How to Facilitate Learning with Nik Paddison, season 2 episode 10

Talking Youth Work

Dear listeners,

Hope summer treated you well. We did miss you, and we hope you are all doing well.

In this episode we talked to Nik Paddison from the UK, a trainer of trainers, youth workers and activists in the European youth field. For the last few years he has been working as a full time freelance trainer, writer and consultant.

The main topic was Facilitation of Learning and how it is a process that has to engage the learner if we want real learning to take place. We discussed that the idea of learning as the receiving of information is a misleading and incorrect one, learning must be an active experience where everyone is involved, interested and responsible for their own growth. The facilitator needs to observe the group carefully to understand the group dynamic and support each individual on their needs.

In this process, the power of reflection is sometimes overlooked, and if we want to have deeply engaging and rich learning experiences we need to have time to reflect on what message was communicated to us, how it relates to our previous knowledge, what parts were less clear and how we can ask for help from others. By doing so not only you learn more about the subject but also about yourself as a learner.

Very rich and insightful conversation, that we hope you enjoy, reflect and learn as much as we did.

Let’s Talk Youth Work.

Links to the resources mentioned in the episode:

Mark Taylor's episode: https://bit.ly/3nmVXxG

Developing Youth Work Innovation, E-handbook.https://www.humak.fi/en/julkaisut/youth-work-innovation/

The Handbook for Facilitators (learning to learn in practice): https://bit.ly/3jAcnk7

One to One (supporting learning face to face): https://www.youthpass.eu/downloads/13-62-276/Publication_121_Final.pdf

Time to Show Off (how youth workers accompany young peoples learning processes): https://bit.ly/3nnRPNO