Introduction

The role of the learning facilitator has been identified as crucial to the success of LearnScope projects not only by LearnScope state and territory managers and independent evaluators, but also by members of LearnScope teams themselves. Given that we are talking about teachers learning more about teaching and learning, why would a learning facilitator be so important? After all, don’t teachers know how to learn?

The answer is yes, teachers know how to learn. However, work-based learning is not the same as the process that takes place in a structured classroom environment. Many teachers are not familiar, experienced or comfortable with learning using the work-based methodology. Hence, having a learning facilitator working with the team has proven to be one of the essential ingredients for success. 

What does the learning facilitator do?

The word ‘facilitate’ means to make something easier; to ease the way.  Hence, the role of the learning facilitator is to make the process of learning easier.

The first task of the facilitator is to help the team members articulate what it is that they want or need to learn. This is not always easy. The facilitator needs to have a good understanding of the overall aim of the project so as to help ensure that the outcomes written in each individual’s learning plan are related to and contribute to the overall outcome for the team.

Associated with this task is helping team members plan appropriate learning activities. The most challenging aspect of this for the facilitator is to help them identify existing work tasks that may contribute to their learning or ways to adapt work tasks to become learning activities. This is challenging because it means the facilitator must become sufficiently familiar with the context of each individual’s work to be able to prompt them to rethink their daily tasks as potential learning activities and to recognise opportunities for collaboration.

The third significant role of the facilitator during the planning process is to help the team members develop a realistic time frame for their learning. Very often teachers underestimate the time required for work-based learning. An experienced facilitator will know that it takes a very short time for other work pressures to force the work-based learning project down the priority list thus encroaching on the time set aside for learning.

Clearly then, part of the facilitator’s role during the project is to monitor the team members and encourage them to keep their work-based learning project as a high priority. The facilitator needs to strike a balance between motivating and nagging, and also needs to recognise that some individuals respond well to close and obvious monitoring whereas others prefer a looser approach. One size will not fit all.

Monitoring is not the only ongoing role. The facilitator needs to keep in touch with each individual in order to recognise if and when it might be appropriate to renegotiate the learning outcomes or to modify the planned activities. In some cases the original learning plan is found to be too ambitious or perhaps not ambitious enough. It might be that an unexpected opportunity has arisen which would greatly benefit the project if it were incorporated. There are many reasons to modify a learning plan along the way and the facilitator needs to be aware and ready to help do this.

Facilitating communication between team members is another aspect of the facilitator’s role. Not all members of work-based learning teams are necessarily working towards the same specific outcomes. The facilitator needs to make a judgement about the degree and form of inter-team communication necessary to maximise learning and develop strategies for this to occur. Some teams are made up of independent individuals who need very little face-to-face contact. Others thrive on regular meetings. For some teams virtual communication is ideal and for others the personal approach is more beneficial.

Work-based learning often produces unexpected outcomes. This is one of the reasons why it is so valued as a professional development methodology. A good learning facilitator helps team members recognise and take advantage of the incidental and unexpected learning that they gain along the way. This requires keeping your eyes and ears open, being aware of changes in the way individuals talk about their work, and asking questions often.

Finally, a learning facilitator helps to provide a sense of closure. Projects that are not formally ended can leave participants with a sense of something unfinished which in turn can make it difficult to recognise and value their achievements. Having a final meeting at which the project is formally announced as complete is important (even though the learning may continue afterwards) and generally coincides with the end of the funded activities. This meeting is where the learning facilitator encourages each team member to recognise the planned and incidental learning that has taken place, to celebrate the hard work and energy they have contributed and also the fact that they were the ones who achieved the outcomes. Work-based learning is not easy and each team member should feel proud of their achievements even though each has accomplished different things. 

Specific challenges of facilitating work-based learning

 Work-based learning facilitators will face many challenges that are common to the facilitation of any group activity. But there are others that are more obvious in work-based learning.

1. One of these is the unpredictability of work-based learning. Unlike structured classroom based learning, work-based learning gets interrupted, reprioritised, forgotten, redirected, and rarely proceeds exactly as planned. The facilitator needs to reassure team members that its OK to make changes to their learning plans when the context around them changes. Work-based learning has to be fluid and dynamic to survive the environment in which it is taking place. However, the facilitator must be on guard that any changes don’t result in the team members being distracted or diverted from the overall aim of the project. All modifications to their learning plans need to be purposeful and focused on achieving the project outcomes.
   
2. Another challenge for the facilitator is to help maintain the profile and priority of the work-based learning. Because the learning is integrated with work, and because individuals are generally more comfortable with their work than they are with the unknowns of learning, and because the learning is often invisible to colleagues, work-based learning has a tendency to degenerate back into just work. Only the individual can prevent this from happening but the facilitator can help make individuals aware that it is occurring and develop strategies to reprioritise the learning back to higher profile.
   
3. Communication is the third big challenge for learning facilitators. This is specially so when the work-based learning team is made up of many independent individuals each working on their own project. In this context the purpose of team meetings can be misunderstood leading to them being seen as unnecessary and as an interruption, hence the facilitator needs to make the value of the team meetings clear as well as find other communication strategies and ways of sharing learning among team members. Its through the dialogue that takes place in team meetings that the facilitator helps ensure the individual team members keep focused on the ‘big picture’ of the project and provides the opportunity to gain different perspectives on their newly forming understandings.
   
4. Perhaps the most important challenge for the learning facilitator is to help the work-based learning participants recognise their learning. This involves conversations peppered with critical questioning to draw out and make explicit the learning that has taken place and implications of that learning. These ‘learning conversations’ are perhaps the most valuable that a facilitator will have with the participants. Without them it is possible that the participants will not recognise how new understandings may affect their future teaching and learning practices; they may fail to consciously and deliberately take their new understandings into account.

Implications

Facilitation of any form cannot be taught solely in a workshop. There are many basic principles that can be learned this way but ultimately one must experience the process in order to fully understand it and become adept. Experiential learning in parallel with networking with other facilitators is probably the most common way of learning about facilitation.

The role of the learning facilitator is probably the most crucial of all the persons associated with work-based learning.  A good facilitator can help even the most inexperienced team achieve extraordinary outcomes. Similarly, a poorly facilitated team can fail to reach their full potential. Some consider learning facilitation to be as much an art as it is a skill.