YOCOMO - Facilitating learning skills - European Training Strategy

Facilitating learning

…means facilitating individual and group learning in an enriching environment, as well as establishing dialogue and ensuring cooperation with individuals, groups and communities. This requires youth workers to have the attitudes, knowledge and skills to support young people in identifying and pursuing their learning needs and to then choose, adapt or create methods, methodologies and digital tools in residential and online environments accordingly. Ideally, youth workers and the young people they work with trust each other. Youth workers actively support and enhance young people’s learning processes, self-responsibility and motivation and empower young people to improve their personal situation, stand in solidarity with others, and encourage their peers to do the same.

The single skills are summarised in different headlines that illustrate what “facilitating learning” means for youth workers skill-wise. The “cluster headlines” do not name skills as such; these can be found through clicking on the lists.

Carefully chosen approaches and methods need to fit the purpose of the activity and the young people’s needs. + -

This requires skills to:

assess the learning needs and objectives of the learners
choose appropriate methods accordingly
identify dimensions and stages in group processes/dynamics

Learning also happens through reflection and emotional support. + -

In this matter, the related skills are to:

initiate and support self-reflection on learning
build and support the self-confidence of (young) people
enable reflection on issues connected to values, ethics and norms, or those that may be emotionally charged
empathise in a way that the learners feel challenged and supported at the same time, so that they can learn from the experience
address crisis situations
guide others to channel feelings into action, including in online environments, where appropriate

Working with resources is needed for the learning process of youth workers. + -

Thus, they must be able to:

identify, organise and refer to those resources to support their own learning process, too

Learning processes have a solidarity dimension and can also have an impact on communities. + -

Youth workers can contribute to this by:

generating an environment in which group members can show and build solidarity within the group
facilitating learning towards community impact

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