Chapter Number
11
Authors
Hussein AlAhmad
Elias Kukali
Pages From

Book Title
Diversity in the MENA region: Bridging the gaps in language learning
Editor(s)
Hassan Abouabdelkader
Barry Tomalin
Publisher
Palgrave Macmillan
Edition
1
Abstract

The chapter stresses the importance of media aids in Teaching and Learning (TL) and discusses classroom mediation as a theoretical object of inquiry and conceptual elaboration. Reflecting on the prevalent sub-cultural, emotional/rational, and lingual barriers that typically materialise among undergraduate students -primarily first-year students and sophomores, the chapter explores whether, also to what extent are classroom mediation dynamics applied in TL process, and their relation to effective education in heterogeneous TL environment (classrooms). A probabilistic sample of 486 undergraduate participants from a cluster of six university campuses in the West Bank was studied to assess the effectiveness and innovation that media-influenced learning can bring to TL process, primarily in its cognitive, pedagogical, and behavioural dimensions. Data gathering and analysis draw on mediatisation; a meta-theory that discusses how media-associated effects play vital role as agents of change in culture and society (Schulz, 2004). The chapter confirms the inter/relatedness of classroom mediation to effective education, principally as agent in mitigating school-inherited and socio-cultural disparities among students of heterogeneous backgrounds, to efficiently foster the cognitive, behavioural, and pedagogical dimensions in TL, and their subordinate mechanisms of students’ engagement, motivation, innovation and productivity, within undergraduate classrooms in the sampled Palestinian universities.