# 4 What do you mean by inquiry?

Session 1 explored some underpinning images and language that shape how we consider inquiry. Throughout this course, you have been asked to critique your own assumptions about inquiry and how others in education may perceive it. Having completed the course, you may find the way you talk, write and do inquiry has changed as a result.

## Activity 7 What do you mean by inquiry?

Allow about 15 minutes

Return to your notes from Session 1, Activity 1 in which you created a concept map of the terms inquiry and research.

Using a highlighter or similar, mark those words or phrases that you feel fit with an appreciative approach to inquiry. Take a different colour and mark those which don’t. Take a third colour or pen and write in additional words that you didn’t originally add to the concept map.

### Discussion

Looking at your concept map may indicate a shift, a deepening or expansion of your ideas about inquiring. You may feel on reflection that an appreciative approach aligns strongly with how you are as a person, your view of the world and with inquiry, and therefore this course may be an affirmation of your views and an opportunity to think about how to bring others with you. Alternatively, it may have been a very challenging shift to your previous views about inquiry. Whatever the situation, it is a useful reminder that inquiring through an appreciative approach is a constant, iterative process, without a defined beginning or end, where if you do the same activity again in a year’s time, there will most likely be further changes and additions to make.

As well as thinking about how your own definitions of inquiry may have shifted, you are likely to face situations where others hold differing views on what inquiry entails. In the next activity you will think about how you might respond, as a mentor, to those undertaking inquiries themselves.

## Activity 8 Mentoring other inquirers

Allow about 20 minutes

Think about the following scenarios and how you would respond to each. Try to think about key messages you would want to get across in each case, and what support, evidence or resources you might draw on to help you do so.

1. You are talking with a colleague who is feeling very negative about an issue she is facing in her practice.
2. You are asked by another group of staff in a nearby school to come and talk about your inquiry project and give an overview of an appreciative approach to inquiry.
3. You are talking to another member of staff who is undertaking an inquiry project. They have been advised by their line manager that, by looking at something that is working well, they are ignoring the real problems that should be the focus of their work.
4. You are leading a meeting in which you ask colleagues to spend time free writing around an issue and then use this as the basis for discussions. A colleague challenges you as to why you are asking them to do a creative writing activity – why can’t you just all talk about it. How would you respond?

### Discussion

1. In this scenario, you may decide that you could use Activities 5 and 6 from Session 2 to help your colleague ‘positively reframe’ the opportunities that arise from her difficulties. You may decide that asking her to free write a story of what is happening may help her notice the small things, or take a more appreciative gaze, using a hopeful conversation to bring these aspects to the fore rather than dwelling only on the negative emotions she is feeling.
2. This may be a moment where you are in effect ‘reporting’ on your project and need to have developed a good story about what has been happening, just as you have started in Activity 6 in this session. You may also think that the interactive model in Session 1, Activity 4 may be a useful starting point for sharing what an appreciative approach to inquiry involves.
3. Throughout this course, we have highlighted the potential tension between adopting an appreciative stance to inquiry, and the views of others about what inquiry involves. In this scenario, you may want to discuss with your colleague about what issue their line manager wants them to explore. It sounds like the manager has a strong opinion about what is happening, and that perspective is important to bring into the project. You may decide to ask them to write their story as part of the immersion phase. You could discuss whether reframing the inquiry as generative rather than positive may help bring the line manager round to realising the potential of developing new practices from things that are working well.
4. Much of the response to this scenario will depend on your relationship with the colleague in question. You may have considered how you might explain:
   - the benefit of paying attention to what happens around an issue
   - the importance of understanding how people in the group use language, image and metaphor around an issue
   - how you can collectively use the stories to map a way forward.

OpenLearn - An appreciative approach to inquiry
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