Facilitating Group Learning: Strategies for Success with Diverse Learners

by George Lakey, Mark Leier (Foreword)

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 attention—of a teacher preoccupied with curriculum and participants preoccupied with distractions—with 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.

Genres: Education, Social Justice, Activism, Teaching, Nonfiction

321 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2010

About the author

George Lakey is the director of Training for Change. He began his career as a trainer at the Martin Luther King School for Social Change, and has since gone on to lead over 1000 workshops on five continents. He has run trainings for coal miners, therapists, homeless people, prisoners, Russian lesbians and gays, Sri Lankan monks, Burmese guerrilla soldiers, striking steel workers, South African activists, and others. Trained as a sociologist, he has taught at the college and graduate level and is the author of six books. He consults regularly with a wide range of nonprofit groups.

George has given leadership to a number of social change movements. In late 1989 he led a team of Westerners in Sri Lanka who for 24 hours a day accompanied human-rights activists at risk of assassination. He has done neighborhood organizing, once successfully preventing tree-cutting and another time creating a neighborhood festival to celebrate ethnic diversity. He co-founded the Movement for a New Society, which for nearly 20 years specialized in organizational innovation. He founded and directed the Philadelphia Jobs with Peace Campaign, a coalition of labor, civil rights, poverty and peace groups. He was a designer of and staffed the Campaign to Stop the B-1 Bomber and Promote Peace Conversion, which mobilized sufficiently to gain cancellation of the B-1 in 1977 and raise the visibility of the concept of economic conversion. He was director of A Quaker Action Group when it assisted Puerto Rican nationalists in stopping the U.S. Navy from using the inhabited island of Culebra for target practice. He was also a founder of Men Against Patriarchy, which organized pioneering projects for the early men's anti-sexism movement of the mid-'70s.

George has taught peace studies at Swarthmore and Haverford Colleges, Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. At Penn he brought the program from 11 students in one class to 105 in three sections; the administration lauded the program for the way it reached out to students of color. He also created a group dynamics lab at Penn for training men in new leadership styles under a federal grant for feminist education.

George's sixth book is on organizational development: "Grassroots and Nonprofit Leadership: A Guide for Organizations in Changing Times" (1996). He is author or co-author of five previous books: "A Manual for Direct Action" (often called the "Bible" of direct action by Southern civil-rights activists of the '60s); "In Place of War, Moving toward a New Society"; "No Turning Back: Lesbian and Gay Liberation for the '80s"; and "Powerful Peacemaking: A Strategy for a Living Revolution." His publications have been translated into Swedish, German, Danish, French, Japanese and Thai.

On the personal side, George is a Quaker, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather in an interracial family. He received the national Giraffe Award (1992) for "sticking his neck out for the common good," and the Ashley Montague Peace Award (1998) from the International Conference on Conflict Resolution.

Reviews

[Rhiannon Grant · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book uses lots of stories and anecdotes - an approximation of the experiential method it recommends for the classroom - to explore ways of delivering what Lakey calls 'direct education'. Many of the key themes are familiar from other work on education (I wouldn't mind if nobody ever again told me that there are four kinds of learners with four different learning styles...), but some were new to me and his use of the theories is often innovative and engagingly presented. Some aspects, such as building a container (creating a strong group who can work together on learning), I realise I had been applying instinctively in some ways, so having something spell out the process is helpful to my understanding of what I'm doing. Other parts, such as the interplay between mainstream and margin, don't seem so intuitive to me - something to watch for in future situations, perhaps. I'd certainly like to experiment with some of the specific ideas here, especially making the focus on participant's responsibility for their learning more explicit.

[Nina Luo · Rating 5 out of 5]

concisely summarizes, complexifies and applies w stories & theory the best educational experiences i've had

[Diana · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is so much fun to read. While the subtitle is "Strategies for Success with Diverse Adult Learners" the strategies can be applied to youth and children too. Lakey combines stories of his 50 years of experience leading people through self-exploration and learning, tips and tools, and a strong theoretical framework. A great find.

[Margaret Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you work to facilitate groups, meetings or classes, this is a just-read. The best book on group dynamics taking into account gender,race, class, ability, sexual orientation etc.

[Cheryl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great descriptions of many things I'm thinking about these days in education. Lots to try!