Background and context

This page is a sub-page of Training the Trainer (TTT) - training model and provides a number of core ideas about the training process.
See also Train the trainer: potential barriers to achieving training objectives for other general ideas about the training process.
Training is a part of learning within a team. The manual contains a number of pages about Developing learning organisations; many of these ideas are based on the work of Peter Senge.

Core ideas around training

Train in pairs.

Wherever possible, do a training session in pairs. Adjusting to your natural style, it is often helpful for one person to lead the session and the second to be in a more reflective position to think about the process of learning as much as the content of the session. Modelling 'mentalizing' between trainers around the process of training is likely to be very helpful.

The process of training is potentially very non-mentalizing.

The challenge of training is for the process and content of training to connect with people's real experience of working with young people. It needs to connect with areas of work that people find difficult but this can raise anxiety and if this happens too much it can create a context for all three forms of non-mentalizing: Psychic equivalence ('I know these kids and how to work with them'), Pretend Mode (e.g. I think AMBIT doesn't take enough account of the cultural narratives of exclusion and we need to understand these more fully') and Teleological thinking (e.g. 'just tell me how to do AMBIT') disconnected with the experienced feeling in the session. The trainers need to monitor the session in similar ways that one might monitor an interaction with a young person. 'How are we doing? Is this making sense? I have a feeling this feels a bit remote etc? How are things feeling right now?

The learning cycle: Agree, Explain, Practice, Reflect, Manualize.

1. Agree. Begin by trying to be as explicit as possible as to what the learning task of the session might be. Within the team, some will be more knowledgeable or confident about the task than others. Rarely is anything completely new so everyone will have some starting knowledge of the content to be covered. For some teams it may be useful to invite team members to rate on a scale of 1-10 how familiar they are with the content of the session and to make explicit the variability of this within the team.
2. Explain. Present the core ideas to the group or use video from the manual or do it through role play or other creative methods. The length of time for this will vary depending on the session. But the tendency can be for this part of the session to take up too much time time so that other parts are squeezed out.
3. Practice. This can be practicing a skill or practicing explaining an idea to someone else. Moving form passive to active modes of learning is pretty crucial to the effective learning.
4. Reflect. Talk over what has been practiced. This can include explicit mentalizing about the process of learning i.e. feeling a bit anxious; thinking the content was a bit simple; feeling embarrassed etc
5. Manualize. Draw together what has been learnt. Add to the team manual by working together to create a sub-page in the AMBIT core content in which the core content was adapted to the local context.

Length of training sessions.

Training sessions may vary from a whole day to 15-30 minutes depending on the opportunities and team practices in the team. Some teams use regular team meetings to have training sessions while others prefer to allocate specific times (awaydays; half days etc). This again is something that can be manuaised and made explicit. It is not a matter of not doing it properly. It is a matter of doing it in a way that fits with local practice.