Since I studied Adult Learning Development and Educational Psychology back in the 1990s, I pondered the question of how we can make teaching and learning more meaningful for students. How can we engage and bring out the knowledge that is right in front of us as teachers, that brings the classroom alive, present and engaged with real questions?
During my studies, I found many answers to these questions, and I found that good facilitation skills and processes are essential.
In a time where knowledge is widely available, and information can be accessed at our fingertips anywhere and anytime, good facilitation skills are more important than ever for making learning relevant and meaningful.
So, what are those essential facilitation skills?
Well it is a bit like walking in the dark when we step into the unknown and navigating the knowledge of the group forward to this ‘Aha’ moment, when the light bulb goes on and we have an insight, a collective or individual understanding about a situation and new learning is discovered together.
So in my experience, as a facilitator to be able to navigate the unknown the following skills are essential:
Presence, Full Awareness with what is before us
Powerful Listening
Powerful Questioning
Powerful Speaking
Awareness of the Purpose and Direction of our inquiry.
So, what else do facilitators do differently from teachers? Facilitators are process guides and stay typically outside of content. Content is created, developed and discussed by the group, guided by it’s purpose or learning needs. The content and process are guided by the purpose of the session, the group or the inquiry. The facilitator stands for the purpose and helps the group to achieve it.
A process guide knows many different tools and processes on how to engage a group of people to share and collect the knowledge that is present in the group. That can be done through small group work, games, brainstorming, drawing, singing, dancing or any other form of communicating and creating together.
There are many resources for facilitation available online.
I was inspired to write this article after an interesting conversation I had with a friend who started teaching mindfulness in schools. We talked about the idea of bringing facilitation skills into schools as well. Can you imagine your teachers and students having those skills and tools? I can. Being a facilitative participant can be just as powerful as it is to be a facilitative teacher on the path to discovering new knowledge together.
I have developed two prototype workshops for teaching facilitation skills to teachers and children. Each workshop takes about three hours and allows participants to experience and practice some of the essential facilitation skills that I mentioned above.
For more information, please get in touch with me here: https://calendly.com/collective-insight/claritycall