Appreciative Inquiry

This session drew from the OpenLearn course, An Appreciative Approach to Inquiry. In the session, we explored what we mean by Appreciative Inquiry, focusing particularly on the generative possibilities of starting from a positive core instead of problem-focused inquiries. We explored how a different language of inquiry, involving immersing, imagining, innovating and re-immersing, changes how we feel and enact inquiries in education. 

Figure 1 The 4D modelShow descriptionA central circle with the words ‘What do we mean by inquiry? A positive core’. four further circles appear, each linked to the positive core. The top one has the words ‘Immersing. Discovering’, the second to the right has ‘Imagining. Dreaming’, the third to the bottom has ‘Innovating, Designing’, and the fourth to the left has ‘Reimmersing’ with the ‘Re’ in brackets, and ‘Delivering’. There is a large blue box below which reads: In many forms of educational inquiry, the focus of our attention is often on problems to be resolved or tackled. Taking an appreciative approach reframes this focus towards building on what is already working well, where existing strengths identified through our stories, combined with imagination, hope and courage, form a generative space for future practice transformations.

During the session, we explored the ways in which Appreciative approaches can use creative methodologies to disrupt existing narratives, and the importance of storytelling about a ‘different’ future to create collaborations to ‘doing differently’. 

Padlet board of a digital brainstorming session on Appreciative Inquiry using virtual sticky notes.

As a group, we considered the role such an Appreciative Approach to Inquiry can play in our contexts. Responses included the use of an Appreciative Approach for wellbeing sessions, for overcoming ‘blocks’ when trying to generate new ideas and considering how it could be used to challenge existing narratives when in a group situation.  

Transcript