Fundamental Facilitation
To facilitate means to “make easy.” This section introduces fundamental ideas about facilitation that both complement and support delivery of the content of the Creating Learning Partners manual. Building on this introduction, you will find facilitation tips in sidebars throughout the manual.
In a survey done in 2006, literacy coordinators across Alberta raised five priority questions:
- What principles should guide facilitation?
- How can I tap into learners’ experiences beyond simply asking them?
- Why include icebreakers?
- Why should I try to be creative if I believe I’m not?
- How do I work with diversity (i.e., of culture, learning styles and levels of
experience)?
The questions are related to one another, and so our responses to one help to answer each of the others.
Principles guiding facilitation
Principles guide our facilitation practice, whether our work is one-to-one or with small or large groups. The following facilitation principles help to anchor our work.
We begin with these assumptions as facilitators
- We should only ask people to do things we feel comfortable doing ourselves. The intent is to strike a balance between stretching participants beyond the familiar and avoiding embarrassing them.
- Participatory activities are purposeful rather than simply games for entertainment.
- The way we facilitate reflects how we see ourselves in relation to the other people. If we see ourselves as the experts, for example, that attitude has an impact on how we value the knowledge of others.
- We are creating knowledge together. We don’t necessarily know where we will end up. Learning is an evolving process of discovery rather than a process of filling an empty vessel.
Our role is one of “power with” rather than “power over” participants
If we trust the process and have faith in the wisdom of the people taking part, we accept that they hold many of the answers to their questions. Our role is to support their process of figuring out solutions. We are not using power to control but, rather, sharing power with the participants as a process of shared learning.
- As facilitators, we legitimately add new information. At the same time, we are creating the conditions for discovery and new understanding as partners in learning.
- Education for change takes learning beyond the superficial and connects it with people’s day-to-day lived experience. It is based on a continuous learning spiral, asking What?, So what? and Now what?, or to put it differently, What is our experience?, What does it mean? and What can we do about it?