Children’s Participation Group Meeting (March)
The Children’s Participation Group has grown!
Welcome Hannah Mehta, the children’s participation adviser from Save the Children UK, Claire O’Kane, a freelance consultant whose specialist interests include children’s participation and Sonal Zaveri, a consultant based in India who has experience and interests in promoting children’s participation and who is also a monitoring and evaluation specialist. Sarah Huxley could not join us for the meeting but sent a useful link that is included in the notes.
Having grown quickly we have decided on keeping the group to the size we are now and adopting a ‘one topic’ strategy for forthcoming monthly get-togethers. It’s also important that we leave enough time in our meeting for sharing news and any other tips and ideas. Clare is creating a ‘waiting list’ for associates who may like to join us if one of our members steps away. But please don’t wait till then to begin talking to us. We welcome our friends and associates to add comments, contribute guest blogs etc.- right away. In addition, any associate (or anyone else for that matter!) is encouraged to start up a ‘sister’ group with whom this group could exchange. All ideas and comments on these ideas are welcome.
The March Meeting
Our March meeting aimed to share ideas and resources on four child participation related topics:
- Mapping training needs ;
- The use of mentoring to support post training activities;
- The use of active learning methods and the distinction between active learning and activity in workshop-based training; and
- The importance of communicating information visually.
Topic 1: Mapping training needs
Resources:
The first question we set out to explore was: what tools were out there to use as a pre-training workshop assessment? And linked to this, how we might assess how a particular training event was likely to be regarded by trainees and how followed up once completed. I had been hunting for tools but I had not found much of interest. This pre-workshop training needs assessment was suggested by one of the group members and can be usefully adapted. We were also reminded of the Oak Foundation pilot project in Monitoring and Evaluating CP and the matrices of indicators in the framework document and the tools. Click here for the link to these. A power point overview on the pilot of this can be uploaded here. All this is good material to use when designing training needs assessment – depending on the aims of the training or workshop event. Do others reading this have tools they can recommend or ideas to share on mapping? Please tell us more if you do.
Issues we discussed re: Mapping training needs at the organisational level:
- The importance of understanding the ‘buy in’ and ‘support’ that already exists (and lack of it as well) is crucial for those designing training. Without sufficient ‘buy in’ from managers and country directors it is unlikely training will have impact after it is completed.
- If we want participants to actually initiate or enhance children’s participation, not just in the programmes they implement but in their organisations as well – and this is central to ensuring sustainability of CP – then we need to ensure we know enough about the organisations who are nparticipating in the training as well as the organization who has commissioned it.
- Managers often have less experience than others both on the theory and the practice of children’s participation and thus the training itself can be a vehicle for advocating the ideas and approaches.
Unpacking terms:
- Prior to mapping – there is a need for unpacking/consensus building as to what CP actually is/is not.
- ‘Child rights’ also needs re-visiting CP may be culturally defined and varies in different contexts and culture.
- The point of mapping training needs is to understand and then build upon the conditions for participation work to thrive after the training. is this repeat now?
- Training needs to be tailored to the needs of different groups within an origination so that some sessions may need to be adapted for managers. It is difficult and often unnecessary for managers to attend the whole training, but they do need some orientation at the same time as their staff so that there is a dialogue prior to the end of the training to actually look at the opportunities and barriers for increasing CP in the organization itself
- It can be useful to include young facilitators in the training.
Ethical principles
The Oak Foundation project above uses the general requirements set out in the CRC General comment on Article 12 as indicators to monitor and evaluate quality participation. These include attention to ethical practice of CP. An ethical approach needs to be embedded at the beginning. We reflected on how the more experienced people are the more they are aware of and are able to discuss ethical issues and that a question about ethical issues or standards in children’s participation is a useful tool to understand how trainees have an existing grasp of how to ‘do’ children’s participation!)
Topic 2: Mentoring
The use of mentoring to strengthen training in children’s participation was also discussed. Mentoring is usually done on a one to one basis (phone/skype or face to face) and can be used at an individual level after training to deepen learning. It is especially suited to a dynamic where an individual has to make practical changes in their approach and within a challenging environment.
The group reflected on the following issues:
- Does someone need to be trained as a mentor? What are the distinctive skills and can they be acquired in a training? Are there some who are just naturally better mentors than others? We also know that experts do not always make good mentors.
- What a good mentor needs most of all is coaching skills that elicit the ideas and potential of the mentor partner. The term is used advisedly because the relationship should not imply a dominant and an apprentice relationship but rather a partnership of near equals.
- A paradox about mentoring is that, in real life, mentors or role models are not ‘allocated’ to others: they are chosen, often unknown to themselves, by others who consider them mentors. How then, do we transfer this naturally occurring phenomenon into a more openly articulated relationship and create a framework within which to operate it, while remaining true to its origins?
- Organisations can set up mentor training. One of the members of the group has co-developed a model for mentor training in INGO’s. She is happy to share this privately with those interested.
- An important feature of good mentoring (like children’s participation!) is an enabling environment for the mentee.
- It is difficult to get organisations to ‘buy’ mentor training and none of us know of organisations who currently use mentoring after training in a formal and strategic way. Is this something we may want to explore and/or develop further as a post-training strategy?
- Do we need to rephrase ‘mentoring’ and call it instead something like ‘supportive supervision and link it closely to monitoring?’
- A group such as this is a group where we are mentoring and supporting each other to deepen our work and do it better so – maybe there are different systems of mentoring? And again, this group came together in a relationship of ‘equal, but different’ and an understanding that for us, diversity is strength. So the paradox of mentoring lives on.
- Maybe we need to clarify/identify the skills that are the linchpins around which mentoring operates. Do others have thoughts they want to contribute to this?
- We all agreed that in our work we switch roles from a directive style facilitator (useful for skills development where a way of doing something can be right or wrong) to a more empowering style of facilitation where the expertise is shared, to mentoring where the mentor partner is the one who is at the center of their own solutions.
- In mentoring the Mentor will be learning a great deal from the mentor partner.
- Internal and external mentors are both useful and fulfill different functions.
- One of the groups had the experience of a professional life coach supporting the organisation and helping individuals to solve problems. She found it amazing and really helpful.
- In a way children's participation IS about becoming a mentor and a coach to the children vs. being a teacher and this should be modeled all the way up.
Topic 3: Active Learning for Adults in Training Workshops on Children’s Participation
We need to model active learning and thinking in our training if we want participants to learn and use it in their participatory work with other adults and children. We wanted to share more about our experience of participatory training workshops and the strategies we use to ensure they are not just an overdose of unsatisfactory group activities and group work which do not achieve the objectives of the session or the aims of the workshop. What we aim for can be called ‘serious fun’! The problem with active learning for adults, as indeed for children, is that the ‘activity’ can take over and become an end in itself. It is frustrating when that happens and when the reflection that should accompany an activity is simply lost in the activity itself. So participants are so focused on the presentation that the learning is left behind and the problem is ours. The topic came up because of that. There are a number of strategies that we need to re-visit and some new ones to get at this ‘active learning’ for adults.
The jig saw classroom where each group takes and learns about a different piece of the jigsaw. Attention to feedback is heightened as the participants groups are all doing something different. This would require very carefully planning by the facilitator and clear direction – especially if they’re as scope for groups to underperform when the rest of the group relied on their colleagues for this ‘piece of the jigsaw’. There is more on the steps to setting up the jigsaw classroom here.
Other ideas that the group shared included:
- The debate approach (even adults get very attached to their ‘position’ even if this is the opposite of what the group consensus is and this can be funny.) For example, debating the issue: By introducing children’s participation we are going to ruin our project.
- We can ask adults to read and prepare before training (although some will and some won’t). they are adults after all and a bit of advanced reading would not hurt but we have been taught to shy away from all of that in our ‘bitesize’ world.
- We can also use different forms of quizzes
- Recognise the value of the lecture method when used well. We reflected on the fame and effectiveness of the inspiring Reith Lectures and the TED talks.
- We touched on the ideas around adult learning styles and the theory of multiple intelligences. The main point we draw is that we need to pass on the need for understanding your own learning style and then any teaching or training we do need to find a balance in the techniques we use. There is a lot online on this and here’s a place to start.
- Most of us have used a system of reflecting learning styles and techniques used openly, explicitly and throughout training ( keeping a running list). In this way participants analyse what you the facilitator is doing while they are experiencing it. Anise has a few strategies that she put down on paper and is happy to share with others if they feel they want more on this.
The importance of communicating information visually
This topic was introduced by a useful web link to a way in which information is being visualized for learning. Here is an example: provided by one of the group. The work of Hans Rosling is amazing. Have a look at how he is mapping health. At the Street Child World Cup children’s rights conference in Durban (March 2010) a ‘wordle’ was used to visualize the key words children came up with as an outcome of a participatory activity to introduce sessions on children’s perceptions of home, violence and access to health and education. The wordle also sorts out ranking. The results were amazing. The children found them empowering, uniting and beautiful. And here is the wordle site. Does anyone else have any thoughts or resources to share?
I feel this was a pretty good outcome from a 60 minute meeting!
Recent Comments