National School Reform Faculty

Facilitation Course
Date: August 7 - 19, 2003
Listserv: Coaches

Thursday, August 7, 2003 10:09 AM
Hello Colleagues-
This year I will be teaching a facilitation course for educators. The topics we will address are: how to facilitate effective meetings, dealing with difficult dynamics, turning your committee into a learning organization, group decision-making models, etc. Do you have ideas, resources, syllabi or anything else that can help me? I'd be happy to share my plans in return once they're fleshed out.
Thanks!!
Edorah, VT

Thursday, August 7, 2003 11:21 AM
One thing I think is important to be clear about is that committee and teamwork is different than "learning" work. Etienne Wenger's book, Communities of practice, has informed my thinking about this point. Below is an adapted excerpt from his work:

Communities of practice, Etienne Wenger argues (Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, 1998)), are different from teams and networks in a number of ways. Networks are typically made up of people who simply have an interest in a topic or domain. Communities of practice are made up of people who actually do the work.

Teams (like communities of practice) have common work to accomplish, but the structure and the process of that work differ from that of communities of practice. Teams are typically task-oriented, with clearly defined roles and goals. Typically, a team has a supervisory element: one or more people are in charge. They oversee the work of the rest of the group (or oversee the work of a portion of the group, who oversee the work of others, etc.).

Wenger sees communities of practice as having a broader, more ambiguously defined-but absolutely essential-goal: the creation and management of knowledge, a goal that teams are not particularly well suited for. Communities of practice may exist within organizations or may draw people together from across organizations. The structure is looser than that of a team. People may assume leadership roles within the community of practice, but the leadership is facilitative rather than supervisory. The members are drawn together by their commitment to understanding the particular practice in which all the members are engaged. The result, Wenger says, is knowledge and expertise that grows out of the experience of the practitioners. And because the generation of knowledge is coming from the practitioners themselves, this new knowledge gets put to use in their practice, and they are more likely to avoid the "idea-action gap" that researchers and practitioners alike have written about.

Two resources on facilitation that I think are top notch are:
The Facilitative Leader, Roger Schwarz, from The Skilled Facilitator
Facilitator's Guide to Participatory Decision-Making: Facilitation Strategies, Sam Kaner

If you have my binder from last summer, there are chapters from both these books in there.
Gene, MA

Thursday, August 7, 2003 12:29 PM
Dear Edorah, Here’s an example of something I did last year. I would love to hear what your plans are, I’ll be teaching a course at Baruch College for prospective principals and would like all ideas.
Nancy, NY

Friday, August 8, 2003 7:50 AM
Hello Edorah. In a CFG for administrators, I used the information and adapted two protocols offered by Peter Senge et al in The Fifth Discipline Field Book, Chapter 36—Balancing Inquiry and Advocacy. You may find an idea or two there that will tweak your thinking.
Warm regards,
Jan, RI

Friday, August 8, 2003 8:55 AM
After near 20 years in public school education teaching and teacher leadership roles during my CAS in Educational Leadership study beyond my masters, I finally took organizational behavior. We did a "lens" portfolio of many thinkers and leaders and approaches such as; Pat Wasley (key balances) Seymour Sarason (balcony view), Jaffee (human factors vs. organizational factors), Morgan (creative metaphors and models- the iceberg, the gulf, deer hunting), Oshry (tops, middles and bottoms), McGregor (x/y theory- the inner dialogue of the x and y in all of us), Lewin (frozen-unfreezing and refreezing, gatekeepers, force field analysis), Emery Trist (quality work life), Mayo (social skills and atmosphere, participatory work groups), Follet (reciprocal leadership), J. Forrester (causal loops, fixes that fail and unintended consequences), Block (stewardship and empowerment), Senge (learning organization and systems thinking), Hersey/Blanchard (task behavior and relationship behavior), Weisbord (six box model-leadership, purposes, structures, rewards, mechanisms, relationships), Covey (circles of influence and concern), Liberman/Miller (learning focused renewal- the new reality of teaching), Eisner (9 givens to 5 refocus efforts), and most effective and needs ample practice and rehearsal (the Ladder of Inference- I use it every day some how!)

I now have a better set of lens for knowing what I am seeing, experiencing, facilitating and struggling with as I work with individuals, mentoring pairs, ad hoc groups, building teams and district-wide committees which are all responsibilities I hold in my position. The Adaptive School: a Sourcebook for Developing Collaborative Groups by Garmston and Wellman and Pathways to Understanding by Lipton and Wellman are good resources for choosing and structuring group activities.
Hope this helps-
Susie, ME

Sunday, August 10, 2003 10:55 AM
Hello Edorah I missed our being able to say goodbye but maybe that isn’t necessary. I have lots on facilitation seems like tons) but if you could give me a little more information I can give you a more useful list of stuff.
Peg, VT

Sunday, August 10, 2003 1:05 PM
A recent book by David Perkins of Harvard may be of use for the facilitation course:
King Arthur's Round Table: How Collaborative Conversations Create Smart Organizations
It's a lively witty and very thoughtful treatise about group conversations and dynamics and the need for skillful facilitators. One of my favorite terms from the book: collaboration, describing groups that aren't being facilitated well or at all.
Hope this helps
Eric, NY

Monday, August 11, 2003 7:13 AM
Hi Peg-
Good to hear from you! Attached is a draft of my syllabus. I'd love any feedback, warm or cool, you'd like to offer. Thanks!
Edorah, VT

Tuesday, August 19, 2003 11:33 AM
HI Edorah,
Sounds like a great class... I would love some information / strategies about non verbal communication and physical space etc...
Let me know when this flies!
Happy Days,
Melissa, VT