CHAPTER 2

Facilitating vs.
Teaching vs.
Lecturing
 Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation:
11 Key Concepts You Didn’t Know You Didn’t Know
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 2

Facilitating vs.
Teaching vs.
Lecturing
“The greatest sign of success for a teacher
is to be able to say, ‘The children are now
working as if I did not exist.’”
- Maria Montessori

A
wise person once said, “If this is a book about facil-
itation, why is there a chapter about teaching and
lecturing?” That person was our first-pass editor
(and likely you). It’s a fair question. In the last chapter, we
talked about the nuance of facilitation, and how facilitation
is a tough subject to teach. Well, one of the ways we’re hop-
ing to help you understand that nuance is by talking about
two things that facilitation isn’t—but that it gets confused
with, and are as integral to most training or learning experi-
 Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation

ences as facilitation itself. And besides, what’s more nuanced

than talking about a thing by talking about what it isn’t?

DIFFERENT METHODS WITH THE SAME

GOAL: LEARNING
Although we identify as educators whose method of
choice is facilitation, we also find ourselves putting on our
teacher or lecturer caps. All three methods of achieving
learning have their perks, and to know which is best when,
we must first understand the differences among lecturing,
teaching, and facilitating.
Two helpful things to consider when dissecting the dif-
ferences among lecturing, teaching, and facilitating are (1)
the levels of agency the educator and learners hold over the
content covered; and (2) the level of active participation
required by the educator and learners. Let’s define these con-
cepts so we’re all on the same page:
Agency, in this case, can be thought of as the “capacity of
individuals to act independently and to make their own free
choices” (Wikipedia) for what content will be learned.
Active participation is the level at which the person is
engaging the other people involved—vocally, externally, and
in a way that affects the outcome of the overall learning.
More simply, agency is who is deciding what’s learned,
and participation is how that learning is achieved.

LECTURING: HIGH EDUCATOR AGENCY

& PARTICIPATION, LOW LEARNER
AGENCY & PARTICIPATION
Lecturing has achieved a negative connotation in most

16
 Facilitating vs. Teaching vs. Lecturing

social circles, but it is not without its value. Lecturing can

be thought of as any time the educator is speaking direct-
ly to the learners in an uninterrupted way until their point
is made. Beyond the bias that the word “lecture” evokes,
our main concerns are that lecturing is often overused and
sometimes not treated with enough care.
In lecturing, the educator has high agency over the con-
tent that will be covered, and also must be actively partici-
pating throughout the entire learning experience; whereas
the learners have little to no agency, and little to no partici-
pation is required. This high level of educator agency and low
learner participation is helpful when…
! there is something really specific that needs to be learned,
and the group cannot do without it;

! you’re crunched for time and have a high level of content

to cover;

! the educator holds some specialized knowledge that the

group likely does not; and/or

! there is a highly disproportionate ratio of educa-

tors-to-learners (there’s a reason universities are full of
lecture halls, not lecture closets).
Lectures are often thought to be long (or really, really, re-
ally long if you want to be melodramatic about it), but there
is no set length that qualifies a lecture. To emphasize this,
we want to introduce you to the idea of mini-lectures (or
lecturettes, if you wanna gender everything), which are short
lectures—generally no more than 5-10 minutes—that teach
a specific, concrete point.
We use mini-lectures throughout trainings when we want
to present a chunk of information before getting feedback or

17
 Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation

taking questions. We like to thread them through other ac-

tivities, or material that we also teach and facilitate. If you
are hoping to accomplish a training that involves your group,
you should avoid lecturing for all (or even most) of the time.
Even if the training is incredibly short, back and forth is cru-
cial for participants to feel included and important.

Teaching: Medium Educator Agency &

Participation, Medium Learner Agency &
Participation
Teaching is the method of learning that we experience
the most. It’s often confused with lecturing, and is generally
the go-to default for achieving a learning goal with a per-
son or a group. While teaching has a lot of value, one of our
goals with this book is to get you out of default-mode think-
ing, and push you to be intentional with all of your choices.
Choosing when to (or when not to) teach is an important
choice.
Teaching, in the context of a school room, often carries
a power dynamic where one person is seen as the “Teacher,”
meaning the person who holds the knowledge and the ability
to disseminate that knowledge, and everyone else is seen as
“Students,” those without knowledge who need to be taught.
This way of thinking is what Paulo Freire calls the “banking
model” of education, and while many school teachers (and
school systems) ascribe to or perpetuate this form of teach-
ing, it is not the type of teaching we’re referring to in this
chapter. That understanding of teaching more aligns with
what we describe above as lecturing.
In this chapter, we’re using “teaching” to describe a co-cre-
ated relationship between educator and learner. Teaching,
as opposed to lecturing, requires that the learner has buy-

18
 Facilitating vs. Teaching vs. Lecturing

in, the educator is ever conscious of the learners’ wants and

needs, and by frequently checking in with the learners, the
educator gives the learners opportunities to ask for clarifica-
tion, redirection, or a deeper understanding of a particular
idea.
To put it more simply, one might say that lecturing is
done at a learner, while teaching is done with or for a learner.
Teaching is the middle of the road on both the agency
and active participation front. In teaching, the educator has
medium agency and high active participation; the learner
also has medium agency, and medium-to-low active partic-
ipation. This medium of everything is perfect for learning
goals that aren’t too hot and aren’t too cold. We recommend
teaching when…
! you have a sense of what material needs to be covered,
but the group could live without everything, and you’re
able to head down a few rabbit holes if the group asks;

! you have a few more minutes available than what it would

take to just say all the things, but you don’t have buckets
of extra time;

! you know a lot about a particular thing, but you also have
a hunch that you’re not the only one in the room who
does; and/or

! the group of learners is big, but not so big that you

couldn’t learn all of their names in a few minutes if you
gave it a shot.

Facilitating: Low Educator Agency &

Participation, High Learner Agency &
Participation
Now that you have a few different ways to think about

19
 Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation

lecturing and teaching, you probably already have a strong

hunch about what we’re going to say about facilitating. And
you’re probably right: facilitating is everything that lecturing
and teaching isn’t. As we’ve moved through the three con-
cepts using agency and participation as our anchors, you’ve
likely noticed a trend: lecturing, teaching, and facilitation
exist on a continuum of sorts, with lecturing and facilitation
being polar opposites, while teaching is in between the two.
In facilitating, the educator has low agency over what
content will be learned, and a low level of active participa-
tion; whereas the learners have a medium to high amount of
agency, and a high amount of active participation is required
for it to work. Facilitating is communism for learning: it’s
decentralized, it requires everyone’s involvement, and Sam’s
uncle will get mad if you bring it up at Thanksgiving dinner.
Don’t mistake the low educator agency and participation
as a sign that the educator can check out. Facilitation re-
quires an incredible amount of focus, intention, and engage-
ment from the facilitator—even if they aren’t doing most of
the talking.
Facilitation is often activity-based. Activities prompt a
group to participate in a scenario that is an abstract repre-
sentation of the intended learning; then, through processing
that scenario (i.e. talking about the experience), the learning
is solidified. However, facilitation can take a variety of forms,
including games, discussion, reflection, dialogue, and more.
This whole book is about facilitating, so we’re not going
to spend too much more time on it in this chapter, but there
are a few times in particular we think facilitation is the bee’s
knees. Facilitating is perfect when...
! you can leave most of the decision-making of the exact
things the group will learn to the group itself;

20
 Facilitating vs. Teaching vs. Lecturing

! you have plenty of time;

! there is no doubt that the learners, as a community, al-

ready have some or most of the knowledge you’re hoping
to learn, and might just need some help realizing it, or
organizing their way of thinking about what they already
know; and/or

! there isn’t an overwhelming ratio of learners to educa-

tors, or you’re able to easily convert some of the learn-
ers into educators (e.g., break the big group into smaller
groups, and assign each group a facilitator of sorts).

KNOWING WHAT TO USE WHEN:

CONSIDER REQUIREMENTS AND
RESTRAINTS
There are countless recommendations we could make,
beyond the ones we made above, about when it’s right to
lean on lecturing, teaching, or facilitating; but most of them
would come down to our subjective bias (don’t think we have
to spell out what ours would be, considering the title and
subtitle of this book). Instead, we recommend you consider
the requirements and restraints of any learning situation,
and then pick the method of engagement best for the mo-
ment.
In this case, the requirements are pre-determined
learning outcomes or goals for the experience, the decisions
about which are out of your hands. For example, answers to
questions like “Are there specific ideas, concepts, or under-
standings that the learners must know?” would constitute
requirements.
And by restraints, we mean the conditions around the

21
 Unlocking the Magic of Facilitation

experience that are out of your hands. For example, the

amount of time you have, the number of participants in the
group, and the physical setting in which the learning will
take place are a few possible restraints.
With the requirements and restraints in mind, the choice
often makes itself. Knowing the differences among lectur-
ing, teaching, and facilitating fall largely on agency and
active participation, you’ll often find yourself seeing that
lecturing is great when there are a lot of, or very limiting,
requirements and restraints; and facilitating is perfect when
you have more wiggle room in both areas.
And when in doubt, know that it’s totally okay, and total-
ly recommended, to mix it up: variety is the spice of life, and
sometimes you won’t figure out the best method to achieve a
particular learning outcome until you’ve tried a few different
ones.

EDUCATORS? LEARNERS?
FACILITATION BLURS THE DIFFERENCE.
If you think back to our primer on facilitation, you’ll recall
that one of our favorite things about facilitation is how the
idea-exchange is not unidirectional. That is, the educators
are learners, and the learners are educators. In this chapter,
we’ve used the language of Educator and Learner as an in-
tentional detour from our typical Facilitator and Participant,
because we want to make clear that sometimes the facilitator
is the one learning and the participants are the ones teach-
ing. That is, in every scenario above (lecturing, teaching, and
facilitating), the person serving as Educator could be you or
someone else.
What’s more, the methods that facilitators and partici-

22
 Facilitating vs. Teaching vs. Lecturing

pants have at their disposal when serving as educators are

one and the same: both facilitators and participants can
choose to lecture, teach, or facilitate. If this is getting too
abstract, let’s consider a typical training moment that incor-
porates all three methods of achieving learning, being em-
ployed by both the facilitator and the participants:
Facilitator: “Why do you think we just did that activity?”
[Facilitating]

Participant 1: “You wanted us to realize [...], because for

our roles it’s important to know [...].” [Lecturing]

Participant 2: to Participant 1 “Can you explain what you

meant by [...]?” [Facilitating]

Participant 1: “I meant [...]. Is that more clear? Perhaps if

you think of it like [...] it will help.” [Teaching]

Facilitator: “Well said! And to put that another way, [...].”

[Teaching]

Facilitator: “There is also another reason I wanted us to do

that activity: [...].” [Lecturing]
And now, to put our Authors of a Book About Facilita-
tion Caps back on, we want to leave you with this challenge:
though it may be difficult, we believe it’s possible to achieve
the learning of pretty much any content through facilitation.
And throughout this book, we hope to show you how.

23
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