What Matters Most, What or How We Teach?

While working on a project to create a curriculum that would help a group of agencies reach clientele they weren’t reaching, I accompanied a social worker on a year of site visits to capture what he did and to translate it into curriculum so others could replicate his efforts and outcomes.
Observing these sessions revealed that these agency professionals:

• Wanted to reach those they weren’t reaching
• Understood the research that showed that engaging these marginalized folks would facilitate reaching their agency outcomes
• Were persistent in doing what they’d always done with no new results
• Were anxious about an outside expert coming in to assist because of the potential demands his involvement might place on their already overloaded schedules and professional responsibilities.

I watched this highly skilled facilitator model the very same processes with the agency professionals that he coached them to use to engage the targeted, marginalized families. As all of this unfolded I couldn’t help but notice the parallels between his context and that of the typical training session, and what he did to nurture, coach and guide these groups of caring but somewhat reluctant professionals and what an excellent teacher or trainer of adults might do.

• He connected with his audience on their turf (creating a comfortable learning environment)
• He asked what they wanted help with in the context of the larger outcome (personal learning goals)
• He asked them what they were already doing that met their outcome so they could build on it (stimulate recall)
• He provided novel expertise that fit their expressed needs without overwhelming them with “shoulds” (scaffolded/chunked relative content to meet a self-identified problem or need, building on previous successes)
• He facilitated connecting them with others in the community who might share their goal and have expertise to contribute to their venture (guided practice with feedback)
• He coached them in creating logic models and work plans to carry out their goals (elicit performance)

The outcome was to reach marginalized families. He WAS in his being and interactions the way he suggested might work for them as they sought to engage their targeted population. In other words, he modeled what to do. He didn’t lecture, he didn’t tell them what they were doing wrong, he didn’t fire hose them with the research and tell them that they’d better get on it, he didn’t test them, and he didn’t insist that they all do it the same way.

The content at each site (how they would connect with marginalized families) was completely different and based on the needs and values of the community, the local resources that were available, the strengths of the professionals present, and the hopes and dreams of the populations they wanted to reach. The outcome in each community was to engage those families they weren’t engaging but how that happened looked different in each one (a food bank in one, a culturally specific parent leadership academy in another, and a centralized, multi-language phone system and community calendar in another).

This was one more real-life demonstration that how we go about facilitating change is arguably as important as the content of the change we seek to effect. For how we are has the potential to build social capital not simply for our current set of change content but for influencing ongoing growth and development in those we serve in teaching and training.