Collecting immigrant voices to inform a participant-centered dialogical facilitation method

Abstract

This article describes how a new participant-centered facilitation method developed because the workshop facilitators wanted a process that was more culturally responsive to the perspectives of immigrant participants. Because conventional workshop methods focus on teaching immigrants about how things work in the United States, they often fail to make space for immigrants to talk about how they respond to this information or develop their own bicultural understandings. The participant-centered, Dialogical Facilitation Method emerged when participants were given more time and opportunities to reflect on their own values and share how they responded to the prevailing U.S. values. By shifting away from an expert-centered facilitation approach with a set curriculum to a participant-centered approach promoting emergent dialogues, the workshops evolved from an assimilation perspective to a bicultural approach. New knowledge about immigrant life emerged because participants were encouraged to discuss topics even if the concerns were not explicitly part of the original workshop theme or curriculum. Immigrants with longer experiences in the United States were encouraged to share their learned wisdom about how to be bicultural. Facilitators did not judge nor evaluate what participants said, but instead encouraged a diversity of perspectives and strategies, and encouraged participants to be the experts. The Dialogical Facilitation Method provides social service professionals with a rapid method to identify contemporary issues and strategies than allowed by conventional research methods or programming practices.