Luis Moll Speaks on Cultural Mediation of Thinking in U.S. Schools

The Cultural Mediation of Thinking: Forging New Tools and Pathways
April 19, 2007 at 4:00 p.m.
Schlegel Hall 207
University of Rochester's River Campus
Free and Open to the Public Luis C. Moll, an expert on literacy and a professor in the Department of Language, Reading and Culture, College of Education, at the University of Arizona, will present “The Cultural Mediation of Thinking: Forging New Tools and Pathways” at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 19, at Schlegel Hall 207 on the University of Rochester’s River Campus.

The cultural mediation of thinking is a defining concept of the Vygotskian theoretical formulation. The central point, however, is not simply about the importance of the tool and symbol use by human beings—it is stronger than that. It refers to how human beings use social processes and cultural resources of all kinds in the constitution of human thinking. During his lecture, Moll will present brief examples from previous and ongoing studies to illustrate both proximal (e.g., social situations and the tools at hand) and distal (e.g., ideological systems) that come to mediate our possibilities for thinking.

Moll’s research addresses the connections among culture, psychology and education, especially in relation to the education of Latino children in U.S. schools. Among other studies, he has analyzed the quality of classroom teaching, examined literacy instruction in English and Spanish, studied how literacy takes place in the broader social contexts of household and community life, and attempted to establish pedagogical relationships among these domains of study.

Born in Puerto Rico, Moll was elected to membership in the National Academy of Education in 1998. He has served on the editorial board of several highly-respected journals, and is the author of Vygotsky and Education: Instructional Implications and Applications of Sociohistorical Psychology and most recently the co-editor of Funds of Knowledge: Theorizing Practices in Households and Classrooms.

The event is free and open to the public. Registration is not necessary. An interpreter will be provided for individuals who are hearing-impaired. For more information, please contact the Warner School at (585) 275-3950.