A Facilitator's Book of Questions:
Resources for Looking Together at Student and Teacher Work

by
David Allen
Tina Blythe

Teachers College Press, 2003
Available Late Winter 2004
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Chapter 3
What Do Facilitators Do? The Big Picturee

Effective protocols are not simply a matter of what happens from the time the protocol starts until it ends. For protocols to be effective learning tools, facilitators need to attend to at least three broad areas of concern. In this chapter, we will introduce those major areas of responsibilities. We will also discuss the key "thinking dispositions" that facilitators need to cultivate in order to carry out their roles effectively.

Facilitating Learning, Logistics, and Longevity

To make protocols powerful learning opportunities, facilitators need to attend (or see that someone else attends) to three areas of responsibility:

• the learning of the group
• the logistics of meetings
• the longevity of the work within the school or district

These areas are represented in the circles of Figure 3.1 and discussed in more detail below. As the arrangement of the circles demonstrates, these are overlapping spheres and some responsibilities are found in more than one.

Figure 3.1: Learning, Logistics, Longevity
Acknowledgement: Adapted from The Evidence Process: A Collaborative Approach to Understanding and Improving Teaching and Learning by The Evidence Project Staff (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Project Zero, 2001).


Facilitating Learning
Fundamentally, protocols are about providing all participants with the opportunity to learn both as individuals and as a group. Facilitators concentrate before, during, and after meetings on shaping the process to enhance this. In this role, facilitators address key responsibilities such as:

• Helping participants in the group develop their understanding of the purpose for their collaborative work.
• Helping the group understand how its process, including the use of protocols, helps achieve its purpose(s).
• Facilitating protocols that give participants the chance to learn together.
• Helping the group track its evolving learning by documenting its work and helping the group reflect on that work from time to time.
• Checking in with participants in and out of meetings to gather feedback, respond to questions, and provide support.

Facilitating Logistics
As with any group meeting, logistical details in those that include protocols require attention. Simply put, someone has to handle the nuts and bolts of the work: Where will the group meet? Who will make sure the materials are there (the student work photocopied, the chart paper in place, etc.)? Who will make sure everyone knows where to go and what time to be there? Who will arrange for the refreshments? A big part of facilitating logistics is communicating before and after meetings with participants in the group (and others playing supporting roles in and out of the school).

Facilitating Longevity
Learning, whether it happens individually or with a group, takes time. And using protocols as a tool for learning takes practice in order for groups to engage in them effectively. If a group is to reap the full benefit of protocol-guided conversation, then it needs to meet and use protocols on a regular basis. This can't happen without specific attention being given to issues such as:

• Helping participants identify how this work is related to other initiatives in the school and to school goals.
• Helping participants establish commitment to the work.
• Encouraging the interest of others who might join in the work.
• Communicating the value of this work to others in the school and outside of the school.
• Securing funding to support the work.

Usually, an administrator will play a key role in facilitating longevity. This role will be best served if she is familiar with all aspects of the group’s learning and logistics, and is in close communication with the facilitator(s).

Overlapping Responsibilities
In practice, these roles overlap. For example, in talking with the presenting teacher before a meeting, the facilitator usually helps the presenter frame a problem or question to focus the group's discussion--an important step in facilitating learning (see Chapter Seven). However, she may also go over more logistical details of copying materials, how to set up the room, and so on.

Of course, no one person could carry out all these roles alone. Two or three people (from inside the group and/or from a partner organization) can regularly share these roles. Occasionally others in the group can take on some of these responsibilities as well. Such division of labor can help avoid the all-too-familiar feeling of being overwhelmed and getting "burnt out." It can also spread the wealth, in terms of opportunities to learn about facilitation and practicing facilitation skills.

A reality check: At least in getting started, a primary facilitator often takes on the lion’s share of facilitating learning and logistics, as well as communicating frequently with school leadership about longevity issues. Over time, the facilitator, school leaders, outside partner(s), and participants in the group should “revisit” and reevaluate how these roles can be shared.

Facilitators' “Thinking Dispositions": Reading, Responding, and Reflecting
In whichever area of responsibility facilitators work (facilitating learning, logistics, or longevity), they need to cultivate key skills. We call these skills "thinking dispositions," drawing on the work of David Perkins, Shari Tishman, and others at Harvard Project Zero. "Thinking dispositions" embrace more than the actual skills: To have a particular thinking disposition (such as the disposition to examine assumptions), one must not only have the skill to carry out the task, but also the sensitivity to recognize when that skill is useful and the motivation to use it at the appropriate times (Tishman, Perkins, Jay, 1995). Like all thinking dispositions, the ones we name here can be nurtured and deepened over time through practice and reflection (see Chapter Nine).

The three dispositions we discuss in this chapter—reading, responding, and reflecting—are less visible than the specific actions a facilitator might take in a protocol. However, these dispositions play a critical role in the facilitator’s ability to organize, select, develop, and employ specific actions in particular situations. (These specific actions, which many facilitators refer to as “moves,” are considered in Chapter Four.) While each of these dispositions is useful in each of the three major areas of responsibility, we will concentrate in the remainder of this chapter on the sphere of "facilitating learning.” In particular, we will focus on how these dispositions are useful in leading protocols.

Reading the Group and the Situation: What's Going On?
While facilitators must read materials (the protocol, the student work, and so on), this disposition refers to a more figurative kind of reading. Just as a football team’s quarterback or a basketball team’s point guard must be able to “read” the field or court, the facilitator must be able to take in and make sense of what is going on within the conversation as it unfolds in order to make decisions about what to do at any given moment (including the decision to do nothing at all) to best support the group’s learning. This disposition actually comprises several component dispositions, including listening, observing, and asking for the groups' "read” of the situation.

Listening
While most protocols designate specific periods in which either the participants or the presenter needs to listen while others speak, the facilitator must listen actively and intently throughout the entire conversation. But what, precisely, does a facilitator listen for? It begs the question to say "anything and everything," so instead we offer this necessarily incomplete list:

• What may be unclear to the presenter, a participant, or the group (about the protocol, their role, or the content of the conversation)?
• What may be general or abstract (in the focusing question, the presenter’s presentation, or a participant’s question or feedback)?
• What may be judgmental or evaluative (when evaluation is not called for or intentionally excluded)?
• What may detract from the group’s focus (for example, storytelling or “story topping,” i.e., “I know what you mean, I once had a student who…”)?
• What may be out of place (that is, would be better offered in a different part of the protocol)?
• What contributions may provide helpful examples to point out to the group (for example, of a “probing question” or descriptive comment)?
• What may indicate an emerging focus of interest for the group (in participants’ questions or during the feedback discussion)?

All of these questions begin with the construction, “What may…” This hedging is deliberate. Without knowing the context and variables—the group, its purposes and style of working, the presenter’s interests or question, the protocol being used, the specific point in the conversation, and so on—it is impossible to judge whether a comment is too general or abstract (perhaps an abstraction is just what the group needs at that moment to stimulate its thinking); when a story or anecdote is going to advance the conversation or distract from its goal; and so on.

For facilitators, this disposition means more than just listening for unclear, misplaced, or off-topic contributions in order to somehow correct or censor them. (Facilitators are almost always able to encourage participants to rephrase or “redirect” comments; see Chapter Four.) Listening also involves identifying emerging ideas or questions to highlight for the group’s consideration, as well as particular comments or questions that can help participants appreciate how a particular part of the protocol may be used effectively.

Observing
In reading the group the facilitator is not, as in football, sizing up a defense to find a little daylight. There is no defense or offense in protocols! However, she is constantly monitoring the group to determine how well the conversation is achieving its broader purpose of being a learning opportunity for all participants, as well as meeting more specific goals the presenter and the group have framed. Just as a facilitator listens for indicators of understanding or confusion in what is said, she also pays close attention to what other kinds of signals can reveal, for example, about a participant’s (or the group’s) needs, understanding of the process, or comfort level with certain kinds of questions or comments.

Sometimes specific actions or expressions of body language are readily translatable. For example, when participants look up after having examined closely the samples of work, they are probably signaling they’ve had enough time to look at them. Other expressions of body language may be more difficult to read. For example, when, after a participant’s clarifying question, the presenter turns to the facilitator, lifts an eyebrow and shrugs her shoulders, is she asking whether she should answer, suggesting she doesn’t know how to answer, or signaling discomfort with the question itself?

Sometimes a constellation of observable signals can help the facilitator read the mood of the group. For example, if two participants at one end of the table begin a quiet “side conversation,” others start to straighten the papers in front of them, and the participant next to you checks his watch, it’s likely the group is restless and ready to move on. However, facilitators should not to be overly influenced by more expressive or dramatic participants' comments or body language. The facilitator might want to pay special attention to participants who may be more difficult to read, present themselves more passively, or may require more time or a second invitation to contribute to the conversation.

Asking for the Group's "Read"
Careful listening and observing allow the facilitator to make informed decisions about what kind of a response, if any, is most appropriate. However, the facilitator does not have to rely solely on what she herself hears or observes. She can often ask the group for their perspectives before making a judgment about what steps she should take.

Facilitators sometimes refer to such inquiries as “process questions,” and may choose to name them as such for the group: “I’d like to ask a process question at this point…” For example, if the facilitator cannot determine whether a presenter’s glance and body language signal discomfort with the question or confusion about the process, she may simply ask the presenter, “Is that a question you can easily answer in a sentence or two, or should I suggest we take it up later in the conversation?”

Asking such questions invites the participants and the presenter to share with the facilitator the responsibility for the conversation. Of course, facilitators ask many other kinds of questions, as we will see in considering the other facilitation dispositions below, and facilitation “moves” in Chapter Four.

Responding: What (if Anything) Should I Do?
Reading the group allows the facilitator to pick up on potential problems and emerging opportunities. Of course, in a protocol, everybody is expected to be responsive (as well as attentive) to the presenter, one another, and whatever student or teacher work may be presented. However, only the facilitator is specifically charged with responding in order to ensure that the process is productive, inclusive, and safe for all participants. While the participants can pay attention to the individual trees, the facilitator must attend to the forest as well.

A facilitator's response (or decision not to respond) is a direct result of her reading of the group. Many facilitators talk about these responses as "moves." The purposes of these "moves" are many: to pick up or slow down the pace of conversation; to help clarify steps of the protocol or comments that participants have made; to encourage participants to anchor their comments in the evidence provided by the work being examined; and so on. Chapter Four delineates some of the more common moves that facilitators make in responding. At this point, it is useful to take up a question that is always present in a facilitator’s enactment of her role: When do I step in?

Like classroom teachers, facilitators make decisions nearly every moment of their group’s discussion. Often they make a decision to intervene--saying or doing something to affect the situation that is developing. Just as often, they elect not to intervene, judging that it is better to let the discussion unfold on its own (aware, perhaps, that intervention may be called for at some point in the near future). This “negative” response can open up space for reflection, questioning, or interactions to occur that might have been discouraged by an intervention from the facilitator.

In protocols, facilitators recognize that too little response could allow the conversation to become unfocused or allow a potentially detrimental comment to affect the tone of the group; on the other hand, too much—or poorly timed—response brings the risk of disrupting the flow of conversation or putting too much focus on the facilitator, rather than on the presenter and the group.

Facilitators navigate between these two poles in different ways. Simply being aware of them, and the risks of hewing too closely to either, may help a facilitator monitor her own facilitation. In more novice groups, facilitators may find they respond or intervene more often, but even the most experienced group benefits from a well-timed question or reminder. Some facilitators find value in the maxim, “She who responds least, responds best”; however, all facilitators must be prepared to intervene, even when it is not always comfortable to do so. Through experience, most facilitators find their own most productive ways of responding.

Reflecting: What Went on and What Can Be Learned from It?
So far the dispositions of facilitation we have discussed have called for a heightened awareness of what is happening within the conversation and within the group and a readiness to respond in the moment. In a sense, "reading" asks the facilitator to pay close attention to the forest, as well as the individual trees; and "responding" requires her to look for alternative paths through the forest.

However, good facilitators also value stepping back from the action and reflecting on a protocol once it is over. The disposition of reflecting, then, asks the facilitator to adopt a bird's eye perspective that allows her to look out over the forest, trees and paths, and consider how the group worked its way through it together and how decisions made by the facilitator herself at key moments affected their journey, in particular, in supporting the participants’ opportunities for learning.

In looking back over a learning conversation, the facilitator is also looking forward to the next one, in which she might try something different (for example, being sure to ask people to point to specific evidence in their feedback) and pay close attention to what happens when she does. She may also commit herself to being more aware of tendencies she has noticed in the group or in herself (for example asking “Am I saying too much in setting up parts of the protocol?”) and be prepared to respond to them.

The facilitator’s reflection on a learning conversation may begin when she invites the group to “debrief” the conversation they’ve just had (a typical step at the end of most protocols). Having follow-up conversations with group members outside of the protocol setting can also be extremely valuable in supporting thoughtful reflection, as can talking to other, perhaps more experienced, facilitators about the group’s progress.

Documentation of the group's work and learning is another important tool for a facilitator's reflections. Documentation that captures aspects of the conversation (through notes or “minutes,” journals, or even occasional tape or video recordings) provides a basis for individual and group reflection. In Chapter Four, we consider some of the strategies facilitators use for documenting learning conversations and drawing on that documentation. In the final chapter, we take a more sustained look at how facilitators reflect on their own development.

Facilitation Style
Although it is not a disposition, the issue of style bears some mention here. If we had videotape of two facilitators in two separate protocols, we would find them maintaining the same thinking dispositions, perhaps even making nearly identical moves, yet their facilitation might appear to be very different. Some facilitators, for example, are more inclined to be explicit about following a protocol, adhering strictly to its steps and announcing each step as the group moves through it. Others follow the protocol more implicitly, moving from step to step without much overt "cueing" of the group. Some facilitators inject a lot of humor to ease transitions, to help the group get comfortable with one another, or to diffuse potentially uncomfortable moments. For others, using humor in this way would feel forced: they find other ways to help groups move through tense situations and to work together productively and positively.

There are pros and cons to all styles. Perhaps the only recommendation we would make here is to encourage facilitators to experiment consciously with different approaches and to be aware of the impact those different approaches seem to have on the group's work. In Chapter Nine, we discuss how facilitators learn not only from each other's specific moves, but from others' styles as well.

Reprinted by permission of the publisher from Allen, D. & Blythe, T., THE FACILITATOR'S BOOK OF QUESTIONS: TOOLS FOR LOOKING TOGETHER AT STUDENT AND TEACHER WORK, (New York: Teachers College Press, © 2004 by Teachers College, Columbia University. All rights reserved.). To order copies, please contact Teachers College Press at www.tcpress.com.

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