摘要:The article refers to exploratory research conducted in Capes’ thesis banks, in the Brazilian Digital Library of Thesis and Dissertations, in SciELO Brasil and in Academic Google, on educational mediation in distance education. Two complementary perspectives stood out – the role of the professor-tutor and its relation with technological artifacts. They highlight the importance of educational mediation in distance education processes and point to didactical-educational elements that must be effectively included by the several distance education systems. Thus, one must assure consistent practices of educational mediation in which the teachers’ work mobilizes the students’ capacity to learn how to learn.