Learning to Facilitate

This chapter examines how facilitators of public participation become critical, pragmatic practitioners of their craft. We analyze how facilitators learn through ethnographic study of an approach known as the Art of Hosting. We identify three ways in which facilitators transform knowledge to facilitate. They metabolize facilitation knowledge to understand and incorporate or eschew techniques and frameworks into their repertoire. They situate facilitation knowledge to adapt it in particular contexts. They co-produce facilitation knowledge with practitioner community. Through illustrations, we demonstrate how these learning processes support professional development and discuss the implications for enhancing professional and societal capacities for participatory decision-making.