Page 89 - International Journal of Process Educaiton (Special Issue)

Facilitation (1998) EA

Facilitation transforms the traditional roles and responsibilities of student and educator such
that educators become facilitators of learning experiences where students are learners who take
ownership of and responsibility for their learning.

Facilitation in Process Education ucation lists facilitation as one of the key PE processes
along with assessment, constructive intervention, learn-
With the focus on active learning starting in the early 1990s, ing, personal development, faculty development, team-
Education as a Process (Apple & Hurley-Lawrence, 1994) work, management, and curriculum design.
argued that education could be facilitated as a process with
faculty taking the role of “facilitators rather than providers As a direct result of workshops conducted at Stony Brook
of information.” As the interest in and popularity of active University, two major PE books were published: An
learning grew, it became increasingly necessary to redefine Instructor’s Guide to Process Workshops (Hanson, 1996)
teaching as the facilitation of learning and mentoring as and Improving the Teaching/Learning Process in General
the facilitation of growth. These processes were modeled Chemistry (Hanson & Wolfskill, 1998). Both focused
in the Concept Map of Process Education (Duncan-Hewitt, on the facilitation of active learning and targeted the
1995). As the Primer for Process Education (Apple & development of key processes.
Duncan-Hewitt, 1995) explains,
In the 1998 Teaching institute handbook (Apple &
The main goal is to empower students to become Krumsieg), the facilitation section was expanded to include
lifelong learners, both capable and eager to learn what had been learned through workshops, including
new concepts on their own. Educators become an overview of facilitation, a facilitation methodology
facilitators of the learning process assessing (Figure 1), facilitation tools, and the criteria for a quality
students' performance in real time to help their facilitator.
growth in the use of these processes.
The 2000 Teaching institute handbook (Apple & Krum-
The prominence of facilitation within Process Education sieg), provided even more information and additional
was made clear in the 1995 Teaching institute handbook tools for faculty-as-facilitators: a process map for facilita-
(Apple), in which the Knowledge Table for Process Ed- tion, an outline of facilitator responsibilities, tips for facili-

Figure 1 Facilitation Methodology

1. Define the outcomes of an activity.

2. Design, review, and prepare for an activity.

3. Decide which teaching/learning processes and tools are appropriate for each activity including the roles for the
learners.

4. Pre-assess before an activity. Assess the level of students’ preparation.

5. Set up the activity. Make sure students have the why, learning objectives, performance criteria, resources, and
general tasks for an activity. Performance criteria should be set in terms of both process and content.

6. Release the teams to pursue the activity.

7. Assess team and individual performances.

8. Provide constructive interventions based on process not content.

9. Bring all the teams back together at the conclusion of the activity.

10. Provide closure with inter-group sharing of performance. Share quality performances that others can benefit from
and areas where performance needs improvement.

11. Use various forms of assessment to provide feedback to students. Make regular use of oral reflector’s reports.

12. Follow up after class.

International Journal of Process Education (February 2016, Volume 8 Issue 1) 87