Effective Group Facilitation In Education

Designed for administrators who are assigned to facilitate stakeholder groups, such as parents, site-based management teams, faculty & staff, & accountability teams, this book offers advice in keeping meetings positive, productive & efficient.

Tap into proven do's and don'ts for facilitating dynamic and productive meetings. Get tips on team building, brainstorming, motivating, delegating, and more.

Praise for Facilitating Group Learning "In this engaging and accessible book, George Lakey draws on a lifetime's 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, 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, national president, 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, 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 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, The Courage to Teach, Let Your Life Speak, and The Heart of Higher Education

“I have had the good fortune to watch both David and Tina facilitate learning groups and have learned from the power of their modeling. . . . I am delighted that they have gathered their wisdom here in this volume to share with others eager to embark on the journey and experience the joys of facilitating learning with colleagues.” —From the Foreword by Ron Ritchhart, senior research associate, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education One of the most important shifts in schools in the last two decades has been the growing emphasis on collaboration among teachers and other educators. Whether you are a teacher facilitating a group for the first time or an experienced facilitator seeking to further develop your skills, this book is for you. Organized to be used as both an exploration of the role of facilitating and as a handbook of strategies, this resource covers a range of contexts that include faculty meetings, department meetings, professional learning communities, grade-level teams, and inquiry groups. This book is a perfect companion to the authors’ bestseller, The Facilitator’s Book of Questions, which focuses on the skills needed to facilitate protocols or structured conversations. Facilitating for Learning extends the scope of that work by also examining the facilitator’s responsibilities for supporting a group’s learning during all parts of a meeting, between meetings, and within the larger school context and culture. It is an essential resource for teachers, administrators, coaches, and teacher educators. Book Features: Contrasts facilitating for learning with other professional development roles, including staff development, coaching, and supervision.Outlines the basic responsibilities and tasks of facilitating teacher learning groups, including “moves” the facilitator might employ.Considers challenges related to school culture and leadership, group interactions, and time constraints.Provides resources to help facilitators develop their skills, including tools and references to other works on facilitation.

This book teaches a process that will help both teachers and administrators plan for and conduct meetings that are meaningful, useful, and that generate results. The place to start this work is before the meeting even begins. A careful look at the purposes of the meeting, the working agreements that the group will use, and the agenda will provide the framework for a successful outcome. Once learned, this structure can be used again and again. In addition, you will learn what to do in those cases when decorum breaks down, or you can't reach consensus, or a member of the group is not cooperating. You will also learn decision-making techniques that allow meaningful participation by all members of the group and how to prioritize a number of efforts. The effective structure of meetings along with other techniques to employ when things go wrong will make anyone an effective meeting facilitator!

Teaching in Blended Leaning Environments provides a coherent framework in which to explore the transformative concept of blended learning. Blended learning can be defined as the organic integration of thoughtfully selected and complementary face-to-face and online approaches and technologies. A direct result of the transformative innovation of virtual communication and online learning communities, blended learning environments have created new ways for teachers and students to engage, interact, and collaborate. The authors argue that this new learning environment necessitates significant role adjustments for instructors and generates a need to understand the aspects of teaching presence required of deep and meaningful learning outcomes. Built upon the theoretical framework of the Community of Inquiry – the premise that higher education is both a collaborative and individually constructivist learning experience – the authors present seven principles that provide a valuable set of tools for harnessing the opportunities for teaching and learning available through technology. Focusing on teaching practices related to the design, facilitation, direction and assessment of blended learning experiences, Teaching in Blended Learning Environments addresses the growing demand for improved teaching in higher education.

Every manager, every coach, every HR professional, every trainer, every team leader - anyone who needs to get the best out of a group needs to know how to facilitate. Facilitation bypasses coercion, teaching or chairing. It's about how to read a group, how to challenge appropriately and how to name the apparently unnameable. It's about being able to design events which perfectly match what the group needs and then to run such events with aplomb. Facilitating Groups, now fully revised in this new edition, is written by a facilitator with 30 years of experience and cuts to the heart of the practical skills that any facilitator needs.