Facilitating Group Learning

George Lakey

Description

From the acclaimed coauthor of A Manual for Direct Action comes Facilitating Group Learning, an essential resource designed to help educators, trainers, workshop leaders, and anyone who assists groups to learn. George Lakey presents the core principles and proven techniques of direct education, an approach he developed for effectively teaching adults in groups. To illustrate how it works in action, Lakey includes a wealth of compelling stories from his vast experience facilitating groups in a variety of situations.Direct education cuts through the pretense and needless complications that can distance learners from subject matter. It removes false expectations (for example, that kinesthetic learners will strongly benefit from slide presentations) and false assumptions (for example, that a group is simply the sum of the individuals). This approach focuses the encounter between teacher and group; it replaces scattered attentionof a teacher preoccupied with curriculum and participants preoccupied with distractionswith gathered attention.Unlike in other books on group facilitation, the author emphasizes critical issues related to diversity, as well as authenticity and emotions. Step by step, this groundbreaking book describes how to design effective learning experiences and shows what it takes to facilitate them. Ultimately, it brings all the elements of the author's direct education approach together.Facilitating Group Learning also contains material on sustaining the educator, addresses working with social movements, and includes the Training for Change toolkit of group learning techniques.

Sujets

• Education

Informations

• Publié par: PM Press
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781629638423
• Langue: English

Extrait

A vital read for trainers committed to genuine people power. Practical and profound, this book will serve any facilitator working to activate the wisdom, capacities, and protagonism of groups to build winning social justice movements.
-Zein Nakhoda, director and core trainer of Training for Change
In this engaging and accessible book, George Lakey draws on a lifetime of experience to provide a highly practical resource to anyone seeking to understand and respond to the complexities of group work. The book will be invaluable to anyone trying to effect social change through groups, while striving to stay simultaneously sane and employed.
-Stephen D. Brookfield, distinguished university professor, University of St. Thomas
I ve been working with forms of direct education for many decades, and I found new ideas and inspirations in every chapter. For anyone involved in teaching, training, sharing skills, or leading groups, this book is an invaluable resource!
-Starhawk, author of The Earth Path, Dreaming the Dark, and Webs of Power
George Lakey has inspired our union to engage in education in a way that challenges us to redefine social justice and equality in new and exciting ways. This book helps us to continue our journey to touch the souls of union members.
-Denis Lemelin, former national president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Facilitating Group Learning will ease the way of all who venture into the white waters of facilitation. George clarifies the most basic, complex, and nagging challenges of facilitation, while honoring the realities of individual and social power dynamics and providing real-life examples from the path of continued growth and mastery. A rare gift!
-Niyonu D. Spann, founding president of TRV Consulting and Beyond Diversity 101
This book is a must-read for people who teach adults of any age, no matter what the subject, and who care about doing it in ways that yield deep and abiding learning. Wonderfully well-written and rich with psychological and spiritual insights, as well as practical strategies, it represents the fruits of a lifetime of transformational teaching and learning by one of the foremost adult educators of our time.
-Parker J. Palmer, author of The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, and The Heart of Higher Education
Hard-won advice for community organizers . Clear, encouraging, and potentially empowering.
-Kirkus Reviews
Lakey doesn t make it sound easy, but he employs a reasoned, seasoned perspective to clearly convey principles of organization that have proved their value to activists worldwide.
-Publishers Weekly
I ve applied the wisdom in this book while teaching high school and middle school students, as well as when training teenager camp counselors. I draw on George Lakey s masterful storytelling and pithy insights over and over. He returns my attention to the secret life of groups and helps me design student-centered experience where the group dynamics unleash and empower students. It works.
-Jonathan Ogle, high school teacher in the U.S. and abroad
In contrast to its unassuming title, Facilitating Group Learning contains the toolkit every organizer needs to build the fundamentals of a powerful grassroots group: training, collective decision-making, and heightening its learning curve. The book set me on a path that draws out a group s intelligence and its awareness that it is more than the sum of its parts.
-Lissy Romanow, director of Momentum
With humor and insight, George distills a lifetime of experiences. His stories speak to anyone wanting to be a better teacher or trainer-even showing the transformational potential of our groups, meetings, and workshops!
-Daniel Hunter, global training associate director of 350.org, author of Climate Resistance Handbook
Reading Facilitating Group Learning is like sitting around a fire in a storytelling circle with wise and experienced activist educators. George weaves solid pedagogy into stories of learning that cross cultures, contexts, and human experience. CUPE s union education program is stronger, nimbler, and more relevant as a result of incorporating George s work.
-Cathy Remus, director of union education for the Canadian Union of Public Employees (Canada s largest union)
George Lakey had a positive, lasting impact on the Canadian Union of Postal Workers, by building the pedagogical foundation for our national education program. The result has been building confidence, celebrating diversity, and harnessing our power for positive social action. His book offers authentic magic for elevating moments of despair into profound, hopeful opportunities for change where all can have a hand on the wheel.
-Dave Bleakney, second national vice president of the Canadian Union of Postal Workers
Facilitating Group Learning is my go-to resource for educators who want to tap into a group s wisdom. This book translates an experiential pedagogy to text and offers readers clear examples for how to design, implement, and adapt curricula. When you apply direct education in the world, the results reverberate in learners for years.
-Matthew Armstead, core trainer with Training for Change, director of Culture Work Studios
When I need to explain to people what I think good facilitation is about, I give them this book. In some ways, it is a manual grounded in decades of incredible and varied experience. In another way it is a challenge: to see facilitation as a powerful tool in the essential and transformational work of supporting people to take agency over their lives. I hope more and more of us take that challenge and use this as a guide to support us along the way.
-Yotam Marom, trainer and consultant, founder of Wildfire, cofounder of If Not Now
This book offers living examples that are inspiring and insightful. Our International Facilitators Development Program has for years found that George Lakey has an answer for almost every question that both new and more experienced facilitators bring. It s brilliant, a kind of bible for facilitators.
-Mutima Imani, facilitator trainer for The Work That Reconnects
As a trainer and facilitator, I have found this book to be an invaluable tool in my work! Group dynamics and processes can be complex things, but this book helps you think through how we work together to harvest the wisdom in the room. The book is well laid out and accessible and is a must for any educator!
-Kazu Haga, author of Healing Resistance, founder of East Point Peace Academy
George Lakey s work helped me grow as a classroom teacher, leading me to new understandings of group dynamics, individual students, and the roles of educators. This book is a must for teachers looking to develop transformational teaching practices.
-Joshua Block, author of Teaching for a Living Democracy, public high school teacher in Philadelphia

Facilitating Group Learning: Strategies for Success with Diverse Learners
George Lakey
This edition 2020 PM Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be transmitted by any means without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN: 978-1-62963-826-3 (print)
ISBN: 978-1-62963-842-3 (ebook)
Library of Congress Control Number: 2020934744
Cover by John Yates / www.stealworks.com
Interior design by briandesign
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
PM Press
PO Box 23912
Oakland, CA 94623
www.pmpress.org
Printed in the USA
Contents
Foreword
One Manual for Both Education and Training: Introduction to the New Edition of Facilitating Group Learning
Acknowledgments
About the Author
1 Introduction: Direct Education for Adult Learning Groups
PART I THE LEARNING GROUP AND THE INDIVIDUAL
2 The Role of the Individual and the Group in Direct Education
3 Harnessing the Power of Intention
4 Strengthening the Container: Subgroups Join the Mix
5 The Secret Life of Groups
PART II DIVERSITY, DIFFERENCE, AND EMOTIONS IN GROUP LEARNING
6 Acknowledging Difference to Accelerate Learning
7 Diversity and Conflict Styles
8 Social Class and Diversity
9 Authenticity, Emotion, and Learning
PART III DESIGNING LEARNING EXPERIENCES
10 Structures for Organizing the Content
11 Building onWhat the Learners Know
12 Learning Difficult Material
13 Sequencing for Maximum Impact
14 Accountability in Direct Education
15 Emergent Design: Facilitating in the Here and Now
PART IV FACILITATION
16 Setting the Tone and Building Safety
17 Edgy Interventions to Accelerate Learning
18 The Power of Framing
19 Sensitivity in Cross-Cultural Issues
20 The Drama of Transformational Work
21 Conclusion: Bringing It All Together
RESOURCES
Appendix A: The Sustainable Educator: Advocacy, Modesty, and Diversity of Gifts
Appendix B: The Sustainable Educator: Resilience and Revolution
Appendix C: For Further Reading
Appendix D: Tools and Resources for Direct Education
References
Index
Foreword
Mark Leier
T his is a dangerous and deeply disturbing book for those of us who teach at post-secondary institutions. It is dangerous because it forces us to face the growing corporatization of colleges and universities. These institutions have always abided by the rules of prudent business. They have tended to the accounts and allocated resources and taken instruction from their political and business masters. But over the last forty years college and university administrators have consciously and eagerly adopted the aims and objectives and means of the corporation. Students are considered customers, and the institutions compete with each other for market share, or, in admin-speak, bums in seats. Since the goods offered for sale are more or less interchangeable, like Pepsi and Coke, the competition is based instead on branding, advertising, and dubious rankings. Students are also considered products, and producing more units more profitably means reducing labor costs. The work process-courses and instruction-are prefabricated and routinized and inten