SPB Newsfeed: Enabling Practitioners from Line Ministries in Supporting the Learning of Others

This February saw the second of our Training-of-Trainers workshop, which forms part of our Strategic Planning and Budgeting project. Experts from line ministries and other relevant budget users were introduced to a framework for understanding learning as an inspiration to design and deliver learning activities. Participants engaged in context-driven, real-life activities and collective reflections on their performance as learning facilitators. With this experience and knowledge, we hope they will become more capable at developing the learning of their colleagues about how their ministries can play a stronger role in the budget process.

To help participants identify and better understand their disposition towards learning, we introduced them to different theories of learning and facilitated them mapping out their learning landscapes. The maps illustrate the large number of institutions, people, networks, communities of practice, projects, etc. whom they interact with in their professional development, in extending their social connections, and in getting enabled to influence their world.

As part of the workshop, participants consolidated effective elements of powerful and dynamic presentations, and designed learning activities to engage colleagues in possible ways to strengthen line ministries’ role in the budget process. Participants appreciated the experiential approach, as reflected in the following statement: “Using the best and advanced methods of teaching must be permanent preoccupation of trainers and teachers. During the workshop […] for the first time I had the opportunity to learn some very good details regarding the transfer of knowledge to others.”

We encouraged participants to play different roles and to apply different tools when designing and facilitating learning of others. In this way, we offered them many opportunities for giving each other constructive feedback and looping such information back into facilitating the learning of others.

A participant observed that “It was really an enjoyable time during the course although an intensive one - full of information, positive emotions, friendships, surprises...“. Together with participants, we captured memorable impressions of the workshop and shared them via different social media with other interested learners; captured stories can be found here.

As CEF staff, we are knowledge brokers and learning facilitators in public financial management and central banking in South East Europe. We designed and delivered the workshop, based on our experience with facilitating reflective and participatory learning and with helpful guidance from the leading expert on social learning theory Beverly Wenger-Trayner, and thematic support from the CEF Advisor Dirk-Jan Kraan.

This learning experience has been very rewarding, as the high-level of expertise and good spirits of participants inspired us to keep developing our own capacities in enabling the learning of others further. We share our own learning journey as knowledge hub via our blog.

We look forward to engage as many participants as possible as learning co-facilitators in our future activities.