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CIRL Certificate and Diploma Programmes
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Group Facilitation and Self-Direction
Whatever your story, groups can be a fascinating, scary and exciting places of learning for us all.
CIRL offers a Self-Directed Learning Community that encourages students to become fully involved in their own learning in a respectful and supportive environment.
The course is offered as a one-year Certificate leading to a two-year Diploma.
Training in Group Facilitation at CIRL
An innovative project, this training combines social engagement with psychological and therapeutic depth. This is achieved by being firmly rooted in a commitment to extending and exploring diversity as a fundamental aspect of the group facilitation and self-direction experience.
Facilitators in a wide range of organisational, community and psychotherapeutic contexts will be able to develop and expand their repertoire of group facilitation.
Trainees will:
- have a unique opportunity to acquire the concepts and skills that will enhance their current practice
- develop their confidence in dealing with the underlying forces of individual psychology and group dynamics, and the parallels between them.
These courses are:
- suitable for anybody involved with groups or having professional responsibility in relation to groups of people
- designed for people involved in community, group and organisational team-based work
- aimed at those working in community projects, private and public sector organisational team leaders, managers, supervisors, voluntary sector team leaders plus educators, teachers, psychotherapists and counsellors and social workers with responsibility for groups or teams.
The socio-cultural and ethical background and identity, including knowledge, skills and experience of every individual in the learning community are fundamental to the overall strength of the training. The courses are accessible to a wide range of students in their focus on experiential, self-directed and action learning, with essential theory emerging from practice and experience.
What is Facilitation?
Facilitation is different from leading or directing a group or imposing change. It works by providing a particular kind of space and engaged attentiveness, a presence which can become a catalyst for transformation and re-organisation.
A facilitator needs to be:
- Actively aware, present, engaged and embodied without being invested or attached to a particular outcome
- Capable of lovingly attending to ‘what is’
- Able to embrace the fullness and wholeness that is already present in the system that asks to be facilitated.
It may then become possible, for emergent processes, impulses for change, and forces of evolution to be noticed and followed. This is done by recognising relationships, and making connections and links between segregated and divided aspects of that implicit wholeness.
A facilitator, therefore, does not change anything, but allows process to occur, whether this results in deepened stability or intense transformation.
Different groups and organisations call for different facilitative stances and styles. They require different skills and capacities ranging across task- and process-oriented modalities. In order to feel able to respond to a wide range of briefs (e.g. decision making, conflict resolution, team building, visioning, organisational culture change, therapeutic group process) a facilitator requires flexibility and creativity within a comprehensive framework and developing individual style.
This training aims to help you develop consistency and identity, as well as fluidity and sensitivity.
Aspects of Self-Direction
The training is based on a Self-Directed Learning Community:
- Self-direction is understood to aid self-empowerment and be a catalyst for deeper learning
- Self-empowerment in turn can be utilised to develop a deepened ability to self-reflect on your own practice as a group member, a group leader and in your ability to give and receive feedback effectively
- Self-directed learning is a key feature of the Group Facilitation Programme alongside Experiential Learning
- This provides students with the opportunity to develop their skills and abilities in a number of areas including: taking a facilitative position, speaking and holding space in the group, supporting others, identifying and taking responsibility for own learning needs.
Training elements will include:
• Focussing on community and individual needs in the context of a self-directed learning environment
• Organising individual and group learning agendas within the boundaries of the course givens
• Exploring and developing awareness and understanding of individual and group needs with an aim of negotiating them within the community group process
• Developing awareness of roles and functions in a group context, and habitual positions taken by self and others
• Short presentations by trainees to the whole community; these will look at different aspects of developing self-awareness
• Trainees experimenting with taking facilitative positions within the group, supported by tutors in both preparation and feedback
• Exploring different styles, methods and interventions of facilitation both theoretically and practically
• Tutor presentation of group facilitation theory, social issues and helping, learning and facilitation models with large group discussion
• Trainees will write about their experience and learning on the course using journal extracts throughout the training; these will be self and tutor assessed
• Development of an ability to self-reflect on learning and participation
Resources, theories & frameworks available to the community:
• Theories of facilitation (Heron: 6-category intervention, Southgate) &
facilitator styles including use of self
• Integral, holistic philosophy (theories of change, evolution of consciousness, Wilber’s all quadrants/all leves model)
• Theories of Group Dynamics and Group Analysis (Foulkes, Hopper, Wasdell)
• Spiral dynamics (Graves / Beck)
• Process-oriented Psychology (Mindell) & Psychodrama (Moreno)
• Oppression & trans-generational trauma in both individual and collective
experience
• Consciousness raising (Paulo Freire) and associated techniques (Forum
Theatre, Theatre of the Oppressed - Augusto Boal)
• Models exploring diversity, synthesis and oppression dynamics (Gestalt,
Jungian, Co- counselling)
• Field Theory, Systems Theory, Complexity Theory (Stacey)
• Family & Organisational Constellations (Hellinger)
• Conflict Resolution models
• Person-Centred, Humanistic, Gestalt & Transpersonal Psychology
• Personal and group development theories
• Parallel Process as a fundamental organising principle
The Core Principles:
• An integral philosophy and framework, including a holistic approach and understanding
• A facilitative engagement with self, others, community and the world at large
• Working with diversity as a fundamental dynamic of relationship to self and
the “other”
• A relational, dialogical, inter-subjective perspective
• Working with the concept of the wounded healer
• Commitment to process and an appreciation of parallel processes
• Applying depth-psychological insight, including awareness of unconscious processes, attending to both internal and external dynamics, inner and outer worlds - “the personal is political”
‘Integral’ is a term used by Ken Wilber to refer to a developmental model. It reaches across the full spectrum of human consciousness from pre-personal to transpersonal and an all-inclusive philosophy of ‘wholeness’. This is not a bland uniformity which homogenises and erases differences. Rather, it finds a shared reality within diversity and differentiation.
Diploma in Group Facilitation and Self-Directed Learning
This 2nd year course is a continuation on from the certificate course. It is for those participants who wish to deepen their understanding and practice of self-directed learning and group facilitation in a community context. It will involve increased attention to students’ own practice and its ongoing development through reflection, feedback and supervision.
Appropriate personal support
All participants on this training, students and tutors alike, are expected to take personal responsibility for their own well-being. This means seeking help within and outside the course when needed. This may involve tutors or supervisors recommending therapy, coaching or mentoring as a support to the student. It is strongly recommended that students are in ongoing therapy with a qualified registered psychotherapist or psychotherapeutic counsellor whilst doing this training.
The Tutor Team will meet regularly to discuss student progress and issues arising from the training, as well as self-reflecting on their own learning.
To receive information on enrolling please Click here and fill in the enquiry form stating which course you are interested in and we will then send you details by return or Click Here to Download an Application form
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