A Facilitator's Book of Questions:
Resources for Looking Together at Student and Teacher Work

by
David Allen
Tina Blythe

Teachers College Press, 2003
Available Late Winter 2004

Foreword
by Gene Thompson-Grove

I love to facilitate—be it a protocol-guided conversation or some other kind of meeting or session—and I appreciate the work of really skilled facilitators when I am a participant in a group. However, I admit to being a bit skeptical of the value of books on facilitation, since most seem to focus on new sets of techniques, tricks, or recipes. This book is a much-needed departure from that approach to facilitation—and should be useful to experienced and beginning facilitators alike.

What makes it so different and so useful? First, it avoids a generic discussion of facilitation and instead places facilitation in a particular context, that of facilitating protocol-guided conversations about student work and teachers’ work. To do so, the authors are able to ask facilitators to consider their own assumptions and beliefs — about their role as facilitators, about the purpose of the work they are facilitating, and about the group with whom they are working. Secondly, it avoids giving pat answers for potentially complex situations, and instead invites readers to consider the consequences — intentional or not — of the various “moves” they make as facilitators.

Finally, it addresses the important question of facilitator stance, or disposition, challenging those of us who facilitate to ask ourselves: How am I reading this group, and how do I know I am right? What should I do, and how do I decide this is the best course of action? Do I really believe these people have the capacity to do the learning they say they want to do — and if I do, how do I best serve them and their learning? Certainly, in reading this book, facilitators will expand their repertoire and walk away with ideas and tips for responding to the wide range of facilitation issues that invariably come up in protocols. More importantly, however, the reader will be pushed to think about her stance as a facilitator, as all of the ideas about how to respond are linked to discussions of why one might want to respond in that way.

Facilitating protocols can be a tricky proposition. The task requires the facilitator not only to “show up,” but to be fully present and completely attentive to the group and its learning. The protocols can help, acting, as the authors say, as a kind of co-facilitator. Protocols help build equity into the conversation; they help group members build new skills and habits; they help make efficient use of time; and they help build a useful agenda for almost any kind of meeting. However, they don’t stand on their own, and they require a firm, yet gentle hand on the part of the facilitator. A skillfully facilitated protocol not only creates the possibility of a group doing new, significant learning together — learning that will ultimately benefit students. It also can help a group build the kind of trust that allows it to tackle the really important questions about teaching and learning. Addressing such questions requires individuals’ willingness to share and, often, reconsider their own privately held beliefs.

I think about this kind of facilitation as being full of tensions — tensions that as a facilitator I want to, in the spirit of this book, manage rather than resolve. I want to be an advocate for the presenter’s success, yet also be in service to the whole group and its learning. I want to facilitate with a light hand, yet be firm in helping the group stick to the agreements it has made about how group participants will talk together. I want to honor the steps and intention of the protocol, yet not feel by the end of the session as if the protocol has somehow used us. I know the protocol will demand a certain rhythm by its very structure, yet I want to tap into the natural rhythm of the group. I want to be an active facilitator — one that group members can count on to keep the process safe so they can have potentially risky conversations with each other. Yet I know that sometimes the best thing I can do or say as the facilitator is nothing, because sometimes it has to be uncomfortable for group members to learn and grow. I want to be a fully contributing member of the group, yet I know that good facilitation sometimes demands that I give my full attention to focusing on the process of the conversation.

I remember the day I turned the corner in my thinking about myself as a facilitator. The conversation that day had been challenging, and the group confronted some deeply held beliefs about expectations for students. I knew that individuals in the group had moved to a new, more productive place in their thinking. As I read the reflections about the session written by group members, I was struck by how all of them talked about their learning, about their students, about their practice, about how other group members had challenged them to see the student work and their assumptions differently. There was not one mention about the role I had played as facilitator. That is when I understood what is for me now the most important maxim about facilitating protocol conversations: “This is not about me.” Facilitators with a broad repertoire of responses and sophisticated ways of thinking about their craft are critical to the collaborative work of teachers. But, in the end, the work is not about the facilitator, or the facilitation, or the protocol. It is, first and foremost, about the learning the presenter and the group do together on behalf of students.

Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Allen, D. & Blythe, T., THE FACILITATOR'S BOOK OF QUESTIONS: TOOLS FOR LOOKING TOGETHER AT STUDENT AND TEACHER WORK, (New York: Teachers College Press, © 2004 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.). To order copies, please contact Teachers College Press at www.tcpress.com.

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