Exercises

Learning from Practice

Action Learning - a developmental approach to change - the ins and outs of this central approach and tool of a developmental practice.

Four Case Study Methods for Practitioner Learning - Four different approaches to using case studies for practitioner learning.

Surfacing and deepening your question - working with questions lies at the heart of development - this quintessential exercise can be used in many processes and settings.

Intervening developmentally

The Developing Of Capacity, by Allan Kaplan, CDRA, 1999
originally published as a Development Dossier by the United Nations Non-Governmental Liaison Service.
Download word version. (181 Kb)

Listening at 3 levels - reading and exercise - we have already published this as a Nugget, an old favourite. Useful for teaching about listening more deeply for thoughts, feelings and intention. Can also be used to help small groups of 3 or 4 to work with issues at a deeper level.

Organisation biography development exercise - a powerful process to help an organisation to understand itself through exploring its story. The reading The Phases Of Organisation Development can be used to accompany the process.

Turning points exercise - coupled with the reading on the The Phases of Individual Human Development - this exercise helps people to explore and understand aspects of their own development and therefore of development itself.

Conflict Handling - A Map For Facilitators - a guide to help facilitators understand and work with conflict

Developing mandate groups - a different way of making decisions and encouraging authentic initiative in organisations.

Handling Denial - an approach and framework for working with denial

Surfacing and deepening your question - working with questions lies at the heart of development - this quintessential exercise can be used in many processes and settings.

Counselling exercise - The aim of the exercise is to let participants experience an authentic helping relationship within a counselling framework and to learn from their experience.

Creative Conversations Exercise - an engaging and enjoyable process exploring communication, creating consciousness about 'listening' and 'speaking' in situations of non-verbal communication.

The Four Temperaments - handouts for facilitators helping people to explore their temperaments

A Brief Guide to Open Space - Open Space is a conferencing process that operates without a pre-determined agenda. It seeks to maximize participation and minimize input. Capable of incorporating between 15 and 1000 people it is a unique self-managing process that can be used to explore almost any theme.

Thinking about development

Leadership - The Creative Balance - a description of a facilitative leadership approach.

A Framework for Leadership Roles and Qualities - Six roles that lie at the centre of facilitative leaderships as well as the qualities that must accompany these.

The NGO as a unique organisational type - a simulation game - an engaging game to help people grapple with some of the more difficult issues of practice and organisations.

The Phases of Individual Human Development - a map of how individuals tend to develop over their lives - useful for helping a particular person (especially self) to identify the challenges of their age. Useful as a reading to accompany the Turning points exercise which helps individuals to better understand their own development and therefore development itself

The Phases Of Organisation Development - organisations, like people, develop organically through phases of development - an insightful description and analysis of three phases.

The Organisation biography development exercise can be used to help an organisation understand its own development and phases.

Strategies of development - a map of several different strategic choices used by development practitioners.

Barriers and Resistance to Change - what makes change so difficult and how can these difficulties be faced?

A toolkit for the preparation, implementation and evaluation of community-to-community knowledge and learning exchanges

By Noel Oettle and Bettina Koelle

Website: www.emg.org.za

Surfacing and deepening your question

Working with questions lies at the heart of development - this quintessential exercise can be used in many processes and settings.

Download document (doc 44Kb)

Four Case Study Methods for Practitioner Learning

Four different approaches to using case studies for practitioner learning.

Download document (doc 141Kb)

Action Learning - a developmental approach to change

By James Taylor, Dirk Marais, Allan Kaplan, Juta and Co. Ltd., 1997

The ins and outs of this central approach of a developmental practice. Taken from the Associates Toolbox, adapted from Action Learning for Development: use your experience to improve your effectiveness (out of print but available as a photocopy from CDRA - go to the Bookshop)

Download document (doc 135Kb)

Participatory Research And Community Organizing

By Sung Sil Lee Sohng, Ph.D. University of Washington, School of Social Work, 1995

"...Originally designed to resist the intellectual colonialism of western social research into the third world development process, participatory research developed a methodology for involving disenfranchised people as researchers in pursuit of answers to the questions of their daily struggle and survival..."

Download document (doc 198Kb)

The CDRA Biennial Practice Conference March 2005 - An account

By Sue Soal of the CDRA

In March 2005, CDRA convened its first Practice Conference in MacGregor in the Western Cape, South Africa, with 87 participants. The Practice Conference, intended as a biennial event, is simultaneously a celebration of, and critical reflection on, practice. 'The thing out of which we do what we do in the world.' This is an account of the experience.