Mediation Index in Dynamic Assessment for story retell

Theorical Background: Narrative analysis is a method that examines narratives to understand how individuals construct meaning and identity through storytelling and story retelling. Children with language difficulties may face challenges in retelling stories, making it essential to analyze the mediation strategies used during interactions.

Purpose: To analyze the role of mediation used during the assessment´s storytelling.

Research Method: This pilot study involved two stories presented to 10 schoolchildren aged 5 to 7. Five children had no reported linguistic-cognitive difficulties, while the other five, according to their parents or teachers, exhibited challenges related to storytelling, attention, or expression. After listening to the stories, the children were asked to retell them and received mediation from evaluators when necessary. Data were audio-recorded, transcribed, and analyzed from a socio-historical perspective.

Finding: Mediation strategies were categorized into 10 types: evaluator feedback, follow-up support questions, direct open questions, direct closed questions, dialogic complementarity questions, intertextual complementarity questions, corrective complementarity questions, reflective questions, synthesis-support questions, and engraving-support questions. The mediations varied in both quantity and quality. Children`s performance was assessed using a "mediation index," with scores ranging from zero to three for each strategy, the higher the score, the less support required.

Discussion: The findings indicate that mediation plays a crucial role in enabling children with language difficulties or those still developing narrative skills to successfully retell stories. The proposed mediation categories can serve as a framework for interventions in schools and clinical settings, helping to identify the levels of support that optimize children`s learning potential.

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