The Multi-stakeholder Policy Formulation and Action Planning approach was applied in the context of a multi-city study to influence and/or change policies that govern urban agriculture practices in three African and two Asian countries. Although the approach was successful and resulted in remarkable outcomes, it showed space for improvement to facilitate its application. The study also showed that there are significant regional differences in how best to achieve policy change, which require careful attention in order to achieve the highest returns on investment in the facilitation of impact pathways.

Combining more than 30 years of facilitating, training and teaching experience, the authors use field-tested approaches to create a group reflection experience that maximizes engagment, participation and, most importantly, learning.The 5 Question Model takes the essential elements of classic learning cycles debriefing and presents them in such a way that they can be quickly understood, used and taught to a wide variety of skill levels.

In Facilitating Evaluation, Michael Quinn Patton recounts stories of his experiences as an evaluation facilitator. Evaluation facilitation applies and adapts general facilitation knowledge and techniques to the specialized challenges of working with stakeholder groups involved in program evaluation. The purpose of such facilitation is to enhance the relevance, credibility, meaningfulness, and utility of evaluations. Michael Quinn Patton outlines five evaluation facilitation principles that are the organizing framework for addressing how to work with stakeholders to generate evaluation questions, make decisions among methods, interpret findings, and participate in any and all aspects of evaluation, from initial determination of purpose through design and data collection, and on through follow-up to ensure and enhance use. His between-chapter portages are an opportunity to hear different voices and encounter diverse perspectives on evaluation facilitation. In each case, he invited colleagues to write about anything they thought was important to understand and yet neglected in the evaluation literature. The book will be required reading for advanced courses in program evaluation and become an indispensable resource for practitioners in the field.

“I have had the good fortune to watch both David and Tina facilitate learning groups and have learned from the power of their modeling. . . . I am delighted that they have gathered their wisdom here in this volume to share with others eager to embark on the journey and experience the joys of facilitating learning with colleagues.” —From the Foreword by Ron Ritchhart, senior research associate, Project Zero, Harvard Graduate School of Education One of the most important shifts in schools in the last two decades has been the growing emphasis on collaboration among teachers and other educators. Whether you are a teacher facilitating a group for the first time or an experienced facilitator seeking to further develop your skills, this book is for you. Organized to be used as both an exploration of the role of facilitating and as a handbook of strategies, this resource covers a range of contexts that include faculty meetings, department meetings, professional learning communities, grade-level teams, and inquiry groups. This book is a perfect companion to the authors’ bestseller, The Facilitator’s Book of Questions, which focuses on the skills needed to facilitate protocols or structured conversations. Facilitating for Learning extends the scope of that work by also examining the facilitator’s responsibilities for supporting a group’s learning during all parts of a meeting, between meetings, and within the larger school context and culture. It is an essential resource for teachers, administrators, coaches, and teacher educators. Book Features: Contrasts facilitating for learning with other professional development roles, including staff development, coaching, and supervision.Outlines the basic responsibilities and tasks of facilitating teacher learning groups, including “moves” the facilitator might employ.Considers challenges related to school culture and leadership, group interactions, and time constraints.Provides resources to help facilitators develop their skills, including tools and references to other works on facilitation.

This much-needed guide provides the specific skills and materials necessary to facilitate effective dialogues across identity differences. We are living through arguably one of the most divisive times in our country and the world. People do not know how to communicate across differences in a way that advances the public good—from the international halls of power to local city governments to classrooms to family dinners. The consequences are devastating—from hate-fueled conflicts and mass shootings to teachers who do not know how to address problematic comments in the classroom. This book responds to the urgent need to address complicated, intense, and oftentimes personal differences in a productive way. Written for both novice and experienced facilitators, it offers concrete materials to use in classrooms and other settings, along with anecdotes, vignettes, and hard-earned lessons based on the authors’ own experiences. By capturing conversations among leaders in the field and emergent practitioners, Facilitating Transformational Dialogues emanates optimistic energy and time-tested wisdom from the fields of Intergroup Relations and Intergroup Dialogue. Contributors: Daniel Alvarez, Charles Behling, Trelawny Boynton, adrienne maree brown, Mark Chesler, Erika Crews, Sara Crider, Tazin Daniels, Roger Fisher, Kristie Ford, Patricia Gurin, Rima Hassouneh, Emely Hernandez, Stephanie Hicks, Olive Jayakar, Donna Kaplowitz, Michael Kaplowitz, Charles Liu, Kelly Maxwell, Sariah Metcalfe, Alice Mishkin, Christina Morton, Taryn Petryk, Shana Schoem, Deborah Slosberg, Beverly Daniel Tatum, Monita Thompson, Meaghan Wheat, Anna Yeakley, Ximena Zuniga

This edited collection seeks to enrich the dialogue about the expansive possibilities of visual sociological research facilitation. Although facilitating ethical research has long been identified within medical research literatures, there is a dearth of distinct perspectives and voices in academic theorizing when it comes to facilitating ethical research. For example, how can researchers learn and incorporate community created approaches to facilitation into their visual research approaches? Although ethics, positionality, and reflexivity remain important components of visual research, the authors argue that the incremental decisions made in real time by research facilitators within the process of visual research is currently under-theorized. This edited collection seeks to discuss how thinking about facilitation in a more critical and nuanced manner, as well as thinking through the kinds of relations, problems and local changes that happen within a project, can help visual sociological researchers move towards more equitable research practices.