How to organise a structured group discussion for academic education and training purposes?

Research has suggested that group discussion is a powerful learner-centered strategy for education and training of teacher educators. In my inservice trainings, I have found that use of parables, narratives ofrevealing events; mini-poems and non-poems; book excerpts; incidents events and encouters; etc., are very useful tools for learning.

The trainees are are divided into groups of 5-10 and they are encouraged to discuss on content of reading piece. Discussion has to be properly coordinated guided through structed three learning steps as follows.

Step 1: To which of the given three you agree with and why
Step 2: Sharing a similar issue personally encountered or heard about
Step 3: Analyzing the issue reflectively and asking for suggestion for resolving it

For example, I used the following non-poem (Kishore, 1994) and put the groups to analyse the present reality of the schools and visioning a child-friendly school an the larger group

Reference

Kishore, L. (1994). Reactions of the tender mind. Jaipur: University Book House