Being the Future: creativefacilitating.com Blog

Facilitating Learning

January 11th, 2010

I read with interest an article in the Washington Post today about D.C. teachers who have won national certification. Judy Leak-Bowes, a talented teacher, says the program “made me more of a facilitator than a dictator. You give students the room they need to make an investment in their education.”

This interested me because of its strong resonance with my earlier training to teach, back in the 60s. And it interested me because of my current profession, as facilitator of group experiences, learning, visioning, planning in work settings. This work is all about creating the space in which people can learn. And it is about encouraging inquiry more than advocacy.

Many people feel compelled in their professional lives to be confident, competent, persuasive, strong. In doing so, they often feel they must be in an advocacy role, telling, “dictating” in Leak-Bowes phrase for old classroom habits. There is certainly a place for advocacy. But if it is all advocacy without inquiry then little learning is taking place, either on the part of those getting talked at or on the part of the advocate.

Learning occurs when minds are open, when we wonder what possibilities are out there, when we entertain the ideas that seemed dissonant or jarring on first hearing. In organizations, learning occurs when it is safe to question and to explore, just as in Leak-Bowes classroom.

I commend to you a book that supports individual inquiry. It is a short, easy read in narrative form, Change Your Questions Change Your Life, by Marilee G. Adams, Berrett Kohler. In it, we experience the journey to be a Learner rather than a Judger, and we learn questions that can alter the path of that journey. “What assumptions am I making?” “How else can I think about this situation?” “What is the other person thinking, feeling, needing, and wanting?”

In supporting our own learning we support each other’s learning, too.

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