Mediated learning is a method of relaying instruction to learners through a mediator. The method was developed by Doctor Reuven Feuerstein. In this method, the mediator, who can be a parent, a teacher, or anyone mandated to teach the students develops a test or an assignment and gives it to the student, thereafter, the response of the learner is monitored. The mediator assists the learner where weaknesses are noticed gauging by the response of the learner. The reaction of the teacher can be interaction which can be in the form of criticism, encouragements, praising the student, giving new assignments or giving examples. This process is meant to continue till the learner, teacher, or both of them are satisfied with the learning. Mediated learning comes with many advantages. It is very effective in learning new knowledge. It is also very effective in preparing students for higher level learning. One on one tutoring has been very successful with mediated learning. It has also been found to be very helpful in classroom teaching. This paper purposes to discuss the importance of mediated learning to the learner’s cognitive development. For a comprehensive discussion of the topic, the paper will look also at theoretical considerations. It will also touch on the features of mediated learning, and finally, its importance in developing a learner’s cognitive quarters.

Mediated learning aims at assisting a person in becoming a skilled, independent student or learner (Skuy, 1996). The best way to approach mediated learning is to guide the learner towards discovering their best method to learn. There are some features that are associated with mediated learning. Reciprocity is the establishment of a connection between the learner and the teacher. It involves creating of an environment of learning by knowing the values of one another, as well as, the cultural consideration. Yate (1987) explains that this is a very important step in mediated learning. After the first step, goals are developed. The learner and the teacher have to be conversant with the objective of the learning. To ensure that these are achieved well, the teacher and the learner share their understanding of the goals. The next step in mediated learning is the derivation of the meaning of the leaning. The teacher and the learner share the relevance of the learning to the learner. The learner has to consider how this learning will impact to them personally. The last feature in mediated learning is transcendence. This involves developing understanding in the learning process. The learner is assisted to develop skills on how to learn rather than emphasizing the product of learning.

Before considering the importance of mediated learning experiences to students and teachers, it is important to look at what triggered the development of mediated learning. Feuerstein and Feuerstein (1999) developed this model because of some gaps in teaching, contributed to by the changing of the times, as well as, globalization. Firstly, multiculturalism has emerged in the present classroom, and is mushrooming day by day. The mode and methods of training teachers has not been tailored to respond to these needs in the speed with which they come. On the same line, introducing multicultural concepts in teacher training has been of little help. This has been found to be even more confusing because of inadequacy in details of a theoretical framework focusing on the same (Feuerstein & Feuerstein, 1999). The answer to this problem is mediated learning experience. This is because this student-centered method will focus on an individual student and help them develop learning skills. The development of learning skills in an individual learner will enable them to learn well regardless of their cultural backgrounds. Therefore, mediated learning is very important in teaching multicultural classes.

Mediated learning has been found to be very important in teaching learners with learning problems (Fuerstein & Fuerstein, 1999). Apart from learning problems, there is the issue of understanding among various students. Yate (1987) asserts that assisting students requires handling them as per their individual needs. For example, a student may be very weak in a subject that is usually performed well in a class. If the teacher relies with class performance, this student will never be assisted. For such a student to benefit from the learning, they have to be handled individually. The solution for such a case, therefore, is mediated learning.

Mediated learning too is important in teaching in a class that has special students integrated. In the present, leaners with special needs have been incorporated in the regular classrooms. The traditionally trained teacher finds themselves at a difficulty on how and what content to deliver in such an integrated classroom. For all the learners to benefit in such a classroom, a student-centered method has to be used. The best method for such a case is mediated learning. Training teachers on how to apply mediated learning is, therefore, of vital importance in teaching (Yates, 2009).

Globalization and the ever-increasing technology is the other aspect that portrays importance of mediated learning. The current industry and the job market require graduates who will be always ready to better their skills and to better their skills in their respective profession (Yates, 2009). Going by this, the best way to teach students is through mediated learning. This is because this method teaches students on how to learn, rather than only emphasizing on the content that the student is learning.

The consideration of diversity is very important for a teacher in the classroom. Fuerstein and Fuerstein (1999) observe that students who are classified into social, economic and cultural backgrounds, deprives them of the right and independence to think. Feuerstein presupposes that these students fail to perform in their academics, not because they are poor in their upstairs, but they have been denied the power to think. He observes that critical thinking skills should be imparted to all the students in the classroom if they have to benefit from the learning. In supporting the Feuerstein’s theory, Yates (2009) observes that students who have been empowered with the skills of critical thinking tend to benefit from environmental experiences, and thus; they learn all through their lives. From these presuppositions, it is important to impart critical thinking skills to students so that they can be able to organize their environmental experiences and benefit from them. This will enable them learn all through their lives and be productive.

Differentiating between mediated experiences and direct experiences is important. For a student’s or children cognitive aspect to develop well and be geared towards critical thinking, they have to be taught on how to interpret their direct interactions with the environment. Yates (2009) observes that; as much as it is possible for a child to learn from direct environmental interactions, they get little value in the development of mental skills. For a student to develop their cognitive skills, thus; there should be a mediator. The process of mediation is what Fuerstein referred to as mediated learning. In this case, the role of the mediator is to guide the student on the important aspects of the interactions they make with the environment, so that the children can develop skills to add value to these experiences. Concerning the same subject, Feuerstein and Rand (1997) states that; the intervention of the mediator in this process, is to improve the mental significance of the environmental experiences. Apart from these, the mediator also assists in the transformation, organization and reconstruction of the knowledge.

Instrumental enrichment is a term that has been coined to explain the process of intervening to help students who have weaknesses in cognitive development. Yates (2009) asserts that one of the major goals of instrumental enrichment is to assist students in developing cognitively.

The theories developed by Feuerstein and Vygotsky (1978; 1986), as well as, Feuerstein (1980; 1990) offer the experiences and the importance of mediated learning experience in the cognitive development of a child. Their theories concerning mediated learning focus on constructive activity of the learner and its contribution in cognitive development. In applying the mediated learning experiences theory in the development of the cognitive quarters of the learners, these theorists advise on consideration of the socio-cultural background of the student. To make sure that the learner benefits in the matter of cognitive development, Feuerstein (1990) advises that the teacher be completely involved in coming up with the curriculum of the learning, as well as, in designing what the student will be learning. The purpose of involving both the teacher and the student in this activity is to make sure the student benefits, and that the learning is effective.

Discovery is a very important aspect to anyone who wants to become a learner. One aim of mediated learning is to prepare students to discover for themselves (Yates 2009). Learning to discover helps one to cope with the development in the world, as well as, to be meet the demand of their professional fields. This is because the profession in today’s world requires updating of knowledge day by day.

The difference between mediated and unmediated interaction is very vital in the understanding of the importance of mediated learning to learners. According to Feuerstein (1980), a child, in their development are exposed to two types of situations. He explains the first situation as composing if indirect learning. This comes out as a kind of learning that is not mediated. It happens when a student interacts with the environment but they do not understand its meaning. The second type of interaction involves a mediator. The mediator comes in between the student and the environment. In this case, the mediator modifies the environmental situation in a way that the student will understand it well. When this happens, the child understands the meaning of the environment, or the environmental situation, and thus understands them. This contributes to the cognitive development of the child in a great manner.

To produce criteria that will bring about cognitive learning, Feuerstein (1990) developed a list that facilitated mediated learning experience. The need for this comes out from the fact that; not all the interactions may produce learning. On the same note, a stimulus from the environment or interactions may be an undesirable type or amount. To deal with this, the theory of mediated learning advocates for learning materials. The introduction of learning materials in mediated learning is tailored to introducing cognitive modifiability in a learner. To make sure that this goal is achieve, Feuerstein et al. (1980) developed content-free materials. When constituted together, these materials compose the Instrumental Enrichment, which facilitates cognitive development of the learner. Further, Kozulin (1998) connote that; for a learner to learn the skills of how to learn, they have to acquire basic skills of cognitive development. The acquisition of the basic skills is facilitated through mediated learning. There are several reasons why this mediated learning is preferred as being content-free. Firstly, content material is perceived by students with resistance. Kozulin (1998) argued that students perceive content material as being just information, rather than knowledge. Secondly, when learning is based on content, teachers will spend time in teaching the information rather than teaching the student thinking skills. Thirdly, the content material usually contains specific knowledge and information that is not related to learning how to learn. Therefore, content-based learning does not facilitate cognitive development of the learner.

The essence of mediated learning is to teach with a paradigm of learning activities with goals just like content based learning. Feuerstein (1980) explains that the difference here is that; the teacher in content-based learning is to deliver the content, while the role of the teacher in mediated learning is to play the role of the mediator. To enhance the skills of the teacher in this system, it is important the teacher be trained on how to deliver in mediated learning. The preparation of the teacher in mediated learning is to be ready with the cognitive map, as well as, the cognitive learning criteria. To ensure efficiency, it is important that the teacher understands the cognitive needs of the student that will be taught. Further, Feuerstein (1990) advises that the teacher should be a believer in the concept of cognitive modifiability. This is because mediated learning experience too has challenges just like other modes of learning. To accomplish this, the teacher is encouraged to consider the nature of their classrooms. For example, a class that has diversity in different aspects will be very challenging for the teacher. This is because every student should benefit from this student-centered method.

The importance of mediated learning in a diverse group is emphasized. Feuerstein (1990) challenges the teacher who is to handle a diverse class with an intention of imparting thinking skills to them. In a case like this, the teacher has to handle the class with an understanding that every student has a different level of understanding. The advantage of mediated learning at the expense of content-based learning is that; in the later, the teacher may ignore the specific needs of the students of that class. In lieu of this, instrumental enrichment (Yates, 2009) and mediated learning (Feuerstein, 1980) are concerned with preparing a learner for cognitive development. They are the first stages towards developing the skills of self-learning. The importance of this preparation is based from the fact that, acquisition of cognitive knowledge is dependent on basic skills on cognitive knowledge. This will help in preparing the student to be able to participate in the detection of raw data, and also in the formation and checking of hypothesis. If these pre-requisite skills of cognitive-oriented teaching are not considered, cognitive under-development can result. In consideration of this, it is paramount to emphasize the cognitive-oriented pre-requisite skills when training teachers of mediated learning. For such a reason, it is vital to provide teachers with the tools of identifying the cognitive pre-requisites that some students may be lacking. Therefore, the role of intellectual enrichment is to develop this pre-requisite knowledge before embarking on mediated learning to develop the cognitive learning skills of the students.

Migration has come out to be an important aspect of many countries in the world. Some cases of migration are characterized by people who become permanent settlers in those countries completely. With globalization, people have found themselves living in places they didn’t expect they will spend their life in. For example; the USA has been characterized by many people from the different parts of the world. This issues of immigration brings with it cultural diversity in the classrooms, and presents new demands to the teacher in these classes. Kozulin (1998) argues for mediated learning experiences in such classes, he presupposes that for a teacher to stand a better chance to deal with this problem, they will have to spend time preparing students to stand a good chance for formal education. The best way teachers can help these students is by teaching them how to learn. The very best way for doing this is by applying mediated learning in their teaching.

A collection of people together in a classroom representing different diversities portrays ethnic diversity. Hermstein Murray (1994) revived the model that dealt with ethnic differences in the area of cognition. Standard psychometric IQ tests by these researchers did not agree with uniformity of cognition in human beings. Their research is very much in line with the findings of Tulviste (199). Although this model considers human cognition as uniform, tests and experiments by Hermstein and Murray showed that cognitive development is different in different sets of ethnic groups. This is because their results show different scores in different ethnic groups. The conclusions by these researches that cognitive skills are unevenly distributed in different ethnic groups, is an indication that; for learners to be assisted, they have to be focused on individually. This brings the need for, and points towards mediated learning experience. In their study, Feuerstein and Kozulin (1995) fault the psychometric model for failing to explain the processes of cognitive development. In the quest to argue out this particular model, these authors strongly support mediated learning model for application in diverse situations.

Mediated learning has been found to be very useful in the development of cognitive modifiability among students who have disabilities. Many institutions are making use of the program called Instrumental Enrichment-Basic to tap its benefit to students with cognitive difficulties. According to Kozulin et al (2009), mediated learning can be applied to help these learners with disabilities to develop cognitively. Among these areas are: abilities in self-regulation, abilities in forming concepts and vocabularies, development of system perception ability, and interpretation and application of the learned principles into the activities of daily living. These propositions have further been suggested by Lebeer (2006). Research has also shown that mediated learning experiences can be applied to help students with problems in intellectual impairment of the genetic origin. With such proven findings, policy development can benefit from mediated learning experiences, and so is educational philosophy and curriculum development that concerns issues of the disabled children. Kauler’s (2002) agrees with the proposition of inductive reasoning in small children with disabilities. He postulates that the learning of patterns, comparison and classification are some of the skills that can be easily imparted on small children at such an age.

Mediated learning has been found to be of a great importance in children or learners who are undergoing remedial teaching (Seabi, 2012). Regardless of the age of the learners, mediated learning experience has come of help. The traditional methods of improving cognitive ability have been faulted by many for their inefficiency, not until the development of mediated learning experience. In the western countries, for example, the traditional methods have performed very poor regarding cognitive development of learners with the fact that the classrooms are with diverse peoples. People of socio-economic minority groups in these areas have been seen to be disadvantaged (Tzuriel, 2000). According to Saebi (2012), most of the disadvantaged communities in the African continent have been victims of the traditional methods of cognitive modifiability and cognitive development. The major solution that has been suggested for this problem is the development of mediated learning experiences. According to Lidz (2002), many of these traditional methods have been very ineffective in providing remedial teaching to groups projected that they would benefit from remedial teaching. One reason that has faulted these methods is their failure to accommodate the intervention of the examiner and the teachers in the cognitive development of the learner. In contrast, mediated learning experiences promotes interaction between the student and the teacher, thus allows the intervention of the learner. Through this, the teacher is in an advantaged position to assist the leaner. The study of Saebi, for example, focused on South Africans. He argues that; a group like this that was disadvantaged during the apartheid regime, as well as, the current regime, needs a future focus. The author thus strongly recommends mediated learning as a way of developing future potentials of the South Africans, rather than just depending on their current ability. The advantage of mediated learning experience, according to Saeibi (2012), is that it will promote dynamic assessment, thus children from the socially disadvantaged areas will no longer be left out of the bracket of benefiting from education.

Learning that is technology based has been found to benefit a great deal from mediated learning experiences (Senapaty, 2009). The potential of technology in transforming the nature of education can only be realized through adoption of a student-centered learning method that will empower the students to learn by themselves without requiring the assistance of the teacher all the time. Such is the mediated learning experience, because in this method, the very importance of the teacher is teaching the student how to learn. According to Senapaty (2009), adoption of such a method in technology learning will enable the sector of education to take advantage of the advancement in technology. This is backed up by UNESCO (1998), in that education systems all over the world should adopt mechanisms to enable students to learn technology by themselves, so that they can keep abreast with the advancements thoroughly being made in the sector. The incorporation of mediated learning experiences into technology, will completely transform the way learners acquire information in this sector, and place them at a better place to be empowered through mediated learning experiences. In supporting this observation, Briner (1999) brings about Vygotsky’s socio-cultural theory into play, and recommends its concept in adopting a student-centered methodology to teach technology. The reason for subscribing to such a method is that; though mediated learning experiences can be implemented without technology, embracing technology makes sure that the learners are updated with the millennium requirements, and it will also act as a recipe for the technological professional development.

Teching science and mathematics in students with low functioning cognitive students has been found to be difficult. Fridjhon (2002) addresses the issue of teaching hard science subjects to people with low-functioning cognitive skills. He relates this with an experimental astronomy class that was in place for more than seven years. According to Fridjhon (2002), the children would practice with the celestial bodies, observe the, and teach their parents and teachers about what they have learnt. The children did this for a prolonged period of time. It was noted that the students, though they were very young to learn meteorology, were very motivated by these experiences, and they improved tremendously in mathematics and science subjects. The effect of constructivism and mediated leaning experiences can be seen into play in this experiment. The advantage and importance of this is that; a student develops their own view of the world. This gives them an advantage in becoming people who can discover things by themselves. Driver and Oldham (1985) agree with this phenomenon, in that when students are allowed and empowered to interact with the environment, they construct knowledge from both the natural and the technological world. When students are exposed to such at an early age, they get the advantage of developing their cognitive skills. Fridjhon (2002) further argues that the students of science go to classrooms with preformed minds and with alternative observations about science. When such students are empowered to develop their alternative thoughts about science, they yet again get the advantage of developing their cognitive skills. In lieu of this, the teacher has the mandate of accommodating the alternative views of the students, if they have to develop cognitively. Howe (1996) faults the traditional methods that saw the views of the students as being on the wrong. He proposes mediated learning approach that will give the learner the independence of learning by themselves. When a learner is allowed such independence, they benefit by developing cognitive skills.

Writing and the communication of meaning is another very important area that has seen students benefit greatly from mediated learning experiences (Thompson, 2013). A high level of abstraction is usually realized if students are empowered to think by themselves, and more so, express their thinking. Composing is a process that is very much dependent on interactions of the social and the cultural environment. Thus, translation from the internalized thought, and the inner speech, to the outer speech, and put it onto writing is very much assisted by environmental interactions. For this reason, writing represents a mode of learning that is developmental in nature. Therefore, empowering a student to learn how to write by themselves contributes to the cognitive development of those students. Thomson (2013) faults the model of assisted performance developed by Tharp and Gallimores (1988), and argues that the best way a student can be helped to develop cognitively, is by empowering them to be in a position to interpret their day to day social and environmental interactions.

Goswami and Byrant (2007) agree that all the forms of learning are beneficial for cognitive development. The only way of preparing a student to embrace all the forms of learning, is by empowering them to think independently. These forms of learning include learning by imitation, learning by analogy, causal learning, as well as, statistical learning. All these forms underpin cognitive development of the learner. To enhance neuro-cognitive development of the learners, pre-preparation has to be done through mediated learning experiences. Munakata (2001) agrees that for a better realization of results in this area, mediated learning experiences have to be applied in preparing the students to think for themselves. It is by empowering the students to think for themselves that the teacher will achieve their gal of influencing the development of the cognitive centers of the student. According to Munakata (2001), pumping information to students without developing their thinking capacity and skills, through mediated learning, will lead to the development of gaps in the learning. Such learning will not be beneficial to the students. To deal with this problem, mediated learning experiences are recommended.

One of the most advantageous concepts about mediated learning experiences, as well as, instrumental enrichment, is that it can be used as a mentoring tool for students (Lebeer, 2006). This is because the concept of mediated learning experience determines how effective learning will be. It attracts the role of other people in their intervention for the learning of an individual. For this reason, all forms of education, whether formal or informal can benefit from mediated learning experience. The intervention, and transfer of the concept is through how the will and intention of the mentor, in this case, teacher or parent, changes the thinking skills of a students. In this case, it can be used as a model for professional intervention. Lebeer (2006) agrees that; in using mediated learning as a model for professional development, the mentors and teachers should do their best to substitute the lack, or inadequacy of the method in the families. This is because many family members are not versed with the importance of the method, and they may concentrate on feeding the learners with information.

In conclusion, mediated learning experiences are very important in the cognitive development of learners. The tools of instrumental enrichment go hand in hand with mediated learning in preparing students and learners on how to learn. The development of the model of mediated learning has facilitated many achievements in learning. Learners can be empowered to discover by their own. Professionals are empowered to develop professionally through the course of their profession. Remedial teaching has been made efficient through the system of mediated learning experiences. The leaning among students with disabilities has been facilitated through the same method. Further, learners with low cognitive skills have benefited in areas like sciences, astronomy and mathematics. In addition, technological development has benefited greatly through mediated learning experiences. For these reasons, mediated learning should be applied in all the learning settings, in order to tap its benefits in cognitive developments.

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