CO-CREATING KNOWLEDGE: A COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY
INTO COLLABORATIVE INQUIRY
Craig A. Mealman and Randee Lipson Lawrence
Presented at the 17th Annual Midwest Research-to-Practice Conference
Ball State University, October 9, 1998
This study illuminates the power and potential of collaborative inquiry for creating and extending knowledge. By exploring and giving meaning to our own collaborative process, we uncover and understand ways in which knowledge is co-created through collaborative effort.
Introduction
The decision to collaborate in research often comes out of a shared history and mutual passion. In order to channel the passion into creative energy, each co-inquirer must be willing to give up, put on hold or negotiate predetermined conceptual notions. We have found that the actual direction of the inquiry may indeed shift as a result of this process of developing "shared" passion. Sharing the passion often means co-creating something new which is based in a specific area or topic of mutual passion, which could not have been known prior to the onset of the project.
Prior to working on this inquiry, we had been associated as colleagues in a major university for over a decade. It is through work related tasks that we became acquainted with each other's interests and styles of working in an academic environment. For example, we both share interests in collaborative learning with cohort groups, in experiential and transformative learning and in outdoor and environmental education. We have co-presented at several conferences, have co-facilitated workshops and co-taught in graduate adult education programs. Because both of us have strong interests in collaborative learning, we have sought each others' insight about issues that surface around teaching in cohort learning groups. Additionally, we both have ongoing research interests related to learning in cohorts (Lawrence, 1996 and Mealman, 1991).
When a colleague suggested that we consider writing about collaborative inquiry, we began to further explore the collaborative processes that undergird our work. That suggestion was a jumping off point for what became an extensive ongoing area of substantive inquiry.
Methodology
A primary purpose of collaborative inquiry is to deepen the understanding of one's experience, to gain an understanding of and from fellow inquirers, and together to develop new understanding of some shared phenomena. Our methodology draws on phenomenology: deepening our level of consciousness through seeing, intuiting and reflecting upon our everyday lived experiences, heuristic research: "a research approach which encourages an individual to discover, and methods which enable him to investigate further by himself," (Moustakas, 1981, p. 207) and participatory research: "Inquiry as a means by which people engage together to explore some significant aspect of their lives, to understand it better and to transform their actions so as to meet their purposes more fully." (Reason, 1994 p.1).
Because we were investigating our own process, we used dialogue, or deep critical conversation as our primary data collection method. Throughout this dialogue process, ideas emerged, were articulated, shared, listened to, responded to, built upon, challenged, re-thought, clarified, validated, changed and expanded. In the end a mutual understanding was reached. This process was not always harmonious. Indeed some of our most creative thinking emerged out of dissonance. In collaborative inquiry it is not enough to share and discuss our experiences and have them validated by others. At times our understanding of our experiences is deepened through critical engagement with collaborators. This may take the form of asking critical questions of one another, testing assumptions or offering alternative interpretations. We have discovered that certain interpersonal communication processes such as devoting time to listening to each other's stories, ( Group for Collaborative Inquiry, 1993), and supporting one another's personal growth even when it seems to be only peripherally relating to advancing the inquiry, as well as engaging in "focused hearing" such as listening deeply ( Lawrence and Mealman, 1996), expands the possibilities and adds richness to the inquiry.
The time and space where our dialogues occur is also significant. We are aware of other collaborators who have spent extended time at a retreat setting to immerse themselves in their work (Kasl, Dechant and Watkins, 1993; Brookfield, personal communication, 1998). While we have not had the opportunity for such an experience, we have found that prolonged conversations in certain settings seem to provide space for maximum creativity. Many of our dialogues have taken place in coffee houses, on park benches and in the clock tower of our university building.
In our data collection and analysis, we often use presentational methods (Heron, 1996) such as metaphor, storytelling, drawing, photographs and music to communicate. We have noticed that certain metaphors may come into our individual or collective consciousness which describe a concept that is being developed as part of the inquiry or project. These metaphors are explored in depth in the dialogue sessions.
One strength of the collaborative process is that often a metaphor will present itself to one collaborator that would never have been evident to the other since it is out of the realm of his or her experience. For example, in a prior inquiry on collaborative learning (Lawrence and Mealman, 1996) we were searching for ways to more deeply explore facilitating the collaborative process in groups. Craig had some knowledge of wilderness tracking and introduced a metaphor about studying animal tracks and learning to think like the animals, where they were when they stepped in that particular space. Randee, having had no experience with tracking was able to make the connection to interpersonal relationships through the collaborative exploration of the metaphor. Similarly, Randee has done a lot of photography and was struck with how one could metaphorically understand others' perspectives by looking through different lenses. Craig was able to comprehend and work with the metaphor even though his experience with cameras was limited to the point and shoot variety. These discussions sparked other metaphors that aided our understanding, such as putting ourselves into uncomfortable positions to view a sunset unobscured by trees. An added benefit to the sharing of metaphors in collaborative inquiry is, that as collaborators search their own experiences for relevant examples that communicate their understanding to one another, existing knowledge is uncovered which aids in the creation of new knowledge.
Often in our work together, some time passes between the more intense, prolonged conversations. It is during these times that a period of incubation occurs (Firestone, 1996). During this period, many other tasks occupy our agenda. Nonetheless, it seems as though the inquiry is being advanced in a subconscious manner. During these incubation periods, we both keep journals to record insights and connections that emerge. We share these journal entries and then provide written feedback about each other's contributions. The subsequent reading and discussion of these reflections prompts yet another round of individual reflection or filtering of the information through the lens of our own experiences. Collaborative knowledge is deepened and enriched through these reflection and dialogue cycles.
Model for Collaborative Inquiry (CI)
CI is like a huge kettle hanging outdoors on a tripod which is fueled by natural materials. Establishing and maintaining a culture that challenges the dominant paradigm for knowledge creation and "pushes the boundaries of what knowledge making is all about." (Clark and Watson, 1997 p. 57.) requires certain ingredients mixed together in the kettle. The essence or aroma (collaborative knowledge) from the cooking pot, derives in part from the data collection and analysis process of collaborative inquiry. The collaborators’ experiences, dialogue (employing attentive listening) and reflection are the primary ingredients in the pot. Herbs and spices (the emergent literature on CI) complement these ingredients. The ingredients are fueled by shared passion, attention to relationship, commitment, and openness to divergent views. Following is a brief overview of the essential components of the collaborative inquiry process. While expressed separately below, these complex, interacting components are overlapping and linked.
Developing Collaborative Knowledge - Collaborative inquiry creates intersubjective understanding, including areas of common experience and mutual knowing. Knowledge is co-created by the group and is shared by the group.
Relationship - The potential for collaboration is enhanced by a shared history and careful attention to relationship building. It is characterized by an affirmation of one another's contributions, an absence of internal competition and the nurturing of individual and well as group development.
Dialogue - Dialogue is central to the process of collaborative inquiry. This includes storytelling, creating metaphors and using other right brained processes, experience sharing and the expression of tentative, not fully-formed ideas.
Attentive Listening - Collaborative inquiry requires careful attention to self and others by listening with the intent to understand, observing nonverbal cues, attending to affective responses, honoring silence, and listening to the spaces between the silences.
Reflection -Engagement in collaborative inquiry requires multiple levels of reflection:individual reflection on process and experience, individual reflection on the written reflection of others, and group reflection through dialogue.
Openness to divergent views - By acknowledging that our own knowledge base may be limited by our socio-cultural background and experiences and becoming open to seeing from another's frame, opportunities to extend knowledge are created.
Shared Passion - When passion is mutual, the motivation for collaboration is high. Excitement and energy generated by one member often ignites passion in others.
Commitment - In order for effective collaboration to occur, members must be committed to themselves, to one another and to the group process and project.
Discussion
In this section we highlight three significant themes that emerged from our research: The value of commitment, the inclusion of peripheral and half baked ideas and the emergence of the collaborative self.
Commitment
Engagement in a collaborative inquiry process requires multiple levels of commitment. We have discovered that commitment occurs on four levels: to self, to the project (including both the process and outcome), to the inquiry group as a whole, and to each individual within the group.
Commitment to self includes the knowledge and belief that one has the ability, the openness and willingness to devote oneself to a complex and multi-layered project. The multi-layered project includes not only one's internal motivation, but the various dimensions of working collaboratively with others. We have found that individual researchers need to bring a level of readiness which includes curiosity and a general sense of being open to varied and new phenomena. The commitment to openness, personal risk taking and one's ability to learn are important to collaborative inquiry.
Commitment to the project is critical for collaborative inquiry. This involves the belief in the collaborative process as a dynamic way of constructing knowledge. It is a belief that something important will emerge, even though the path seems obscured by fog some of the time.
Commitment to the project means that group members value the time spent on the inquiry and do not see it as a burden. Equally as important as the outcome or end product of the inquiry is the inquiry process itself. We believe that it is in the actual doing of collaborative inquiry where the greatest learning occurs. We first discovered this phenomenon when we submitted a proposal to facilitate a 90 minute workshop at an international conference. Our proposal was accepted with one revision. Instead of a workshop we were asked to participate in a poster session. This posed a great dilemma. How were we to convey the complexities of our work in a visual image that some would view only momentarily? During our planning sessions we were forced to rethink and rework our ideas in many different ways. This process turned out to be far more enriching than the actual presentation of our ideas at the conference.
Commitment to the group may involve temporarily subordinating, or at least holding lightly, personal needs for the greater good of the group. This includes finding ways to work with the various ideologies, experiences, research orientation, styles and needs of the different members.
Time is also a significant factor for a group engaged in a collaborative project. In collaborative inquiry one must be willing to devote time for the collaboration, balancing it with other personal commitments. This is not easy. As full time professors, family and community members, we have often struggled with finding time to pursue our inquiries. This has been complicated by the fact that for much of the time we are separated by more than 400 miles. We have found that providing large blocks of time devoted exclusively to advancing our research works better than small chunks. At times this involves forgoing other efforts and projects that compete for our time. At other times one or both of us has had to take a detour from the inquiry to attend to other pressing business. In individual inquiry one may become so immersed in other responsibilities that the inquiry project may remain on a back burner for an extended period of time. In collaborative inquiry, with other people invested in the project, there is greater likelihood for continued sustainability.
A commitment to work together as a group is developed through shared passion for an area of mutual concern or interest. However, shared passion alone is not always enough to sustain the inquiry over time. For example, one group developed a shared history and deep affection for one another while working on a project. They committed to staying together as a group to work on another project of longer duration. After a while it became clear that some members had stronger individual passions that were taking them in different directions. Still, they maintained they were going to stay together as one group. Eventually they realized that their lack of common passion was dividing them to the point of inertia. Although they remained committed to one another, they realized they could not pursue a collaborative inquiry.
Individuals engaged in collaborative inquiry also need to be committed to one another . This may take the form of encouragement, celebration of individual accomplishments, stepping in to take over when another is unable to do so or attending carefully to another's thoughts and ideas . The commitment to understanding the other’s perspective is foundational to collaborative inquiry.
An unexpected benefit to collaborative inquiry may be the nurturing or development of transformative learning in the individual co-researchers. In our research process since we value one another as individuals as well as research partners, time has been devoted to supporting individual growth and development. Co-researchers can become mirrors for each other, reflecting reality that initiates and facilitates transformational processes. Reason (1994) postulates that collaborative inquiry disrupts the lives of the researchers and that it is likely that individuals will change. While it is understood that some degree of relationship among the collaborators, along with mutual interest, often facilitates collaborative inquiry, an unexpected outcome of this process has been the growth of the relationship of the inquirers which serves to strengthen commitment to the inquiry.
In collaborative inquiry, investment in team members is an investment in self. In our experience we have sometimes delayed working on the "collaborative project" when one or the other can not be fully present because of some other pressing concern. A collaborator may need help getting unstuck or freed up from some other aspect of one's life. We have tended to university business, attended to each other’s transformative learning experiences, and to other life happenings which occur concomitantly with our work.
In order to maintain a viable collaborative inquiry, all four levels of commitment need to be present and in balance. If one is committed to oneself but not to the group, one may potentially alienate group members while pursing self interests. If one is committed to the group but not the project, one may soon lose interest or experience a conflict between personal goals and the goals of the group. It seems as though we are constantly attending to and negotiating among these areas of commitment.
Peripheral and Half-Baked Ideas
In our dialogue sessions, two related patterns of communication emerged. We introduce and allow half-baked or partially formed ideas, and we pay attention to thoughts and ideas that seem on the periphery of our topic, treating everything as if it were relevant.
One way to use dialogue between collaborators is in the "baking of ideas." This form of communication assumes a great deal of trust. In a trusting relationship, inquirers do not hesitate to put tentative, not fully thought out ideas on the table for discussion. Trust involves a willingness to be open and share these tentative thoughts and ideas that are often fragile like new seedlings. It means knowing that they will be taken seriously and not squashed prematurely. It means trusting that collaborative partners will help to nurture these thoughts, often adding thoughts of their own so they may grow and develop. These half-baked ideas are welcomed as raw ingredients for knowledge creation. Yeast is added to this mixture of ingredients, through dialogue. It is left to rise over time, kneaded, baked for a while and transformed into bread.
To participate in the creation of group knowledge one must be open and willing to share ideas and insights no matter how seemingly far out or half-baked. In collaborative inquiry one not only must be willing to share ideas, one has a responsibility to do so. This may include introducing points that are conflicting or which appear to be in disagreement with the prevailing consensus. There is a tendency to withhold these differing viewpoints in order to maintain group harmony. However, to not share these ideas could severely inhibit potential knowledge from emerging.
In collaborative inquiry it is essential that the dialogue is free flowing and not restricted to what seems to be relevant to a particular agenda. Sharing stories or digressing to discuss topics that seem only peripherally related to the inquiry subject are not only allowed, they are considered necessary to the process. As Brew (1993) observed, holding the assumption that everything is relevant increases opportunities for learning by drawing attention to that which may have been previously overlooked. These opportunities are magnified through collaborative inquiry since what maybe overlooked by one researcher is often articulated by another.
We have learned to view these seemingly unrelated stories, thoughts, and physical phenomena that catch our attention as attractions rather than distractions. It is often in the relating of these seemingly irrelevant stories and the consideration of phenomena that present themselves where connections are made, insights emerge and creativity is heightened. Experiencing this form of conversation is like walking down a path with another without knowing exactly where it is leading, but trusting that the path will lead both to deeper knowing.
As half-baked or peripheral ideas are introduced, collaborators need to have the confidence and patience to realize that a response need not always be immediate. Often when ideas are given time to incubate, more thoughtful responses become available. It is indeed quite affirming when one's collaborator reintroduces an idea that one raised previously after giving the idea considerable thought. Bateson (1994 p. 31) referred to this phenomenon as "spiral learning." We keep ideas and concepts that have no immediate application in the periphery of our consciousness to be returned to and more fully understood at a later time.
Collaborative Self
In collaborative inquiry, like most qualitative methodologies, the researchers are the primary tools of inquiry. Therefore, understanding self as inquirer is a necessity. In the case of collaborative inquiry the "self" is composed of the team of researchers. As part of our collaborative process, a collaborative self emerged which is characterized by its own language, ways of approaching problem solving, motivations and styles of working. "New language" (Clark and Watson, 1987. p. 59) has been developed which reflects the reality of the knowledge making. Phrases were coined and metaphors created (along with other language forms) representing the phenomena that emerged from the dialogue. Indeed, as Clark and Watson (1997) suggest, "new modes of intellectual engagement" (p.57) appear to be fostered which moves beyond the expected "synergistic" dynamic. In our research we have been less able to articulate the specific boundaries of our work, our relationship and our inquiry. Dimensions of each are woven into and through the other. The collaborative self deepens as the understanding and the relationships between the collaborators evolve. Clark and Watson ( 1997) have discussed a phenomena as "the creation of a new voice where the location or the self becomes more indeterminate, and we see a kind of fuzzing of the self"(p.58).
To work collaboratively in research and writing, one must place value on joint contributions relinquishing the idea of sole ownership of individual contributions. Additionally, one must not hold fast to ideas being viewed in one particular way. There is a fear that one could lose him or herself in the process and cease to be recognized. In our experience, the opposite was true. At various points in our writing we would ask "Did I write this or did you?" We gradually realized that we could both share ownership for the pieces since the writing came from the collaborative voice. The collaborative voice was developed through extensive dialogue around salient themes that emerged from our data. Over time, we became less concerned about finding our individual voices because we could see that they were reflected in the outcome, and yet that outcome was stronger and deeper than either one of us could accomplish alone. Like a rope made up of individual threads we can be pulled apart and retain our individual uniqueness. However, entwined together, the rope has more strength. Rather than losing our selves to the collaboration, we found a stronger self.
Implications for Theory and Practice
This study expands how we understand ways in which knowledge is created and extended through a collaborative dynamic. Additionally, the findings of this study point to an alternative paradigm for working with emerging scholars in adult education graduate programs. There is emerging support in the literature establishing Collaborative Inquiry as a research method. (Heron 1996, Group for Collaborative Inquiry 1993, Clark and Watson, 1997). Existing doctoral programs in adult education have encouraged and currently support various forms of collaborative inquiry in their dissertation (Columbia University) and Critical Engagement Project (National- Louis University) (Heaney, 1997). The study suggests new ways of working with formal and informal adult education groups by drawing on the collective strength of the participants, therefore extending the collaborative learning fostered in these groups.
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