteria – intentionality/reciprocity, transcendence and meaning – are central to the development of modifiability in the individual. Feuerstein describes mediation as fundamentally about change. The criteria of intentionality/reciprocity refer to the way the mediator is ‘animated by an intention above and beyond, and distinguishable from, the content of the interaction’. This intention can be both conscious and unconscious, and the mediator is often carrying out this intention ‘on behalf of the culture’.