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# Introduction

Practitioner inquiry (which is also known as scholarship of teaching and learning, or practitioner research) has long been established as an important part of educational practice. Much of our thinking about inquiry is still shaped by Dewey’s (1933) discussions about the vital role of reflection as being the driver for practitioners to undertake inquiries into processes of teaching and learning. Dewey’s writings about inquiry can be seen to underpin many models of reflective practice and action research cycles, which are widely used throughout education. But, in this cycle of reflect-inquiry-reflect, the focus of inquiry tends to foreground what could have gone better, or what was not achieved, rather than what went well, and what we could build on.

This course will help you reframe reflection and inquiry, to open up a more appreciative space full of positive possibility. Underpinning our course is the literature around appreciative inquiry (see Cooperrider, Whitney and Stavros, 2008), which has gained significant attention in the last decade across a range of fields. We have adapted the appreciative inquiry model to provide an approach to educational practitioner inquiry or scholarship.

Welcome to Session 1 of An appreciative approach to inquiry. You will start by considering the questions:

- What is meant by inquiry and how does that relate to you?
- How is inquiry shaped in educational contexts and what are the potential difficulties raised by these approaches?
- What might an appreciative stance to inquiry offer in generating new forms of finding out and changing practices as a result?

The examples you will explore relate to inquiry in a broad range of educational contexts. But, the issues raised are much more widely applicable to any context involving humans working in complex and dynamic situations.

By the end of this session, you should be able to:

- reflect on your own experiences and assumptions about what inquiry is
- understand key reasons for adopting an appreciative approach to inquiry
- begin to develop an appreciative approach to your own context and professional learning.

The session will start by exploring what is meant by the term inquiry.

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OpenLearn - An appreciative approach to inquiry
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