quote:

Originally posted by LoveLearning:

quote:

Obviously you need to know your content and know more than the people you are trying to teach.

Respectfully, the latter half of that sentence is a myth. Helping people learn isn't about knowing more than they do about the subject matter - it's about helping them make cognitive connections. There are many ways to accomplish that -- particularly with adults.

Many questions come to mind at the thought of a trainer not knowing the subject matter better than the learner. A few are:

What subjects do you think can be successfully taught by a trainer/facilitator who does not know the subject matter more than the learners?

How much respect and confidence in a trainer/facilitator should a learner have in one who does not know the subject better than them? Who would even show up for the course if they knew that ahead of time?

How would you meet the needs of the learner who learns best by hearing from an expert?

Why would anyone want to teach a subject that they know little or nothing about? And why would a company want someone to do that?

Why not stick to something where you do know more than the learners?

How do you answer learner questions and guide them to discover the answer if you don't know the answer yourself? Will just any answer do?

What if they reach the wrong answer or conclusion or make connections that lead nowhere? What if they leave the class unable to make the connections - and have nothing concrete to fall back on; and have a trainer who cannot help them afterwards because they don't know themselves?

Would such a trainer/facilitator even recognize that they might be making the wrong cognitive connection?

Maybe I just don't understand what subjects you're talking about here, but I honestly cannot imagine suffering through any learning event where the trainer does not know more than me about the subject. I might make cognitive connections, but I would not have any confidence that they were the correct cognitive connections. Nor would I attempt to teach such a course.

I have evaluated a lot of trainers/facilitators who did not know the subject matter, but who attempted to "teach" the course anyway. I can't even begin to tell you how many INCORRECT things they said. And how many incorrect "connections" the learners made during the course. And the poor learners didn't know the difference. How is that helping anyone? At the very least, the trainer should know the subject matter. That has to be the foundation. Then add facilitation skills on top of that.

How could a person learn to fly a 767 without an instructor who knows how to fly a 767? How can one learn calculus from a prof who does not know calculus? And on and on.......I don't think either would work too well if one had to depend on a non-pilot or fellow student help them make the necessary cognitive connections. That would be absurb.

To use the digital camera analogy, who would you prefer to take photography lessons from: someone who just bought a camera themselves and is willing to help you make some cognitive connections, or Ansel Adams?

LoveLearning, I think what you are referring to is facilitation or as you put it helping other people, which is closer to coaching. As a facilitator you just have to be a mirror and reflect back the personality of the person so they can discover for themselves. So yes, in that case it doesn't really matter if you know more than your delegates or not.

However, when it comes to training, it is important to be a subject expert so that you can 'transfer' your skill. You need to 'have' a skill, otherwise what is there to transfer? Having skills usually means knowing more than the delegates about a particular topic.

At the bottom of my resources page, you will find some links to the past Training Within Industry presentations given at the TWI Summits.

TWI Service

quote:

As a facilitator you just have to be a mirror and reflect back the personality of the person so they can discover for themselves.

This was Carl Rogers theory many years ago and it worked unusually well for him; but according to everything I've ever read, it does not work so well for most others. Most psychologists do not agree that this is all that is needed and are more cognitively oriented.

But we're not talking about psychology here and helping someone discover who they are. That is entirely different from corporate learning. We are talking about "facilitating" in terms of "teaching" something. I believe that it is irresponsible to do nothing but mirror back something (whether you call it, personality or whatever) and call that helping others to learn. I do not know if this is what LoveLearning is advocating or not.

Unfortunately LoveLearning has not responded to earlier questions I posted so it is a little hard to discuss anything of merit. It's one thing to have opinions, but if you can't or won't even attempt to discuss them, how can anything be learned here? It can't, and I guess that is okay too.........but this is a discussion board.

Kaliko, I certainly agree with you that when it comes to teaching the transfer of knowledge for trainer is a critical part. I mentioned this in my original reply to LoveLearning.

This is perhaps a matter of terminology, so without becoming too academic about this, lets say that I consider "facilitation" as a helping activity which may not require transfer of skills and training as an activity that involves the transfer.

I think this is the general understanding (as confirmed by wikipedia)

Either way, I think you are quite right to think that the cognitive process is essential and simple mirroring is not all that is required. After all there is only so much one can discover by reflection and to learn quicker we need to borrow from others.