Yes, I agree that teaching and learning are only vaguely related concepts that don’t always happen concurrently. But, the point of Vygotsky’s work was to show that all learning is mediated by ‘tools’. These tools, including language, are technologies in the broadest sense (that is, technologies are not necessarily ‘technical’, particularly as we use the word now). Once language is viewed as a technology, you can only conclude that learning is technologically mediated (that is, through language). Mediation itself is a more complex term in this framework and the ‘teacher’ may be but one form of ‘mediational means’ to learning. So teaching is not ‘technologically’ mediated, but learning is. Teaching is but one process through which the learner is exposed to, and engages with, concepts.

I’m no pedagogue, so I have to admit that I have only the vaguest notion of what you’re talking about, but fools rush in…

First I want to make a clear distinction between learning and teaching. In my view, learning is not the complement of teaching. If we use the term “knowledge” to refer to both what is taught and what is learned, then we reduce the teaching/learning process to communication or mediation, which I would regard as a flawed model. Actually, I would resist use of the term “knowledge” in this context, not just for philosophical reasons, but because it reinforces a bias towards information that can be reduced to propositions.

From the point of view of the individual learner, the results of learning are to be found in the different capacities possessed after the learning process. (In this sense, “unlearning” is a special case of learning, involving the loss of capacities or ceasing to rely on pre-existing capacities.) Teaching provides a context within which learning is supposed to take place. I labour this point because it seems to me that “learning”, in this sense, need not be “technologically mediated”, if you believe, as I do, that the individual mind can restructure pre-existing “knowledge” into new forms without the need for an external stimulus. Whereas without the intention that “learning” should take place, “teaching” hardly seems to be a meaningful act but, more importantly, such an intention alone cannot constitute “teaching” unless there is some way in which it impinges upon the learner (or, at least, the learner’s context). To this extent, we can regard “teaching” as “technologically mediated”: the learner’s context is altered as a result of the intention that learning should occur.