Acive reviewing and debriefing

Edited by Igor Lisin, Paulina Kida Edited by Igor Lisin, Paulina Kida OUTDOOR EDUCATION from theory to practice WROCŁAW 2018 Edited by Igor Lisin, Paulina Kida Authors: Daniele Bettini, Ioanna Mirto Chatzigeorgiou, Paulina Kida, Agnieszka Leśny, Igor Lisin, Peter Mitchell, Reka Puskas, Anastasia Rodopoulou, Kinga Vajda, Floor Vullings, Philippos Nachmias Copyeditor: Marcel Majchrzak Design and layout: Małgorzata Chustecka Illustrations: Anna Zając Copyright and publisher: Foundation Institute of Animation and Social Development Probostwo 34, Lublin 20-089, Poland [email protected] www.iairs.pl www.outdooracademy.pl ISBN 978-83-943238-2-0 Book is published within project “Outdoor Academy: coaching and outdoor education in youth field” Co-funded by Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union. Copy free of charge CC BY NC The European Commission support for the production of this publication does not constitute an endorsement of the contents which reflects the views only of the authors, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein. CONTENT INTRODUCTION OUTDOOR EDUCATION 7 10 Peter Mitchell, Ioanna Mirto Chatzigeorgiou, Daniele Bettini What is Outdoor Education? 11 The Scouting Movement 12 Kurt Hahn and Outward Bound 13 John Dewey: Learning by doing 14 Outdoor Education principles 17 Facilitation in Outdoor Education 23 THEORIES AND MODELS 28 Kinga Vajda, Agnieszka Leśny, Paulina Kida, Floor Vullings Kolb’s Learning cycle 29 The Stretch Zone Experience Model 32 Active Reviewing and Debriefing 36 Scale of cooperation 50 Nonviolent communication 58 Action Centred Leadership Model 63 PROGRAMMING IN OUTDOOR EDUCATION 67 Paulina Kida, Agnieszka Leśny, Kinga Vajda Role of environment 68 OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 5 3 ACTIVE REVIEWING AND DEBRIEFING by Kinga Vajda, Agnieszka Leśny INTRODUCTION Debriefing is like an art. It is one of the most fascinating aspect of a trainer’s work. This skill has to be learn in practice. Good debriefing can have a strong impact on learning process of participant and by bad debriefing trainer can push group into conflict or impose their conclusions. Below you will find a brief theoretical background, examples, techniques and guidelines how to design a debriefing process. However, the best way to learn is to observe other trainers, keep asking questions why they use specific methods or ask specific questions, and study group dynamic process. 36 / OUTDOOR EDUCATION FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE WHAT? If you come back to learning process in Outdoor Education, as a simplification it could look like that: FRONT LOADING ACTIVITY REVIEWING/DEBRIEFING This schema is based on outdoor education principles (page17). There is no consensus between outdoor experts that debriefing and reviewing process are the same or different. For some of them, all steps after activity could be called debriefing, processing, reflection or reviewing. Commonly used concept is to provide a space for the participants to reflect on the experience occurred, look back at the situation, feelings, process. During the activities participants gain a strong experience, which they are trying to share with the instructors and peers. In order to not lose some individuals thoughts, which are important for them, but in terms of the group are often an irrelevant detail, it’s good to lead the review in a more structured form. For example, where everybody can have space and can speak. First you have to ventile emotions, then carry out the reviewing and the last step is debriefing. Methods used can be very similar or even the same. Roger Greenaway said that “Reviewing is learning from experience – or enabling others to do so. Reviewing helps you get more from work, life and recreation – especially if you have the reviewing skills to match your ambitions”. This process is strongly connected to the concept of transfer knowledge and skills. Do you, as a trainer, have to debrief every experience? No. The simple activities like energizers, ice breakers, name games, the introductory activities (group contract, expectations, etc.), knowing each other activities don’t need a debriefing. Their role is to create the atmosphere, direct the focus on something, energize the participants. But the complex and challenging activities (team building, problem solving, communication, climbing, etc.) only achieve their goal with a debriefing. WHY? Reviewing is intended to reflect by the participants on the activity occurred, look back at the experience of the situation and feelings. This is the way to go back to the experience and opportunity to analyse it. Greenaway defined reviewing as any process that helps participants to make use of personal experience for their learning and development. These reviewing processes can include (Greenaway, 1999):  reflecting on experience  analysing experience  making sense of experience  communicating experience  reframing experience  learning from experience OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 37 38 / OUTDOOR EDUCATION FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE During the activities participants gain a strong experience, which they are trying to share with the instructors and peers. The goal of the review is to recall the experience, feelings, actions, thoughts, reaction during the activity. It is not necessary to use the method after each small activity, but it is important and useful before starting the debriefing of a longer, bigger and complex activity, like: expedition, ropes course, implementation of own projects/ programs, closing the day, closing the whole program etc. Following Greenaway concept, you could understand reviewing in two senses:  Sense 1: Reviewing = learning – the process of learning from experience itself (e.g. by keeping a diary, confiding with a friend, or talking with your mentor). Sense 1 is about what the learner does.  Sense 2: Reviewing = helping others to learn – the process of facilitating learning from experience for others (e.g. by asking questions, giving feedback, or exploring alternative explanations). Sense 2 is about what the facilitator or trainer does (Greenaway, 1999). Greenaway describes 10 reasons why trainers are supposed to do reviewing and it is worth to quoted all of them (Greenaway, 1999): 1. Adding value to the experience The value gained from experiences depends very much on how experiences are reviewed. Reviewing is an opportunity to add value and meaning to experiences however ‚small’ or ‚large’, ‚negative’ or ‚positive’ they may be. 2. Getting unstuck Without reviewing, groups and individuals can get stuck at a particular stage of development. Reviewing provides a range of strategies for moving beyond this stage and for getting the cycles of learning and development turning again. 3. Achieving objectives Reviewing can help to clarify, achieve, measure and celebrate objectives. 4. Opening new perspectives People may be in the habit of reviewing experiences from their ‚normal’ perspective. By also ‚seeing’ an experience from the perspectives of others and by ‚re-viewing’ an experience through a variety of ‚windows’ (reviewing techniques), people can escape from tunnel (or normal) vision and learn from the bigger picture. 5. Developing observation and awareness The more involving an experience, the harder it is to observe what is happening. Reviewing can encourage observation, perception and general awareness both during and after experiences. 6. Caring By reviewing activities we show that we care about what people experience, that we value what they have to say, and that we are interested in the progress OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 39 of each individual’s learning and development. When people feel cared for, valued, and respected as individuals they will be better learners! 7. Encouraging self-expression It is not always easy to talk about experiences. An imaginative and sensitive approach to reviewing can help people find the medium, situation, symbol or question through which they can most readily express themselves. This is where the expressive and creative arts can be particularly helpful. 8. Using success Focusing on success may be a strange experience if it is usually problems that are the focus of attention in reviews. Reviewing can help people to enjoy success, to understand how it happened and to get accustomed to the idea that they can be successful. 9. Proving support Reviewing can be a valuable safety net. The reassurance that support will be available in the event of failure encourages people to take risks (of the kind that will be supported). Whether people experience failure or success, the causes can be analysed so that they learn how to avoid failure (or win from failure) and how to achieve success. 10. Empowering people Reviewing enhances people’s ability to learn from individual or group experiences. Improved learning ability, together with increased confidence, allows people to become more independent and more capable of self-development, and even of self-actualisation! (‚Self-and-others-actualisation’ may be a more suitable aspiration for those who acknowledge the mutually supportive nature of much reviewing.)” HOW? Reviewing methods The reviews can be verbal, physical or visual. There are a lot of ways for reviewing, that depend on the instructor’s goal, conditions, creativity, age of participants, weather, ect. The crucial factor is a goal for a group (so also for an activity). If you are working on communication - your reviewing method should be relevant to communication. Also, especially during long process, it is good to switch between methods (visual, verbal, ect.) to be sure that participants with different way of expressing their feelings and thoughts could be involved in a reviewing process. Here are a few examples: Color: Choose a color that describes your experiences and explain why (this method is a metaphor based on and connected to emotions of participants). One Word: Use one word to describe your day and explain why you would choose that one word. 40 / OUTDOOR EDUCATION FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE In the Hat: Write how you feel (e.g. a problem or a fear) on a piece of paper. All the papers are put in a hat and are pulled out one by one. They can either be discussed by the entire group, or a single person can discuss what is written (not their own piece of paper). This brings different ideas to problems and can offer solutions. Awards: Give each participant an award for their achievement or exact steps they did during the activity - they can be humorous or serious or both. Plays/Skits/Songs/Poems: Dramatic productions are good for younger groups, they can often react their experience more effectively than they can describe it verbally. Draw: Draw a picture describing your day or an experience. Present it to the group. Image of Nature: Find something from the environment that represents how they feel. This will make them more aware of the natural environment and how they view it. Planning and structuring a debriefing: Having aims for your debrief will help to keep focused. It has to be also connected with a goal for a group and what happened during group process. Ask yourself the following questions:  What are the most important questions to which I want participants to respond and why?  At what level are these questions? How deep I want to go?  What questions should I use to lay the foundation for the important questions to be more easily answered? Depth of experience: main caution on the depth of the psychological content we expose. If you are not trained to facilitate experiences therapeutically, you should be aiming to remain here and now. So in the focus of the debriefing are the facts of the activity, the affect/effect of them and the possible future consequences. For example: if during an activity you observe strong conflict or storming and you are not trained how to deal with a conflict in a group, do not go deeper into the bad emotions. Let your group ventile their emotions to help them step back from an activity situation, clear their minds and stay on facts and findings level. More inspiration how to help group in different modes you will find in a The Scale of Cooperation chapter, (page50). Motto: „only pull apart what you can put back together”. When to debrief? The debriefing is effective if it’s done as soon as possible after the experience is completed. Where to debrief? Debrief in a proximity to the location of the experience. The closer you are, the more participants will be able to visualize and recall the events. Outdoor environment gives OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 41 you a lot of possibilities to design creative reviewing methods. Greenaway wrote: “Once you discover that you can abandon indoor teaching aids and exploit resources and opportunities in the outdoors for reviewing, you will become tuned in to spotting good reviewing locations and making the most of them. By making reviewing active, mobile and outdoors, the reviews themselves can be at least as memorable as the outdoor experiences being reviewed. This makes the learning as memorable as the experience in which it is grounded” (Greenaway, 2004). Guideline to an effective debriefing: Basic Group Ground Rules adapted from Priest and Gass (2005)  Establish a Full Value Contract and balance this with Challenge by Choice: This extends to debriefing. Participants have the right to select their own ways of getting involved and may choose to pass during either activities or discussion. (page17)  Single Speaking: Is a sign of group respect. Having one person speak at a time ensures an opportunity for each person to be heard and for everyone to hear what is being said.  Non-violence is a must: Violence is not acceptable. (page58)  Confidentiality: a) Participants need to understand whether or not information can be shared outside the group b) Promising confidentiality can be difficult, as you may be legally required to report certain issues (ex. abuse)  Group Position: Important for effective communication; needs to be in a configuration so that you can see everything; need to provide a setting that encourages discussion.  Time is critical: Schedule sufficient time to reflect on the experience. Match the length of debriefing time to the maturity, needs, and abilities of the articipants.  Participant Responsibility: They are responsible for their own actions during the debriefing, what they would like to take from the session.  Commitment for success: Put them in situations where they can learn from the experience.  Role Clarity: Establishing your role to eliminate confusion among the group.  Ethics: Know your stance on ethical issues and non-negotiable values.  Be Neutral: Be an observer and do not take sides. Don’t play favorites.  Construct Change Processes: Do review plan  Good Listening Brings Useful Questions. Can’t understand the group if you have not listened to them. 42 / OUTDOOR EDUCATION FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE Questions The most common question during debriefing is “How do you feel?”. Why is that? It is not always useful and even not recommended to keep continue asking participant about their feelings. Trainer's question should be related to goals and what happend in a group. It is much better to ask open instead closed questions. For ventilation group emotions you could also:  ask participants to express their feeling through body posture or gesture.  ask “what do you need now (from me, from others)”?  ask participants to draw what do they feel or with what emotions they want to deal with?  arrange pairs or small groups and let people speak in that groups.  do reflection walk for everybody and after it ask if there is something that they want to talk about. How long to debrief? Duration of debriefing depends on a goal, age of participants and different circumstances mentioned above. However, it is good to remember that debriefing is a time-consuming process and after complex game it could takes even the same amount of time as an activity. What to debrief? The trainer observes the group during the activity (actions, reactions, processes, the atmosphere, relationships etc.) than choses a debriefing model/ questions according to the needs, goals, interests of the participants. DEBRIEFING MODELS: 1. THE THREE QUESTIONS OF THE EFFICIENT DEBRIEFING BY T. BORTON. The trainer should structure a debrief: What? So what? Now what? WHAT? SO WHAT? NOW WHAT PAST PRESENT FUTURE FIG. 3. MODEL OF EFFICIENT DEBRIEFING BY T. BORTON, BASED ON: BORTON T. 1970. REACH TOUCH AND TEACH: STUDENT CONCERNS AND PROCESS EDUCATION, MCGRAW-HILL, NEW YORK. OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 43 What? The first stage is to look back over the activity. This involves the recall of facts in an objective way. It is usually more effective to concentrate on the positive to begin with, so that the group will become more comfortable talking about their feelings. Possible questions: recount the main events leading to the end of the project:  What was the best/worst/more interesting/most involved moment?  What were the stages you went through in managing this event? So what? Once the facts are discussed the next stage is to find out what people think or feel about them. This stage is in the NOW. It involves ideas and opinions. People are able to build on the activity described to grasp some meaning to them. Possible questions:  What kind of communication helped/hindered?  How did your risk taking change throughout the session?  What could have increased the level of support you received? Now what? This stage looks into the future. It is about change and development and is focused on action. Possible questions:  What will you do differently next time?  What will you do the same?  How will you tackle this next time? 2. THE FUNNELING MODEL BY S. PRIEST Guides the group through a series of steps that ‘funnel’ participants attention from the experience toward making beneficial changes in their lives. Characteristics:  Expansion of “What? So what? Now what?”  Pour experiences through 5 ‘filters’ to distil learning  Each question filters out unwanted parts of the experience  Important to know participants needs FILTER #0: Review  Focus the group on the topic of interest  Replay / describe the experience to refresh memories  If topic is obvious, then not needed Questions: Let’s talk about (issue / topic)  Can you review the last activity for me?  On a scale of 1-5, rate your team’s performance 44 / OUTDOOR EDUCATION FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE EXPERIENCES FILTER #0 FILTER #1 FILTER #2 FILTER #3 FILTER #4 FILTER #5 CHANGE FIG. 4. FUNNELING MODEL BY S. PRIEST, BASED ON: PRIEST S. LEADERSHIP MANAGEMENT, VIEWED 21 MAY 2018, <HTTP://SIMONPRIEST.ALTERVISTA.ORG/LM.HTML>. FILTER #1: Recall & Remember  Participants identify incidents that happened during the experience  Ask questions to bring up the topic or issue, to give the participants ownership of the incident & control of the situation Questions:  Can you think of an example of good / poor (issue / topic)?  Can you recall when during the activity we saw this good / poor (issue / topic)? FILTER #2: Affect & Effect  Addresses emotions and causes  Ask questions to ascertain the impact of the occurrence  Allow group to recognize the positive & negative impacts of their behavior Questions:  How did you / the group feel during the experience?  How did this emotion affect the group?  What influence did it have on the task? OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 45 FILTER #3: Summation  Helps highlight new learning  Ask participants to summarize learning points of activity / experience Questions:  What did you learn from all this?  Can you sum up what was discussed? FILTER #4: Application  Help participants to transfer learning to real life  Ask participants to make connections through metaphors Questions:  Do you see a connection between this learning & your personal life?  How can you apply this in your job?  Do you see any parallels to your family? FILTER #5: Commitment  Looks toward change  Ask for pledge or action plan  At least till the end of the program the participants need to commit themselves Questions:  What would you do differently next time?  How can you commit to change?  Who can support you in your commitment to change? You can see a concrete example, how to use the model during Moonwalk activity (page182) 3. 4 F MODE BY R.GREENAWAY This model can be used as a debriefing model or as an active reviewing model and it is closely linked to the experiential learning cycle (Kolb Cycle, page29). In this context we are focusing on the model as a debriefing model. Facts: this part concentrates on the happenings during the activity and you should focus on the experience of the participants and should help them analyze their actions and reactions. You should review the facts with the help of the similar questions:  What happened?  What did you notice?  What did you see/hear/think?  How did that happen?  Why were you doing that? 46 / OUTDOOR EDUCATION FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE PAST FACTS Focus is on the activity/experience FEELINGS Focus is on the learning/conclusion PRESENT FINDINGS FUTURE FUTURE Focus is on the transfer FIG. 5. 4 F MODEL BY R. GREENWAY, BASED ON: GREENAWAY R. 2007, ACTIVE REVIEWING METHOD AND THE ACTIVE REVIEWING CYCLE. You can also use some active reviewing techniques, for example Action replay (dummy microphone or dummy remote control), when participants ask the questions and other participants answer them. Participants cam also replay the happenings as a theater play or move. Greenaway says about this technique: “it keeps involvement and energy high; it is an exercise in memory, creativity, and teamwork; it brings out humor and honesty; it provides opportunities for leadership, interviewing and commentating; and it can be used as a search technique to find incidents or issues to debrief more thoroughly.” (Greenaway, 2007b) Feelings: this part concentrates on the feelings which were born during the activity and which are triggered by the facts. You need to help participants identify and analyze their feelings. You should review the feelings with help of the following type of questions:  What did you feel?  How did you feel about it?  Was that feeling good or bad in that situation?  How that feeling influenced your actions and reactions?  Do you see any correlation between your feelings and facts / between facts and your feelings? An active way of reviewing the feelings is the Story Line, described by Greenaway (Greenaway, 2008a) Findings: this part concentrates on the present, on what participants can learn now from the experiences. By using questions you facilitate the participants to draw OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 47 the onclusions and to express their learning outcomes. You can use the following type of questions:  What did you find about yourself / about the group?  What are the other / better solutions to resolve similar activities / problems / situations?  What can I / we gain from this?  What can I / we learn from this? Greenaway describes the active version of the discovering the findings in the Horseshoe technique: (Greenaway, 2008b) Future: this part concentrates on the future and ensures the transfer. You facilitate the commitment of the participants and help the participants to express things what they will do better. In another way, in the light of the past experience and in the light of the debriefing session. You can use the following type of questions:  What is going to be different next time?  In a similar situation in future, how would you like to react?  How can you use this learning / findings in my personal / professional life?  What could you take from this experience into the school life / workplace? The participants should complete the following sentence:  From now on I am trying to…..  From now on my goal is…… and I will do…… Reviewing in outdoor and through outdoor Organizing your program in outdoor gives you unlimited tools and techniques that you can use for reviewing. Sticks, sands, water, trees can be very inspiring for you and also for participants. You can even use the same materials for reviewing that you use for activity, for example, you can design reviewing of high ropes activity using harness, helmets, carabiners, ropes as a metaphor of different sense of trust in a group. There are more reasons why it is good to review in outdoor (Greenaway, 2004):  a naturally stimulating environment is more ‚brain-friendly’ (and arouses more ‚intelligences’) than the most well equipped indoor classrooms  space that is useful for more physical reviewing such as action replays, human sculpture, human graphs, or human scales  privacy for solo reflection  freedom from fixed or cumbersome furniture – you can move quickly between large group, small group, paired and individual reviewing activities  opportunities for walking and talking - for paired discussions or for interviewing each other 48 / OUTDOOR EDUCATION FROM THEORY TO PRACTICE REFERENCES  sand or soft earth for drawing anything such as a graph for showing ups and downs, a journey towards a goal, a force field, a flow chart, or a learning model  natural objects and materials that can be collected and arranged as collages, sculptures or maps of a journey  natural objects that can be arranged and moved to represent the changing group dynamics  opportunities for reflective drama inspired by the location or by environmental themes such as life cycles, the food chain, the web of life 1. Borton T. 1970. Reach Touch and Teach: Student Concerns and Process Education, McGraw-Hill, New York. 2. Greenaway R. 1999, viewed 22 April 2018, <http://reviewing.co.uk/_review.htm>. 3. Greenaway R. 2004, viewed 15 April 2018, <http://reviewing.co.uk/articles/facilitatingoutdoor-education.html>. 4. Greenaway R. 2007a, Active Reviewing Method and the Active Reviewing Cycle, viewed 22 May 2018, <http://reviewing.co.uk/articles/4-active-reviewing-methods.html>. 5. Greenaway R. 2007b, viewed 10 May 2018 <http://reviewing.co.uk/toolkit/action-replay.pdf>. 6. Greenaway R. 2008a, viewed 10 May 2018 <http://reviewing.co.uk/toolkit/storyline.pdf>. 7. Greenaway R. 2008b, viewed 10 May 2018, <http://reviewing.co.uk/toolkit/horseshoe-plusquestions.pdf>. 8. Outward Bound Romania 2017, Handout for the program Training of trainers, Outward Bound Romania, Targu Mures. 9. Priest S. Leadership Management, viewed 21 May 2018, <http://simonpriest.altervista.org/ LM.html>. 10. Simon Priest, Michael A, Gass, Effective Leadership in Adventure Programming 2005, Human kinetics, s. 183 - 196. OUTDOOR EDUCATION / 49