Collaborative Transformations

Abstract

This research demonstrates that cooperative inquiry (CI) offers authentic opportunities for academics to transform their teaching, paving the way for additional collaborative practices in higher education across a range of disciplines. Using data from cycles of action and reflection, a multidisciplinary group of seven tertiary teachers committed to monthly meetings over a period of 18 months. This collaborative process enabled expansion of personal, professional, and institutional boundaries in terms of how learning can occur through transformed and transformative teaching approaches. Our commitment led to innovative teaching practices that emerged from our CI process. Challenges of this approach and possible ways to overcome them are addressed. This research led primarily to transformation of self and enhanced academic relationships. It also provides insights regarding the potential to transform tertiary learning institutions and contribute to the development of academics who are inspired to be more appreciative of and engaged with their students.

Keywords

cooperative inquiry lifelong learning transformation of thinking and teaching reflective learning extended epistemology

Authentic collaboration is at the heart of cooperative inquiry (CI). We were attracted to CI because, in this approach, knowing is described as “grounded in our experience, expressed through our stories and images, understood through theories which make sense to us, and expressed in worthwhile action in our lives” (Heron & Reason, 2001, pp. 183–184). Heron and Reason emphasise that effective research methodology involves researching: “with people rather than on people” (Heron & Reason, 2001, p. 179). We longed for supportive relationships, void of competition and embedded in trust. We also held a belief that leading by example can contribute to the practices of others and potentially transform our respective institutions.

The purpose of forming a CI group was to emphasise the primacy of teaching in our academic practice and evaluate the effectiveness of CI as a research method for innovating our practice. Our intention was to integrate teaching and research and explore the possibilities of being research subjects and researchers at the same time.

The transformative nature of CI cycles was evident both in our work as a group and in our individual projects. We planned, discussed, and debated within the group while simultaneously working on our individual teaching projects. The continuity of our individual projects in between group meetings enabled us to reflect deeply on what worked and what could be improved. Trust developed over time which enabled us to work with each other as critical friends (Foulger, 2010; Gibbs & Angelides, 2008), identifying our blind spots and presenting our fledgling ideas to one another without fear or shame.

We were guided by the following quote:

We believe the outcome of good research is not just books and academic papers, but is also the creative action of people to address matters that are important to them. Of course it is concerned too with revisioning our understanding of the world, as well as transforming practice within it. (Heron & Reason, 2001, p. 180)

Our group’s contribution is significant, as the transdisciplinary nature of our group made finding commonalities a complex, yet mind opening process. As trust developed, wide-ranging conversations emerged from our “check-in” times.¹ Our overarching and clear objectives provided a scaffold that enabled serendipitous synergies and possibilities to emerge without too much distraction. As learning partners, we created new knowledge that translates into applicable and useful instruments for our work as members of an academic community.

Background and Method

Contemporary universities tend to be competitive environments that privilege research over teaching. There is a strong case for collaboration and CI provided an antidote to what has been described as increasing competitiveness, corporatisation, and commercialisation of universities. A neoliberal political environment has resulted in academic staff having less autonomy and fewer opportunities to challenge the status quo (Harland, Tidswell, Everett, Hale, & Pickering, 2010). Declining research relevance in the face of complex real-life problems suggests that changes to current tertiary models are required (de Sousa Santos, 1998; Kezar, Chambers, & Burkhardt, 2005; O’Hara, 2007; Shapiro, 2005; Tight, 1994). These shifts are necessary in mission, curriculum content, pedagogy, and modes of inquiry in order to prepare people to thrive in the global knowledge society (O’Hara, 2007). These concerns aligned well with our genuine desire to explore CI in order to pursue a paradigm shift in practice (Almanza et al., 2004; Bolton & Stolcis, 2003; Charles & Glennie, 2002; Coghlan & Brannick, 2014; Deer, 2003). CI offered us a pathway, a different way of working that is both “inherently empowering and transformative” (Duenkel, Pratt, & Sullivan, 2014, p. 285).

The seven participants from two tertiary education providers in Auckland, New Zealand, represented a diverse range of disciplines: social work, nursing, sciences, accounting, and fine arts and design. The initial research questions for our CI group as a whole were

Can CI as a research method support us in improving our teaching practices as well as in leveraging our passion for teaching to respond to the imperative for academics to produce publications and disseminate our knowledge?

How can CI be used to support one another in our individual projects as well as in our group effort so that we could transform our teaching in order to be more responsive to our students’ needs as well as our institutional requirements?

Can CI, by transforming our teaching practices, be used to influence the teaching institutions where we work and those with whom we interact?

Alongside these group inquiry questions, each of us focussed on three or four individual questions as part of our individual projects.

The intention was to disseminate our findings both within and beyond our institutions through conferences and manuscripts on both our CI and individual teaching projects in order to challenge the current academic model.

According to Heron (1996), CI is:

…a form of participative, person-centred inquiry which does research with people not on them or about them. It breaks down the old paradigm separation between the roles of researcher and subject. (p. 18)

Heron’s (1996, pp. 19–20) essential features of CI were all present in our exploratory process:

We were all fully involved as coresearchers in all research decisions. We collaborated on both content and method during reflection phases yet were individually responsible for the individual personal inquiries we conducted in our own classrooms.

There was an intentional interplay between reflection and making sense on the one hand, and the experience and action on the other.

There was explicit attention to the validity of the inquiry and its findings.

There was a radical extended epistemology for a wide-ranging inquiry method that was both informative and transformative of many aspects of the human condition. Personal, professional, and political aspects of our inquiries were attended to, as well as various kinds of knowledge including experiential, propositional, presentational, and practical knowing.

We practiced a range of validity procedures and have developed a range of collaborative skills.

The full range of our human sensibilities was available as an instrument of inquiry enabled through the mutual trust and respect that developed over time.

We fully engaged in cycles of action and reflection grounded in experience through the CI process (Heron & Reason, 2001). We employed a number of validity procedures to ensure we were not just a friendly support group of like-minded teachers. While our individual action plans were divergent and involved largely individual action including “experiential knowing” by these individuals, our group meetings were convergent and involved reflection that was designed to build on the individuals’ experiences to promote “presentational knowing,” “propositional knowing,” and “practical knowing” by the group (Heron & Reason, 2008). Our validity procedures included reflection in action, challenging one another for uncritical subjectivity, managing and balancing chaos and order, addressing unaware projections and collusions, and reminding ourselves of the goal of authentic collaboration—the core of our initial intent, namely, to practice reaching consensus.

Our group members attended monthly meetings over a period of 18 months. Between meetings, we undertook a range of actions to improve, modify, or transform our teaching practices. Participants committed to implementing individual action plans related to their teaching between meetings. At our meetings, we took turns in presenting our individual projects (progress and reflections) and the group provided support, innovative ideas, and critical feedback. This discussion provided refractory elements of crystallisation: our emerging ideas were examined from multiple perspectives resulting in new insights, shared practical wisdom, and clarity (Richardson & St. Pierre, 2005).

Meetings were structured so that one individual project would get a special focus per meeting after a check-in. The check-in, however, still allowed each of the other participants to provide brief reflections on their individual projects. These reflections often produced resonating themes and ideas and also led to the emergence of serendipitous collaborations. Actions tended to happen between meetings and reflections tended to happen during meetings but a lot of reflecting in action happened while we engaged in novel teaching methods in our classrooms. It was essential to establish a balance between our own personal agendas regarding our individual projects and group outcomes.

Group outcomes we intended to achieve were:

to transcend silos within university,

to evaluate CI as a method of transcending disciplinary and institutional silos and improvement of teaching practice,

to have a number of meaningful and relevant research outputs,

to develop transdisciplinary friendships and expand our knowledge of teaching and learning,

to enjoy the process, have fun with new teaching and learning ideas, and grow knowledge whilst researching.

We perceived these outcomes as being interrelated, and that if they were successfully combined, would promote cooperation and learning amongst individuals from diverse disciplines, thereby enabling us to transcend silos. To encourage this outcome, we took turns to chair the meetings, but for other tasks, such as note-taking, we played to one another’s strengths and various members stepped up to each task as and when needed. We also regularly reviewed our processes. This was reflected in our writing processes as well.

In Phase 1, each group member developed a set of questions or propositions to investigate in relation to improving one area of our practice during the semester. Our first two meetings introduced participants to the main features of CI research, allowing us to decide whether this process would be useful for the development of our teaching practice and our working together. At this stage, two participants withdrew.

In Phase 2, we became cosubjects and undertook agreed actions. We observed and recorded the process and outcomes of our actions and experiences. Meeting minutes were recorded directly onto a wiki during the meeting. Later, participants recorded their individual reflections on the meeting onto the wiki for sharing and developed plans for the next phase of action.

Phase 3 saw the participants fully immersed in and engaged with action and experience. This engagement informed the practical skills and new understandings which grew out of our inquiry. At times, chaos, frustration, and uncertainty infiltrated the group. Elements of managing distress and tolerating chaos have been identified by Heron and Reason (2006) as an essential aspect of CI.

In Phase 4, we shared progress on our individual projects and reflected on the usefulness of CI for improving our teaching practice. We reflected on both practical and experiential aspects of actions we took, how we felt about them, and how students responded to them. We compared and contrasted what we observed with our original intentions. Reflecting on our transformations, we were guided by Heron and Reason’s (2006) notion of extended epistemology, which goes beyond the ways of merely cognitive knowing of neoliberal academia and equally values experiential, presentational, propositional, and practical knowing.

We were becoming aware of each of the ways of knowing during our reflection meetings, and this awareness increased the quality of the knowing for individual projects and for the group inquiry. This dynamic interplay of our actions and states of being allowed our intuition and experience to guide us cradled within the security of a group of trusted colleagues. The extended epistemology that permeated our inquiry enabled us not only to expand our teaching and researching abilities but also to improve the quality of our relationships with one another and with our students.

To date, the group has completed a number of cycles of action and reflection over 18 months. Individual participants have completed additional cycles within their own projects. Throughout these cycles, the process and scope of our meetings has been refined. Given the wide variety of projects occurring simultaneously, our meetings now focus on one or two projects only so that there is the opportunity to drill down deeply and mine the seams of learning more comprehensively.

Throughout each cycle and at each meeting, notes were taken of discussions and individual records and reflections noted. These documents were shared on a wiki and became the data for our ongoing debate and sharing. In the writing up of our findings, we gained individual ethical consent for all student quotes used, and statistical data were gathered generically from student survey forms. Low-risk ethics approval was sought and granted by the ethics committee of the university which hosted the group meetings.

Findings and Discussion

Our individual projects for transforming teaching ranged from exploring the use of educational technology (e.g., KahootIt) to experimentation with less conventional teaching methods (e.g., “flipped” classes, blended learning, and use of “academic cocreative inquiry”) to experimentation with factors affecting the student experience and environment (e.g., integrating sustainability within fine art studies; strengthening support structures to promote respect for the diversity of student identities including gender, sexuality and culture). Further detail on these individual projects is available but as many are still the subject of ongoing inquiries, we prefer to defer this detail to a later study.

Six themes emerged from the meeting notes and individual reflections: transformation, accountability, authenticity and trust, uncertainty and anxiety, critical friendship, and serendipity.

Transformation

This was not traditional research based on description and testing of our teaching practice, rather an investigation into how CI might allow us to undergo transformation as teachers. (JT, reflection meeting 10)

The members of our group were keen to initiate changes to improve the student learning experience. Heron and Reason (2006) suggest that one of the defining features of CI is that “primacy is given to transformative inquiries that involve action, where people change their way of being and doing and relating in their world—in the direction of greater flourishing” (p. 3). This clearly featured in our inquiry group.

Each participant made a commitment to an individual inquiry that would operate alongside the group inquiry. Although our disciplines were diverse, the common goal of wanting to transform our teaching practices made us equal partners. Transformation was evident at many levels of the inquiry: The manner in which the group operated was unique and more personally engaging than any other research group we were part of, the teaching practices of all the participants were enriched, we experienced personal transformation of consciousness and awareness, and the students experienced transformation in our classrooms which was evident in their feedback.

In some cases, the support of the group gave permission for courageous changes to teaching and assessment practices. K.N. was required to teach a management course by the terms of her employment contract. As management is not her area of expertise, she felt challenged by this expectation. Belonging to the CI group gave her the collegial validation she needed to make changes to this course and authentically build on the strengths and experiences of the students, as well as her own.

The group helped me to dare to change the delivery of the management course. Teaching it was a part of my contract and neither I nor students were enthusiastic to participate in this course. I transformed the course delivery into an Academic Co-creative Inquiry (Napan, 2009)—a method of teaching and learning based on principles of CI but adjusted to fit hierarchical academic contexts which engaged and involved students in creation of the content and the process of the course delivery. (K.N., reflection meeting 10)

Students responded positively to teaching and assessment practices that were relevant and meaningful to them. Instead of essays, students submitted movies, case studies, art pieces, cartoons, group skits, and a range of creative ways of covering learning outcomes. One comment made by a student highlights the success of K.N.’s introduction of reflective journals as an effective tool to record and affirm learning:

This is actually my first time to see a reflective journal being used to meet an academic requirement. I think the given freedom to do this is just great, and has cemented my study on the systems theory on “equifinality”—that there are many ways to achieve a goal. (Student feedback)

Students acknowledged that peer feedback was significant to their learning and they recognised that it forged strong connections in the group:

Reading my peer review was learning on its own and it’s humbling when someone else receives learning from your work. It’s great to know that we’re all contributing to one another’s learning, I enjoyed this part of the assignment too. (Student feedback)

Such transformative learning approaches resulted in deep learning that could be far more widely employed by tertiary teachers (Weimer, 2013).

J.G. further refined her classroom practices by moving significant portions of her content into a flipped class approach involving prelecture videos, group discussions that built on prelecture learning, Kahoot quizzes during the lecture, and lecture capture videos to allow revision. Her resulting student survey evaluation reflects the transformative process that occurred in her teaching from the first year of implementation to the enhanced results of 2016. Student quantitative evaluations showed that their learning experience had improved by 20% or more through transformation particularly in enhanced use of video lectures and student discussion.

Additional qualitative comments from students show an appreciation of J.G.’s use of interactive technology,

The quizzes that we do in lecture[s] allow me to test my knowledge in a manner that isn’t uncomfortable or pressured. (Student feedback)

and student-focussed approaches:

Having the opportunity to view lecture notes and slides along with video resources beforehand allow[s] me to prepare for the class, as well as utilise my time to get clarification on aspects I am unsure about. (Student feedback)

These initiatives were both prompted and supported by the CI group.

J.T.’s project involved refining her teaching in order to use a blended approach more comprehensively. Her commitment to action-based learning ensured consistent opportunities for students to engage authentically in experiences they recognised as relevant to them. Qualitative feedback from formal student surveys included students saying:

The labs, quizzes and assessments of any kind were all linked and made sense that once a module had been taught it was easier to revise for because the information was very clear. (Student feedback)

Everything had a reason to it which always linked to learning outcomes. (Student feedback)

The transformations J.T. made to her course, and the learning environment she established, resulted in the students acknowledging her efforts by nominating her lecturer of the year at her campus.

Our individual projects and our teaching transformed in a manner that was not anticipated as a result of our regular meetings. Through this project, we were able to transcend the teaching practices of our individual disciplines to form a true cross-disciplinary group aimed at improving the entire group’s teaching tool-kit. This was achieved by a spirit and practice of generosity: sharing of expertise, advice, and resources. The aim of reporting and publishing of our CI process is to stimulate further transformations of teaching practice within our institutions and beyond.

Accountability

As a direct result of the emphasis in our 3-hour meeting on moving from satisfaction surveys to measuring change, I have made some pleasing progress with defining a few variables that may help me to better measure/evaluate change resulting from the Student Success Project work we have done regarding test results and trying to engage with the students on these. (W.S., reflection meeting 4)

Beacon North East (2011) has described a key feature of “coinquiry” as the value given to everyone’s expertise and full active participation. The success of our CI approach depended on individuals completing their actions/implementations between meetings, so that reflections and discussions could occur during meetings. The monthly reflection meetings required a 3-hr time commitment (later reduced to two) and some preparation.

The sense of accountability and responsibility to others was positive in that it acted as a driving force to maintain our commitment to our individual projects. This was especially so during the busy times in academic life when it would have been easier to settle back into old lecturing routines rather than implementing our declared actions.

However, this sense of accountability to others was also a challenge with the huge time and emotional commitment to the group required for the process to work.

Typical experience was to rush in on a Monday, often without preparation…The reality for some of us was that it was still on the back burner even though it was something that we wanted to do and could see tangible benefits. (W.S., reflection meeting 9)

For others, teaching is on the front burner. When there are 400 students currently enrolled, teaching is front and central. It is still a struggle to be reflective. (J.T., reflection meeting 7)

Unfortunately, and increasingly in the academic setting, time to reflect on one’s own teaching practices might be seen as a luxury, let alone time to reflect cooperatively in a group and to evaluate how that group is working. However, all participants perceived teaching as a core of their academic appointment and made a deliberate choice to be accountable to fellow academics, an aspect often neglected within neoliberal university contexts.

It is therefore perhaps useful also to consider accountability in a broader sense. Paradoxically, universities appear to be placing increasing emphasis on financial capital, arguably at the expense of social benefits such as quality education and staff welfare, while encouraging signs of the opposite are emerging in the corporate world. Gray, Owen, and Adams (1996) suggest that firms are morally responsible and therefore accountable to the wide range of stakeholders which are affected by that firm’s activities. In their view, “Simply stated, accountability is the duty to provide an account of the actions for which one is held responsible.” Corporate entities are responding to increasing pressure to recognise their responsibility, and hence accountability, for their social and environmental performance, as well as for their financial performance. Recent evidence of this is the emerging trend to adopt “integrated reporting” (IR), a framework based on the concept of “integrated thinking” (Stent & Dowler, 2015). This concept emphasises the need for adequate long-term consideration of the entity’s usage of, and impacts on, six “capitals.” These include “human,” “social and relationship,” “manufactured,” “intellectual,” and “natural” capital as well as the more traditional “financial” capital. IR also emphasises the importance of identifying key stakeholders and the need to be responsive to their legitimate needs and interests (International Integrated Reporting Council, 2013).

In a broader sense, participants in the CI group have also made a deliberate choice to demonstrate acceptance of their responsibility, and hence accountability, to certain key stakeholders of the university. Personal accountability that developed during our 18-month project increased our accountability to the institution as well, as we became more personally involved with the content and the process of our teaching. This transformation increased the quality of our engagement and, in turn, had ripple effects on our students and administrators.

The individual projects of the CI group members highlight acceptance of responsibility to students in the first instance and, consequently, to future employees of these students, as well as wider society. The interests of these key stakeholders tend to be subjugated as a result of competing pressures, often financial, brought to bear by other powerful stakeholders. For example, Performance-Based Research Funding in New Zealand tends to prioritise research above teaching, budgetary targets and constraints tend to encourage acceptance of unsuitable students to boost fees, and larger student/teacher ratios can result in less lecture/tutorial time in order to cut costs. The CI group’s activities and projects demonstrate concern for relationships with students as well as with the employers and wider society they will go on to serve. It also recognises the rights that these relationships entail and recognition of the moral responsibilities that go with these rights. Reporting back to group members at monthly meetings and reporting through papers such as this one is evidence of the efforts of the CI group to discharge the duty of accountability referred to by Gray et al. (1996).

The learning process was both individual and collective. Reflection in teaching requires ongoing, honest self-critique and problem-solving (Dewey, 1933). To ensure we stayed on track and documented our progress, in-depth reflections occurred face-to-face during meetings (with minutes recorded on the wiki). Members were able to add their reflections to the meeting minutes as well as collaborate in other ways through tools such as e-mails and shared Google documents. This cyclical analysis of our data and musings resulted in significant learning and discovery that enhanced individual reflective cycles. Like Duenkel, Pratt, and Sullivan (2014), we found the learning gained through the CI process of group and individual reflection both personal and empowering. These reflections and analyses subsequently informed the next phase of action/implementation over the months which followed.

In the later cycles of the project, the reflection meetings were reduced to 2 hr to lessen some of the time burden. As a result, we became more focussed and dropped some of the social aspects of our inquiry. We agreed on shorter “check-ins” and, at the second stage, the shortening of time appeared to increase our productivity and focus. However, we cannot know what was lost by reducing social engagement and communing over “shared meals” and by reducing “check-in” time. Upon reflection, we decided to continue with monthly 2-hr meetings in 2017, with a possibility of having lunch together after the meeting.

Trust and Authenticity

We were critical friends to one another, we explored various ways of collaborating for impact, found how to manage power, competence and innovation and had an opportunity to experiment and play with novel teaching/learning methods. (K.N., reflection meeting 12)

We also created a laboratory for ideas which was free of competition and mistrust. (K.N., reflection meeting 12)

In order for the most value to be gained from a CI, members need to be authentic. This cannot be forced. Authenticity emerges as a consequence of creating a context of trust and mutual support. Sharing a problem or challenge within one’s teaching practice, “warts and all,” can be a daunting prospect, particularly with other talented and innovative teachers in the group. Given that the majority of our teaching is in front of students and very rarely exposed to a critique of other academics, in order to reveal our vulnerability, we intentionally worked on development of trust within the group. Laughter and food and getting to know one another through various layers of personal and professional sharing contributed to the sense of trust and authenticity. Our common interest in effectiveness of teaching helped. Trusting could be challenging, particularly with group members coming from different disciplines and departments but, on the other hand, the transdisciplinary combination within the group facilitated trust as “we still retained our expertise in our field while exposing our vulnerabilities and creativity as teachers” (K.N., reflection meeting 7).

Early reflection meetings were tentative, as we learned the rules of communicating and being within the group. However, trust was soon established due mainly to the egalitarian relationship amongst the members, voluntary participation, and our common interests. In an attempt to ensure equal power existed amongst members but still allow for smooth running of the meetings, the “cloak of leadership” (meeting chair and setting of agenda) was rotated.

Heron and Reason (2006) suggest that a key skill for CI is “being present and open.” Group members had to be able to share their personal experiences whilst showing empathy to others by quietly listening or offering support. Taking turns was sometimes challenging for a group of teachers who are all used to being in charge of the discussion and part of our CI approach involved keeping dominant members in check to promote participation in discussion by all.

As best we could, any personal tensions amongst members were identified and managed outside of the meetings to ensure that focus could be maintained during meeting times.

With trust also came the generous sharing of practical wisdom and resources that helped in achievement of individual teaching goals. We explored the use of various action learning techniques and audience response software. We shared various Technology Education and Design (TED) talks relevant to our professional development or potentially useful for teaching, learned how to use Google Docs and Wikispaces for online collaboration, as well as tips when supporting students with varying learning needs or with English as a second language. This knowledge sharing was not only altruistic but also transcended individual projects to help build a tool-kit of effective teaching practices for group members that has the potential of becoming our next research project.

The experience of developing trust within our research group, and the authenticity that followed, was transferred to the classroom. For example, a number of students within K.N.’s project commented how much they learned from flexibility in assignments offered within a management course that was offered as an academic co-creative inquiry enabling students to develop creative group projects instead of essays while covering prescribed learning outcomes.

Students within K.N.’s project shared the following highlights in their anonymous end of course evaluation:

I really like the way that KN provided us with resourceful and interesting materials and reflective, authentic stories. It was amazing that we could negotiate with her about the content of the lecture which made it like tailor-made.

Personal reflections and authentic and honest feedback from my peers.

Group assignments and trust that developed while working together and peer assessing each other’s work.

I really appreciate the flexibility which gave us a lot of chance to find our strength and potential.

I took ownership of my work. I was motivated because I set my outcomes. I was an authentic leader of my own work.

Assignments!!! (Students within K.N.’s project)

Assignments being a highlight!?! It is extremely rare for students to rate assignments as a highlight of the course. It seems that the trust and authenticity that developed during this short course, with only 4 days spent in the class, enabled students to create authentic assignments. They fully engaged in assignment work, played to their strengths, and did much more than a bare minimum to cover all the learning outcomes.²

It became apparent that the practice of trust and authenticity in our research group transferred to our classrooms to the extent that students noticed and mentioned it in their anonymous feedback.

I liked the creative way of teaching and choices that increased authenticity of the assignments in relation to who we are. (Student feedback)

Principles that permeated our inquiry were clearly manifested in our teaching practice. Authenticity enabled us to be coherent in our teaching, and cultivation of trust enabled us to share and better cope with the sometimes significant challenges of being authentic teachers.

Uncertainty and Anxiety

It’s the tangents that give me the opportunity to think: “Oh my god! I’d never thought about that like that before”. It is sitting with the messy-ness knowing that something cohesive will emerge. (S.J., reflection meeting 10)

I’m feeling disconnected with what is happening here—difficult to keep up with all that I am involved in. (W.S., reflection meeting 15)

Working as part of a group dedicated to growth and change can be challenging for participants. Heron and Reason (2006) suggest that managing distress and tolerating chaos is an important CI skill. By acting both as subjects and as researchers, all with our individual projects, discussions sometimes went off-topic leading to frustration. The members who were novices in the CI process (or who were high functioning academics who felt the need to be in-charge) experienced heightened anxiety when the group dialogue went off at a tangent. It was up to more experienced members to advise that the open and innovative nature of the inquiry often leads to chaos and that it should be tolerated as long as we meander back to the topic we were initially focussing on. We developed skills of respectfully bringing participants back on track, which is another useful teaching skill. The initiator of the project also felt pressure to make it work. As we came to discover later, it was often from the tangents of the discussion that great ideas were generated that could be applied to one or more projects. Trusting the process was essential for creativity to emerge.

Preparing novice members for encountering and managing chaos may have helped relieve some anxiety and tension within the group and, on reflection, should have been part of Phase 1 of the project. A stricter agenda also may have limited some of the tangents but we were aware that it could inhibit the cocreative nature of the project from emerging fully. Sharper development of focus was instituted in the later cycles with shorter reflection meetings. We wondered if this was because trust had been established and we were able to get on with the task or alternatively, the imposition of a time limit forced us to be more focussed. The answer will remain unknown but is worth further exploration.

Integral to the process of learning through CI is the idea that the process can never be prescribed or predicted (Reason, 1994). CI proponents use the analogy “edge of chaos” from complexity theory. CI is like a complex adaptive system that performs best when its order verges on its transition to chaos, heightening its dynamic patterns to robustness and responsiveness to context (Reason & Goodwin, 1999).

Throughout this research, there was depth of thinking occurring without any apparent perception of the results of action,

I felt like a fly on the wall for much of the first part of this as I was preparing to teach in the following semester and didn’t actually have anything to show for my attendance until just last week when I delivered my first block course. At the end of the day a student stood up and thanked me. (S.J., reflection meeting 10)

and then there was student feedback and results;

Transforming 4th year project; feedback amazing. Fabulous example of transforming this course in response to students’ feedback. Comparison of results; the reports were amazing, the influence of deep learning. (S.J., reflection meeting 14)

We have identified the process—“wandering and wondering with intent”—which means that we know we want to get somewhere but we have not defined where that is nor how we will get there. However, our intention of being in the inquiry group was to improve our teaching practice. There was also a strong component of curiosity, so we cannot call it aimless wandering as it is fuelled by our sense of awe and even bewilderment.

You can’t plan a ramble, or a meandering thought process. Having a block of time means that we can take time to meander a bit in our thought processes. A main value of CI is trusting each other, being respectfully confrontational when needed, and being full of grace when we are unsure of where something is going, knowing that the end point is just outside our area of vision. (S.J., reflection meeting 5)

Over 18 months of working together, the development of ‘wandering and wondering with intent' enabled us to accept anxiety and bewilderment as part of our creative practice. Having a clear focus overarching these meanderings was essential for effectiveness of our endeavour.

Critical Friendship

The opportunity to bring ideas to the group that would challenge, question, encourage and ultimately enable me to critically look at my teaching innovations was invaluable. The discussions refined my thinking and plans, the encouragement enhanced my confidence to trial new initiatives and the celebration of changes made was highly satisfying and enjoyable. There was a distinct benefit in questions coming from someone who was not embedded within a nursing context. This provided fresh views and at times elicited fuller explanations from me to clarify my ideas. (J.G., reflection meeting 9)

Foulger (2010) identifies that accounting for the many perspectives of the participants involved, including the perspective of oneself, can be a source of difficulty for action researchers. Critical reflection of oneself and one’s teaching practices can be personally and professionally challenging. Collaborative reflection allows participants to explore their own actions, assumptions, and beliefs and, when witnessed by others, this can be exposing. Collaborative reflection also allows other members to reflect back and/or help to reframe those beliefs in a way that provides support and affirmation. When feedback is given in an encouraging manner, and when space is provided for self-reflection, it becomes enabling.

Main values of CI are: trusting each other, being respectfully confrontational when needed, being full of grace when we are unsure of where something is going and knowing that there is an end point. (J.G., reflection meeting 5)

This advantage of consulting the advice of “critical friends,” external to the action researcher, can provide objectivity and supports protection from bias and self-delusion (Foulger, 2010). Because our group consisted of members who were of equal status but who were from different teaching areas and thus did not have a stake in each other’s projects, we acted as “critical friends” to each other. Over time, the level of trust developed allowed us to be critical friends by alerting one another to our blind spots or providing perspective when we became too immersed in our problems to see potential solutions.

One of the stated purposes of this group is to act as a support group for each other while we work on improvements /innovation in our teaching. I have been super impressed with the effectiveness of the support this group offers on more than one level: (a) Genuine kindness and concern members show to each other; (b) Motivation and inspiration gained by attending meetings and sharing of innovative ideas; (c) The pleasure and reinforcing effects of working with people who demonstrate real professional ethics, especially integrity and competence. (W.S., reflection meeting 5)

This critical friendship became a core quality of our work together and enabled true collaboration to emerge which resulted in a number of relevant research outputs and unexpected synergies.

Serendipity

It is the serendipitous nature of our collaboration that is enriching our work. One person makes a comment, which sparks a thought for somebody else and they add value to it and then somebody else thinks of something else and all of a sudden you’ve got this amazing idea and no-one knows where it came from. It is accidental and out of the messy-ness we get this amazing collaboration. (S.J., reflection meeting 12 and in discussion November 21, 16)

The critical friendship that developed within the group facilitated sharing of highs but, perhaps more importantly, the lows in our teaching practice and enabled serendipitous interactions. Embracing serendipity (Montuori, 2005) was one of the processes we incorporated as a creative element in our inquiry. Our meetings provided the opportunity to discuss current educational issues, bounce ideas off each other, and share teaching knowledge and experience, which led to the development of our collective tool-kit for effective teaching practices.

It was off the well-trodden path that the gold nuggets emerged. With people talking about struggles and achievements, and then the discussion around those enabled us to go deeper. (K.N., reflection meeting 7)

The times off the path also enabled us to consider our project in the light of others’ experiences often resulting in unexpected ideas and possibilities. (K.N., reflection meeting 7)

Throughout the course of this research, a number of professional alliances formed between various members of the group. These gave rise to new transdisciplinary research projects and outputs. Within a collaborative frame of reference, incidentals become opportunities for deepening our collaboration. These are the serendipitous moments. For example, the discussion about writing up unpublished data for a liver transplantation article was incidental in that it only eventuated because we were in a collaborative environment in which trust existed. Two of the group members were able to capitalise on the opportunity to work together in order to progress dissemination of the liver transplantation research. This resulted 6 months later in acceptance of a journal article, two conference presentations in diverse disciplines, and the development of a writing team to further the research dissemination. Collaboration occurred as a direct result of developing a collegial relationship within this CI project, which transcended typical academic boundaries.

This is seen further with two other group members finding a “fortunate happenstance” or “pleasant surprise” to swap ideas about sustainability. This subject is applied strongly in arts and is a resurgent topic in accountancy where it is emerging as the next “big thing” in corporate reporting—IR, as mentioned earlier in this article. The synergy between the key elements of sustainability and the discussions within each of their distinctly different disciplines was timely.

Despite our initial scepticism, there is something about CI methodology that supports and enabled jewels to emerge throughout this project. The evidence of this was seen in multiple aspects, some of which included:

Every Massey University member, who was a teacher, was nominated by the Albany students’ association (ASA) for the Lecturer of the Year awards (2015)

K.N.—Lecturer of the Year—College of Health (ASA; 2015)

J.T.—College of Health Lecturer of the year—Massey University Albany Campus (ASA; 2016)

J.G.—College of Health Teaching award: Excellence in e-learning and innovative practice (2015)

Serendipitously, when one of the authors presented this research at an international education conference, she engaged with other participants in a conversation about compatible methodologies, which led to an international project on exploration of effectiveness of duoethnography (Sawyer & Norris, 2012) in teaching for transformation. Four women, from four corners of the world decided to start a virtual group (via Skype), engage in six rounds of dialogical interviews with each other, focussing on what constitutes teaching for transformation—how it transforms students, how it transforms teachers, and how it transforms institutions.

A group of social work educators are interested in doing something similar using Skype as well because of their inability to meet face-to-face. This could reflect that academics are longing for connection and application of principles of “slow-pedagogy” (Burns, 2015) as opposed to the fast, output-based neoliberal style of academia that has been heavily criticised (Spooner, 2015).

An additional outcome of disseminating results from this inquiry was an international invitation for a group member to visit a Pacific Island nation to present on CI. This will begin with a face-to-face session and progress to virtual collaboration using available digital technology. It can be seen that CI supports highly effective collaboration between diverse academic disciplines. Amongst the variety of aspects that have been mentioned already in this article, the serendipitous nature of the many “accidental off-piste” moments has been one of the most enriching aspects of our entire adventure.

Conclusion

Research within academic environments is typically conducted within the silo of an individual’s own professional field of expertise. This CI has enabled group members to cross over traditional research boundaries, while balancing and complementing individual transformations of each member as a teacher and an academic. In addition, this CI has served to evaluate CI as a method of supporting transformation in teaching, as well as responding to the imperative for academics to publish and disseminate new findings. Longer term influences arising from these outcomes on the institutions at which we work and the colleagues and students with whom we interact are evolving and emerging, as our group continues to meet and work on new CI projects.

Extremely powerful and useful peer reviews prior to publication of this article provided another cycle of reflection for the group. The group initiator drafted a response to reviewers’ comments, and this was circulated to all members who then responded and the article you read is the final product of that final cycle.

As one of the reviewers commented,

CI is a powerful strategy for helping people learn from their experience because it provides structure that promotes accountability as well as authenticity and trust. When executed skilfully, inquirers learn to leverage the potential learning in the conditions of uncertainty and anxiety, critical friendship and serendipity. (Peer reviewer, JTED journal)

This is exactly what we all experienced during this exciting and engaging research project. Central to it was a commitment to the group, discipline in following through on agreed actions, and a willingness to put aside our egos. The essence of this CI research is that it resulted primarily in self-transformation of group members, but with this came the promise of transformation for our students, colleagues, and our tertiary organisations. Our CI group have decided to continue this work in 2017 and to devote more time for development of our teaching practice and to continue to experiment with this valuable research method.

At the end of the first 18-month phase of our inquiry, we can say with confidence that we asserted the primacy of teaching in our academic practice and that CI provided a valuable platform from which to do so. We managed to successfully integrate our love for teaching with joyful and challenging research, which is being disseminated as widely as possible through conferences, publications, and memorable experiences for students and teachers.

We successfully cultivated our personal and professional transformations by completing our individual projects and through increased awareness of, and responsiveness to, our students’ needs. This was evidenced in numerous teaching awards, nominations, and student feedback. We believe that our passion for teaching became “contagious” and evidence of this is that our group will continue with a new participants joining us in 2017. It is too early to claim that we have significantly influenced our institutions as yet, but this potential has been enhanced in that one of our participants recently became a Head of Department with much more power to influence transformation. We also believe that the improved quality we have experienced in our teaching is self-reinforcing, leading to continuous improvement as a norm. Overall, this research has been an enlightening process for all of us and transformations were visible, palpable, and enduring. We would wholeheartedly recommend CI as a useful method for personal and professional transformation and argue that it holds the potential for promoting transformation of current neoliberal academia through authentic engagement with the true purpose of tertiary education.

Footnotes

Acknowledgments

We acknowledge the true collaboration of all authors that occurred during this process. We are most grateful also for the valuable feedback received from colleagues at the IAFOR Education and Social Justice Conference in Brighton, 2016 and from comments of reviewers of JTED journal.

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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