Co-Operative Inquiry

Co-Operative Inquiry is a way in which people who have similar concerns and interests intentionally develop together their own experience and action to make sense of their lives and acquire new ways of looking at things and, above all, to know how to act to change the things they may want to change and how to do things better. There is both an informative and a transformative dimension to the inquiry: Most co-operative inquiries are strongly action based (and thus transformative). Simultaneously, active change in the direction of enhanced human flourishing is also potently informative about the human condition.

Co-Operative Inquiries develop progressively through a series of cycles, each cycle consisting of a move from a reflective planning phase to an action phase and back to a reflective review and further planning of the next action phase. Each person is a co-subject in the action phases and a co-researcher in the reflection phases. Thus, all the co-subjects are fully involved as co-researchers in all research decisions—about purpose, method and final outcomes—taken in [Page 188]the reflection phases. There is usually an initiating facilitator who supports group members in exercising the high degree of autonomy and co-operation involved in this full democratization of the knowledge generation process.

The method also applies a radical epistemology involving a congruence of four forms of knowing: (1) propositional, (2) practical, (3) presentational and (4) experiential. Propositional knowing, or knowing that, is expressed in statements. Practical knowing, or knowing how, is expressed in the exercise of a skill. Presentational knowing, or intuitive knowing of significant pattern, is expressed in graphic, plastic, moving, musical and verbal art forms. Experiential knowing, or knowing by acquaintance, is manifest as imaging and feeling the presence of some energy, entity, person, place, process or thing. The full range of human sensibilities—a transparent body-mind with an open and unbound awareness—is available as an instrument of inquiry.

This entry outlines the typical development of a Co-Operative Inquiry and focuses on the inquiry skills, validity procedures and practical choice points which ensure methodological rigour and quality. Examples of co-operative inquiries, and the outcomes which have emerged from these, are also shared.