A promising area of confluence in our field of practice
There are a number of books that address the practice of group facilitation in education, the most visible one was written by John Eller. According to his publisher, this book was designed for administrators who frequently are assigned to facilitate stakeholder groups in Education - parents, site-based management teams, faculty and staff, accountability teams, and others . In this book, John Eller includes many strategies and templates that help groups of people work together to complete tasks, generate new ideas, and solve problems.
However, the great potential of group facilitation skills could be extended to the teachers and educators, that can then become 'facilitative teachers', bring the most out of the collective knowledge in a classroom.
Such is also the impetus of an interesting work started in the US by Ted Dintersmith - the school innovation playlist. "Like all organizations, schools get locked into a routine, preventing change. But all schools need to innovate to prepare kids for a dynamic and uncertain future. The question is, “How?” The Innovation Playlist can help your school make positive, informed change. It represents a teacher-led model, based on small steps leading to big change, that draws on best practices from outstanding educators and non-profits from across the country."
The convergence of group facilitation and teaching can help teachers to design a number of processes for student-driven learning, such as Curiosity time
, Socratic seminar
or What students want to learn.
Ted organizes this innovation playlist like a series of albums (which are the big goals) and tracks (the small steps that help you reach each big goal). Each track can be done quickly — fifteen minutes to a day or two — with minimal downside and lots of upsides. The playlist process can be led by a school’s principal, by faculty at the school, grade or department level, or even by a family at home.
Additional resources about facilitating learning and change in groups and group sessions.
Check out this great article, whose contents include: introduction · what is group facilitation? · core conditions and the facilitator · the facilitator’s role · core values · facilitating sessions – having a plan · facilitating sessions – thinking of beginnings, middles and ends · facilitating – responding to the moment · dealing with difficult behaviour · conclusion · further reading and references · acknowledgements · how to cite this piece
About the author
Paul Nunesdea is the English pen name of Paulo Nunes de Abreu, Facilitator, Master of Ceremonies, Author, and Publisher of the book series - Architecting Collaboration, his LinkedIn profile can be reached here, or in Spanish here, or Portuguese here.
Paul is an IAF Certified Facilitator™ who designs and hosts events for clients ranging from large companies to municipalities and regional governments.
His academic background as a PhD researcher combined with +15 years of experience as a former CEO and entrepreneur has sharpened a client-serving mentality eager to co-create win-win solutions. As an NGO founder, he co-founded Digital Health Portugal and hosts the Health Regions Summit, the Health Data Forum among other initiatives.
As both a GroupMap™ and Howspace™ certified facilitator he co-founded the Digital Collaboration Academy with renowned facilitator Peter Seah united by the vision of creating and sustaining a new emerging field -
Digital Facilitation - augmented by the core competencies of the IAF - International Association of Facilitators.
