Never Stop Learning

I can't wait to hear what the others in my class say and are doing to accomplish this same learner-centered approach. I can say that in my organization we have a series of classes to help our learners step up to become leaders. 

In our industry, we have many leaders and supervisors who are promoted not because of their skill or techniques at leading other workers, but because they show up on time consistently, or they complete projects well, or they've been onsite the longest. These are not markers of great leadership traits. 

We offer a foundational leadership experience that provides these new leaders with some fundamental techniques to allow them to build a leadership career path for themselves. In this class, which I teach or facilitate at times, I'm continually amazed by how little "teaching" or "telling" we do. Instead, we sit back and prompt the class with questions and allow the class to teach themselves through their experiences. 

Writing about teacher and student power, Estes (2004) writes about how limiting formal, traditional teaching can become constraining to the student and to their ability to think on their own, and how the teacher's experience and expectations confine the student, both in terms of their thinking and their learning. Estes also writes referring to Greenaway "that a future generation of facilitation should involve learners as facilitators of their own experiences" (p. 252). 

Their work led not just to learning gains during the formal training but also after the fact. Estes goes on to write about Priest and Lesperence's study, that they "discovered that a corporate group, which chose to self-facilitate by using funneling techniques taught during an experiential program back in the work place, resulted in continually higher gains in postcourse teamwork levels" (p. 252). Having read about this study, I wonder how often our facilitation has led our leaders to continue their education after the class is over. 

References

Estes, C. A. (2004). Promoting student-centered learning in experiential education. Journal of Experiential Education, 27(2), 141–160. https://doi.org/10.1177/105382590402700203