A peer-reviewed publication of The International Association for Cognitive Education and Psychology

According to Vygotsky, mediation is the process of equipping children with mental tools, the instruments they will need for mediating their mental processes. Mediation begins with an adult's involving children in the course of shared activity, with the goal of solving a problem. In the context of this activity, the adult provides for the children a sort of mental template or model that will make it possible for them to solve the problem. Initially, the children apply their new mental instrument under the guidance of the adult. Gradually, the adult passes greater and greater responsibility to the child. The adult also facilitates the child's internalization of the newly acquired tool. As a result, the child's activity, which began as a shared child-adult activity that was mediated by an external tool turns into the child's independent activity that is now mediated by the child's internalized representation of the mental tool. When tha