In this section of Direct. Action Great Turning (DAGT) the focus is on defining and demonstrating usable skills parent and professionals can teach students. Examples of such skills include study skills, executive function (self-regulation) skills, and organizational/thinking skills amongst other possible topics. Throughout, such topics will be presented as tools students can use to help them reach short- and long-term goals. Tools in this context will always be considered something a person uses to accomplish something more effectively. In the sense skill sets and learning help students develop competencies to set and achieve short- and long-term goals, such approaches amount to “dream smithing,”
The presentation of such topics will always will always be within the framework of Mediated Learning Experience. As it is classically defined by Reuvin and Ravin Feurstein and Louis Falik, Mediated Learning Experience may be defined as, “the intentional process between the developing human organism (the learner) and an experienced, intentioned adult (the mediator), who-by interposing him or herself between the learner and external sources of stimulation–mediates the experience by selecting, framing, focusing, intensifying, and feeding back environmental experiences in such a way as to produce appropriate learning sets and habits. Specific criterial dimensions of MLE (the mediation of . . .intentionality/reciprocity, transcendence, meaning, regulation and control of behavior, competence, psychological individuation and differentiation, sharing behavior, goal seeking/setting/planning/achieving, challenge–novelty and complexity, self-change, optimistic alternatives, belonging) have been developed and described, and are used systematically in interventions to create conditions of change in the learner . . .”
Mediated Learning Experience techniques were developed in Israel after the Holocaust to help large numbers of orphaned Jewish children compensate for cognitive and cultural deficits resulting from the traumas of losing their parents, food deprivation, physical and emotional trauma, and educational disruptions in instruction. Much of this approach can be understood as highly structured communication, baseline assessments, Mediated Learning Experience using tools and assessment instruments, and further formal assessments. In these blog posts, the skill sets will be defined and summarized, demonstrated, and discussed, all within the routine communication structures of Mediated Learning Experiences,
