Revista Académica Divulgativa Arjé
ISSN: 2215-5538 Enero a Julio, 2022 Volumen 5, Número 1
Editorial
4
Pedagogical mediation in first person
“Technique is what teachers use until the real teacher arrives, and we need to
find as many ways as possible to help that teacher show up”.
Parker Palmer
As teachers, we are trained to communicate knowledge and master it, in our
daily work we explore new techniques and new teaching tools. This constant
effort to mediate learning in the best way, sometimes makes us focus on the
technique or the tool, leaving aside the person who uses it. We easily forget that
in pedagogical mediation not only our brain participates, but also our person in
its fullness.
Teachers have a dual role, on the one hand, there is the specific responsibility of
guiding the teaching and learning processes; and on the other hand, we are also
learners in search of our own liberation and purpose. This double role as facilitator
and learner implies for us to assume a different way of learning. Given this, the
following is stated:
M. Sc. Norma Calvo Cascante
Decana
Universidad La Salle, Costa Rica
Contacto: ncalvo@ulasalle.ac.cr
Revista Académica Divulgativa Arjé
ISSN: 2215-5538 Enero a Julio, 2022 Volumen 5, Número 1
Editorial
5
When education is the practice of freedom, students are not the only ones
who are asked to share, to confess. Engaged pedagogy does not seek
simply to empower students. Any classroom that employs a holistic model
of learning will also be a place where teachers grow and are empowered
by the process (Hooks, 1994, p. 21).
In other words, the educator is not only the one who educates, but the one who,
educating, is educated in dialogue with the learner. Although as teachers we are
the ones who design the lesson plan, we must be humble and learn from the
diversity of backgrounds and differences in points of view. In that context of
humility, we must recognize that we do not have all the answers and that it is in
the relationship between students and facilitators that we learn together.
This idea of pedagogical mediation contrasts with the traditional academic
culture in which objective facts are considered pure, while subjective facts are
viewed with suspicion and received as unreliable. The use of the first person in
pedagogical mediation is seen as a bias, a danger that weakens academic
certainty and must be overcome. In our investigations we are forced to write in
the third person, we are forced to separate ourselves from what we are
passionate about and not to appropriate our thoughts or not take responsibility
for them, which is considered a virtue.
Contrary to what happens widely in traditional academic culture, this more
relational approach to pedagogical mediation places great importance on the
aspect of self-knowledge. In this paradigm, teacher and apprentice are
simultaneously "I" and "you"; their subjective experiences are located on each
Revista Académica Divulgativa Arjé
ISSN: 2215-5538 Enero a Julio, 2022 Volumen 5, Número 1
Editorial
6
side of a spectrum and in the "we" they come together filling the space between
them. Since blind objectivity is not possible, self-knowledge helps me as a teacher
to recognize prejudices or ideas, which can affect the relationship with learners
for better or worse. I believe that the best we can bring to the classroom is
ourselves. However, there is a price to pay for practicing this type of approach in
our pedagogical mediation; it is imperative that we know what we bring with us.
There must be a commitment on my part to continual self-exploration, to bring
the best of me to my classroom.
In conclusion, we need to practice a pedagogical mediation that privileges that
point where life becomes history, or as I have popularly heard, the point where
life as biology becomes life as biography. We must overcome the state of things
to reach the state of humans in the relationship with our learners, it is urgent to
stop hiding behind the technique and mediate learning in the first person.
References
Hooks, B. (1994). Teaching to transgress. New York: Routledge Press.
Palmer, P. (1998). The courage to teach [El coraje de enseñar]. Jossey-Bass.
