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Mediation: classroom activities for the skills needed for the 21st century workplace EWELINA GEE MILAN PETER GEE
As an important element of our role as educators is to equip our students for their future careers, we surely need to think of how we are going to teach them particular skills. This goal can be achieved by recourse to the recently extended CEFR descriptor scales for mediation, as they go beyond the traditional four skills by focusing on developing: the facilitating of communication with a range of audiences, the collaborative building of meaning, and critical thinking. This article focuses on mediation and some of the dimensions that it can take and gives practical examples of teaching activities that can be used to employ mediation in the classroom.
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ince the beginning of the 20th century automation has had a considerable impact on the jobs that people do, and the skills that they need to learn. A 2018 report from the Mckinsey Global Institute predicted that by 2030 the number of work hours spent on physical and manual labour will fall by 14%, and work entailing basic cognitive tasks will fall by 15%. In contrast, the work hours spent on labour requiring higher cognitive skills, social and emotional skills, and advanced IT skills are set to rise by 8%, 24% and 55% respectively. The authors of the report argue that apart from programming, the worker of the 21st century needs to excel at a range of soft skills, as higher cognitive skills jobs require critical thinking and decision making, the processing of complex information and creativity, while social and emotional skills jobs need advanced negation and communication skills, interpersonal skills and empathy, initiative taking, adaptability and lifelong learning. Mediation – the new meaning
Often when people first hear the term ‘mediation’ they think of the more common use of the word, which refers to resolving conflict between people or groups. While the authors of the CEFR descriptor scales acknowledge that mediation has a range of meanings, including the need to diffuse tensions, the main thrust of the CEFR’s notion of mediation is one that sees the learner as someone who acts as an intermediary, who facilities communication when there is some kind of barrier. Most importantly, the learner is not seen as simply a conduit for information, but as agentive: one who actively chooses. Examples of the communication that can be facilitated include the explaining of everyday information (i.e. announcement at a train station) to someone who does not speak that language; or helping two individuals who may or may not speak the same language to be able to communicate with each other; or it can be the paraphrasing of a complex or technical text or conversation in a more simpler way to facilitate understanding. Thus, the texts can 15
