Integrating Action and Reflection Through Co-operative Inquiry

Co-operative inquiry is a radically participative form of inquiry in which all those involved are both co-researchers and co-subjects. The methodology of co-operative inquiry is set out in a ‘Layperson’s Guide’ which might be used to introduce the method to a new group. This is followed by a reflection on the learning process of an inquiry group, particularly the process of research cycling, the importance of the peer group, and the paradoxical selfreflexive quality of attention. Finally, co-operative inquiry is compared with other action approaches. Co-operative inquiry is an inquiry strategy in which all those involved in the research endeavour are both co-researchers, whose thinking and decision-making contributes to generating ideas, designing and managing the project, and drawing conclusions from the experience; and also co-subjects, participating in the activity which is being researched. The arguments which support this approach—the participative worldview, the human person as agent, critical subjectivity, the political, epistemological ecological and spiritual dimensions of participation, etc.—have been explored extensively in earlier writing; the methodology itself and the choices facing an inquiry group have been described in considerable detail (Heron, 1996; Heron and Reason, 1997; Reason, 1998a). Later in this article I shall discuss how co-operative inquiry compares with other approaches to collaborative or participative research. Those who advocate co-operative inquiry (and other forms of collaborative action research) are in pursuit of two important purposes. The first purpose is to articulate and offer democratic and emancipatory approaches to inquiry—relinquishing the monopoly of knowledge held traditionally by universities and other institutes of ‘higher learning’, and helping ordinary people regain the capacity to create their own knowledge in the service of their practical purposes. At the same time our purpose is to contribute to a complete revision of the western mindset—to add impetus to the movement away from a modernist worldview based on a positivist philosophy and a value system dominated by crude notions of economic progress Management Learning Copyright g 1999 Sage Publications London, Thousand Oaks, CA