Balancing Direction and Response: Four Dimensions of Transformative Facilitation in Educational Development

Practical implications

In our 2016 POD Network session, participants identified a number of contexts that could be understood as liminal spaces, including faculty learning communities, faculty retreats, summer institutes, conferences, and many more. Reflecting on the notion of liminal spaces raised questions for some participants about how they use literal space at their home institutions. One wrote: “This suggests that doing faculty development in an academic department (rather than elsewhere) is not such a good thing: need to pull faculty into a different space! Maybe a room in the rec center?” Another wrote: “I think I want to start having initial conversations with new faculty outside—outside of office spaces, outside of divisional/ departmental turfs, & physically outside.”

This kind of thinking about literal space was complemented by insights into more metaphorical “space”: “Disrupting norms around expertise (either role based or education level based) can create liminal spaces for transformation and creative ideas to emerge.” When faculty participants expand their conceptions of themselves beyond the identity of “teacher,” for instance, to being a “learner,” they not only enact a more reciprocal form of engagement, they try out a way of being that they can carry back into their daily lives. That is what can happen when we create “as if” spaces in which people develop new norms.

Whether conceptualizing liminal space as literal or metaphorical, participants in the session grappled with the affective implications of moving in and out of liminal spaces: “Sometimes for real learning and significant change to occur we need to push people way out of comfort zone to overstretch so they come back to a middle point between comfort and extreme.” Participants identified qualities of presence and attention necessary for liminality to be generative, such as “curiosity & openness,” “vulnerability,” “flexibility,” and “deep attention.”

Like the theory that informs the concept of liminality, the practical ways that participants in our POD Network session grappled with the concept—only a small number of which are mentioned here—highlight the generative potential for facilitation to be thoughtful and intentional about the kind of space we as educational developers create for learning and growth. We can be explicit in recommending and supporting literal liminal spaces, as when we invite walk and talk meetings that help us and another both also achieve our mutual desire to move our bodies more, or when a faculty learning community meets off campus every couple weeks and reports feeling like a mini retreat. When we offer reflective prompts, we create a more metaphorical liminal space, inviting participants to explore in both intellectual and emotional ways new ideas, practices, and even identities. Through writing themselves into a different state of mind and feeling, participants can begin to effect changes in or simply clarify practice.

Building trust by accessing emotion before reason

It is common to assume that people cannot have feelings without thinking, or to assume that thought precedes feeling. But as William Wundt, the Gestalt psychologist, suggested as early as 1905, “When any physical process rises above the threshold of consciousness, it is the affective elements which, as soon as they are strong enough, first become noticeable. They begin to force themselves energetically into the fixation point of consciousness before anything is perceived of the ideational elements” (quoted in Zajonc, 1980, p. 152, emphasis added by Zajonc). All participants in an ED forum bring with them both immediate and cumulative feelings that can either hinder or catalyze transformation. Inviting people to access and name those feelings in the context of the topic under exploration makes explicit and makes into a resource what otherwise might remain implicit and an impediment.

Another path to emotion comes from data or information. On Torosyan’s campus, a regional access institution, his own awareness (and that of colleagues) has varied regarding just how many challenges any given student may be facing at one time. Students and faculty often feel they are not alone when everyone encounters information such as the numbers of students who must grapple with “…financial stress, fear of debt, lack of discretionary funding, working long hours, living far from campus, lack of transportation…staying close to and helping family, lack of role models for college, lack of knowledge about college…”(Kezar, 2011, p. 19; see also Walpole, 2007) and much more. Even for faculty who have experienced few if any of such challenges, learning of these emotionally triggering realities can drive pursuit of all manner of strategies, from classroom conferencing, to virtual office hours, to connecting students with prospective internships. While seeing evidence, or even changing beliefs, does not equate to changing teaching practice, whether owing to faculty identity (Herckis, 2018) or other factors driving the frequent disconnect between faculty’s perceptions and practices (Ebert May et al., 2011), sharing such information increases the likelihood that participants will move past impediments and toward transformation.

Taking steps to draw out perspectives

Faculty and staff often express special appreciation for a well organized session. As one of our POD Network session participants commented: “I really felt led in a logical way through a series of steps that helped me expand my thinking and move forward with my planning” (Torosyan & Cook Sather, 2016). Such steps involve changes of rhythm from start to end, as when we start workshops with a quote, question, data point or brief narrative, or other piece of evidence. These set the ground for people to surface their responses to that information or invitation, as with writing, conversation, doodling, or movement. In the ensuing move to collaboration, “the act of listening is based on interaction rather than simply reception” (Schultz, 2003, p. 9).

In ED, we encourage a kind of listening that is “fundamentally about being in relationship to another and through this relationship supporting change or transformation. By listening to others, the listener is called on to respond” (Schultz, 2003, p. 9). Structures for that response range from staying deliberately neutral to more involved enactment. For instance, in the structure aimed at generating “Thinking at the Edge,” partners engage in “taking turns in what we call a ‘focusing partnership’”; these turns “provide the needed interaction without any imposition” (Gendlin, 2004, p. 4). As Gendlin’s steps require, “In half the time I respond ONLY to you. I write down what you say and read it back to you when you want it. Then in the other half of the time you do ONLY this for me” (2004). Such noninterference honors the notion that “Nobody else lives the world from your angle. No other organism can sense exactly ‘the more’ that you sense” (Gendlin, 2004). When empathized with deeply enough, people often express thoughts or feelings they did not necessarily know they were trying to express (Carkhuff, 1969). That act involves not only wording but attitude, tone, or stance (of not only body but mind or even spirit), our third dimension of facilitation.

Practical implications

In our POD Network session participants’ responses to this dimension of facilitation, a common theme was the tension between whether structure provides needed support or hinders engagement. One participant wrote: “create a set of steps that forces faculty to think differently about a problem/issue … doesn’t let them just sit in what they know,” but as another wrote: “Oftentimes structure can shut down openness and participation.” As another put it: “Structure can create space / filter out distraction BUT/AND does structure sometimes foreclose certain avenues of conversation?” These comments raise the question of how prescriptive vs. free flowing structure should be; each has benefits and drawbacks. For instance, careful planning of steps can help some participants manage movement toward change but can make others refrain from participating for fear they might not generate what the facilitator is seeking.

The point of this dimension is to wrestle consciously with this tension, in terms of both what steps to use and when to value steps or let them go, responsively. The ideas participants generated for how to create useful structure included: “use a specific method of posing questions to invite reflection”; “using a mix of individual/small/large group interactions to invite different kinds of sharing”; and “Backward design in micro steps.” Highlighting the conceptual challenge, another participant wrote: “I struggle to convince new instructors that they need to think through steps so carefully in order to create good experiences for their students.”

For each ED forum, facilitators can make decisions keyed to purpose and participants regarding how to build trust (such as by accessing emotion before reason) and can take steps to draw out participants’—and their own—perspectives and assumptions. Starting an ED session with a dramatic quote, question, data point or brief narrative, or other piece of evidence, inviting participation in a “focusing partnership” activity, or offering a structure and the invitation to revise it as the session unfolds, all constitute practical ways to build trust and to draw out perspectives.

Engaging in radical listening and reciprocity

As teachers ourselves for many years, we have analyzed the dynamics of listening within carefully designed learning opportunities for own students (Cook Sather, 2008) and colleagues (Torosyan, 2004). That work also shows ED facilitators how active listening can feel paradoxically passive, and yet requires effortful exploration of difference (Adams & Bell, 2016).

Radical listening is a practice—a skill nurtured through a structure of “focused partnership” (Gendlin, 2004), as we explained above, that supports its development—but it is also an attitude, stance, and tone. In trying to be completely present to what people bring into dialogue, we put ourselves into a reciprocal relationship with them. We withhold judgment and look for connections, while at the same time inviting disconnection or dissonance. This tone is the attitudinal analogue of liminality: it is the position, both physical and mental, that facilitators take inside the liminal space of an ED forum in order to create conditions conducive to change.

Achieving this tone—of voice, of body, even tone of mind—requires significant intentionality; it does not necessarily happen spontaneously or easily. Even sound itself does not automatically have meaning. As Barthes (1985) reminds us, “Hearing is a physiological phenomenon; listening is a psychological act” (p. 245). Such listening must be chosen, pursued, and focused on, by both relying on prior thought and staying open to input.

From listening and perception to empathy

The point of listening and the desired state of facilitation is empathy—not the pity associated with sympathy, and not wanting to change, mechanically, the minds of others. Rogers (1959) defined empathy this way: “The state of empathy, or being empathic, is to perceive the internal frame of reference of another with accuracy and with the emotional components and meanings which pertain thereto as if one were the person, but without ever losing the ‘as if’ condition” (pp. 210–211). Such perceptual effort is vital to transformative facilitation.

Empathizing, however, also necessitates a paradox: one must assume one never fully knows another’s reality. As Torosyan (2004 5) has argued, “When you restate, you always obliterate something of the otherness you are acknowledging (or assuming to ‘know’). We should resist the tantalizing certainty of a final, ‘Ah, that’s it, that’s their point,’ and instead respect what may be ultimately irreducible about the other’s meaning” (p. 32).

From empathy to enacting one’s own modulated responses

Engaging in radical listening and striving for empathy are forms of directing one’s energy to, and training one’s attention on, others. The counterpart to that attending is enacting a modulated response: both staying true to the structure of the ED space and its goals, and answering to what the facilitator hears from participants. The term “modulate” carries both connotations: it can imply a modifying influence, directing a movement or a process; and it can mean varying the tone or pitch of one’s voice to be better heard by others. To consciously enact modulated responses, then, we balance responsiveness with directiveness—as with examples of careful dialogue prompts used by learning community facilitators (Ortquist Ahrens & Torosyan, 2009).

Three visions of leadership, described by Cook Sather and Felten (2017), display increasingly sophisticated modulation of response: leadership can be conceptualized as “an individual directing or controlling movement toward a goal.” Alternatively, it can be seen as “a practice of organizing for movement in a given direction that focuses on responding and facilitating rather than commanding and controlling.” Finally, it can be framed as “a sharing of the responsibilities for choosing a direction and pursuing it” (p. 175). As we discuss under the fourth dimension below, facilitators move among these differing directions.

Practical implications

In the post its regarding this third, attitudinal dimension, POD Network session participants highlighted a theme of “Making space for connection and dissonance” and asked questions like, “What are some examples of the ways that you enact this?” One wrote:

Desiring such acceptance, a participant aspired to “No fear of reacting negatively.” A practical way to enact the attentive, empathetic, and responsive attitude we propose is, in response to the variety of reactions we may get—puzzled, negative, surprised or otherwise—we can take (and offer) a “pause” by saying, “Hmm, that’s so interesting, I need to think on it for a moment, and perhaps others do, too.”

Noticing the limits of language, one post it said that we need to “Care about what others bring to the space beyondtheir words.” Sometimes enacting such caring simply requires that we mutter “Hmm” with a sense of being with the other. Another post it elaborated similarly: “In our faculty development workshops, we do lots of idea collection—I want to start doing that non verbally.” To attend nonverbally and care beyond words, we might need not just to say something but also to show it. For example, we might say: “I’m seeing some arms crossed, a couple folks pushing back from the table, possibly in concern;” or “I’m noticing a frown; can you say what’s happening in your head right now, how you’re feeling?” Or we might wait in silence, looking around the room with an expression of attentiveness and receptivity, endeavoring to convey respect for where people are in their process and that we are with them.

In group contexts, these kinds of attitudinal expressions also attune others in our groups to the nonverbals they see from their colleagues or peers. Other times we see nonverbals and change our approach. Noticing a colleague in a consultation get glassy eyed as we describe a possible strategy, for instance, we might stop and say, “I wonder how this is landing with you so far.” And in any ED context, to build on a contribution, we use language like, “Huh, what you are saying makes me think about _____,” or “That connects in my mind to this point made by ______.”

No matter what participants offer up, we take everything seriously and attend to where the other is “at” in their mind. Sometimes when a workshop participant shouts out, “Oh” in an apparent “Ah ha,” we may say: “Thank you for voicing the moment that a realization is occurring.” Even—indeed, especially—when we disagree with a contribution, we honor the offering by taking it up with respect. We often then try to personalize our attention to where someone may already be moving in their thinking, but we may have to do some guesswork or free associating, not “at” but “with” the others.

This work on the relatively intimate details of our practice can make all of us “vulnerable, others’ guard down,” as one participant wrote; such “vulnerability” is felt by facilitator and facilitated alike, particularly when directions shift as discussed with the next dimension below. Facing such challenges, we often share with colleagues that we experience moments of uncertainty when facilitating an ED forum, to show that we, too, wrestle with challenges along the way.

This give and take in both directions reflects how both we as educational developers and participants in ED forums redirect our work.

Nonlinear interaction in facilitation

In a workshop or meeting, for instance, colleagues may seek our “help.” In the process, however, we feel helped, viewing our own practice differently. Who was the helper and who the helped? In a nonlinear process, we each act as both helper and helped, serving and served.

A phenomenon from chaos theory, the “Strange Attractor,” serves to illustrate this nonlinear quality of interaction. In charting a simple “time series” like speed over time (see Figure 2), only one variable changes. In a conventional sage on the stage presentation, the presenter mostly speaks, and the audience mostly listens. In both examples, the system is considered less “dynamical.”

Figure 2. Chart of a Simple “Time Series”

In more dynamical systems, each variable may affect the other, as when spiraling “vectors” or paths interact with each other (see Figure 3). The patterns in this figure are still considered rather linear, however, because they follow a precisely predictable and closed orbit. Similarly, a facilitator prompts participants, and participants respond. Both are “dynamical” systems because of their interaction. The dynamism of that interaction, however, is often limited, as when participants take few risks, or a facilitator struggles to be responsive or shift proverbial gears.

Figure 3. Linearfield. Licensed under Creative Commons 2.5 on Wikipedia (XaosBits, 2005)

By contrast, in a system that is both nonlinear and dynamical, three variables interact to alter each other’s paths such that the interaction cannot be represented exactly (see Figure 4). The path in the image (an animation of what is termed a “Lorenz attractor”) nearly follows the same trajectory. But what makes it a “chaotic” or “strange” attractor is that it comes close to but never actually repeats the path. Moreover, it “displays fractal dimension.” Smaller portions resemble the larger portions every time as you zoom in, no matter the number of iterations.

Figure 4. A Trajectory Through Phase Space in a Lorenz Attractor. Licensed under Creative Commons BY SA 3.0 on Wikimedia Commons (Quinn, 2013) For animation, see http://bit.ly/Lorenz_gif

So, too, interactions between an educational development facilitator and participants often follow pathways that seem to recur, yet not quite replicate. As participants influence what the facilitator does next, a third variable is created—that of the relationship itself. No two moments in the same interaction are identical, as facilitator and participant direct and redirect the process between each other. Yet just as a strange attractor’s form looks similar across infinitely numerous iterations, transformative facilitation may look similar in numerous instances—as when it involves liminality, structure, attitude and redirection.

Practical implications

When remarking on this final dimension of directionality, the participants in our POD Network session voiced both observations and requests for applications. One message was titled in all capitals, “COMPLEMENTARITY & LIMINALITY.” A post it was stuck to itself and stood up in tubular fashion. Its words spiraled inward and conveyed two possible endings:

This creative output (see Figure 5) made its medium its message of how process redirection can create a multiplicity of meanings and states.

Figure 5. Participant’s Post it Conveying two Possible Ending Phrases

One participant indicated a wish, noting the “tension between a need to facilitate/create direction and a desire to add ideas/content to a conversation.” This and other posts highlighted the both/and thinking that is behind a heightened openness to redirection, posing questions such as, “How do you set up a process that allows the both/and you were describing?” As if in answer, another participant posted three examples in turn:

These examples illustrate and invite commitment to process and, at the same time, receptivity to uncertainty of outcome. In practical terms, they require leading and being led: offering a direction and, at the same time, being willing to change direction.

One participant asked about such complementarity in a post it: “What does this look like? Do some of the structures support the achievement of temporary liminality?” (Torosyan & Cook Sather, 2016). Here is an example that illustrates a practical application of this dimension of transformative facilitation. In one conference workshop on “constructive controversy” years ago, a facilitator team guided faculty participants in choosing a topic for debate from a list that included issues such as “Which matters more, explanatory instruction or guided discussion?” Participants, however, asserted that what they wanted to debate was the value or place of active listening in the first place. The facilitators quickly changed tack and went with this newly offered “meta” topic. That approach shows one way to avoid being subject to habitual patterns of facilitation, as when we simply note what is going on as it is going on. Hence the value of using dimensional labels we offer for what we choose to note, such as liminal space, structured steps, attitude or approach, and who directs or redirects the exchange.

In sum, the fourth dimension of process redirection goes beyond a strictly singular direction of energies, to create nonlinear interaction and reciprocal redirection in facilitation, rather than any one party alone doing the redirecting of discourse, reflection and learning.