We would like to present you Nik Paddison, a trainer from our Pool of Educational Trainers. We are sure most of you already know him. He was invited to a podcast to talk about Facilitation of Learning and how it is a process that has to engage the learner if we want real learning to take place. They discussed that the idea of learning as the receiving of information is a misleading and incorrect one, learning must be an active experience where everyone is involved, interested and responsible for their own growth. The facilitator needs to observe the group carefully to understand the group dynamic and support each individual on their needs.
Nik is a highly experienced facilitator himself and an enthusiast about training other youth workers, educators and trainers to become more skilled facilitators. He is a trainer of trainers, youth workers and activists in the European youth field. For the last few years he has been working as a full time freelance trainer, writer and consultant. He tells us here his experience:
‘I started in youth work as a young person, I was running the local Church youth group at 16 and was a volunteer in the village youth club at the same age. I stayed connected to youth work in my career and eventually qualified with a Youth Work Diploma from De Montfort University in the UK in 1997. I continued in youth work in a number of organisations and projects, mostly working with disadvantaged and excluded young people. I stayed working as a face to face youth worker until 2003.
I was involved in running my first youth exchange in 1993 with the Czech Republic. In 1996 I was a ‘trainer’ (by accident, but that is another story) for a project in Slovakia. As a result of these 2 experiences I became more and more involved in the European youth work scene working with a number of international NGOs.
In 2003 I took a job in Belgrade, Serbia, with a Swedish and Northern Irish organisation (PRONI) to teach youth work on behalf of Jonkoping University in the Western Balkans – although the course was University based it used non-formal learning as its approach. I did this for 4 years and in 2007 I moved to Skopje, N. Macedonia, to train some professors and former students of the course to become the teachers of the course for South East European University, Tetovo, N. Macedonia.
In 2009 I had worked myself out of a job and so became a freelance trainer at European level. I work for numerous locally based youth NGOs, some European level youth networks (particularly YEU for the last 5 years) and more recently have started to work more closely with SALTOs. During this time I have been on a learning journey exploring teaching training, learning, reflecting and finding ways of engaging learners in the work that I do.’
If you are ever struggling about how you can support others to learn, this episode is for you. Let’s Talk Youth Work!
Listen here (Spotify): https://open.spotify.com/episode/62slFNGApDgvhCkSxgCf7a
Listen here (iTunes): https://podcasts.apple.com/…/how-to…/id1382724589…
Listen here (Windows): https://humak.podbean.com/…/how-to-facilitate-learning…/
