Participation, Facilitation and Mediation in Educational Interactions.

The chapter analyses the meanings of facilitation and mediation, in the promotion of children’s and adolescents’ participation to communication. It aims at clarifying differences and relationships between the concepts of facilitation and mediation, and their ‘dialogic’ aspects. This conceptualisation is applied to an empirical research on international camps concerning peace education and involving adult facilitators and adolescents. The study highlights the kinds of dialogic actions which seem successful in facilitating and mediating the interaction with adolescents, actions which promote the adolescents’ active participation and their coordination in the interaction, by confirming and taking the adolescents’ perspectives, and promoting new narratives. The chapter argues that actions of this type can introduce important changes in the education systems.