Appreciative Inquiry Framework Research Articles

Identity as pedagogy: appreciative inquiry into the stories of our pedagogies

ABSTRACT Teacher identity is a dynamic nexus of experiences and narratives on which teachers draw to understand and situate themselves in teaching. Additionally, teacher identity becomes pedagogy as we teach who we are. This narrative inquiry used an Appreciative Inquiry (AI) framework to explore stories of teaching that have interwoven into the teacher identities of a group of teachers, who encompassed various roles within a single educational jurisdiction. In this study, the term teachers broadly included individuals who are part of an educational system including classroom teachers, principals, and system leaders. Each participant teacher drew upon their lived experiences of narratives from within a common educational system that shaped their identity and pedagogy. Through five AI phases, participants named and confronted common system narratives they had encountered in teaching. Furthermore, they reframed these narratives in ways that might potentially bring about system change. The findings from this study can support teachers, teacher educators and system leaders to examine biases and beliefs embedded in pedagogy and, through critical reflection, consider ways system change might emerge.

Exploring Interprofessional Education and Collaboration in the Midst of COVID-19

The COVID-19 pandemic and the inequities it uncovered highlighted the need for a rapid and coordinated response among different disciplines in medical settings. Interprofessional collaboration and education is necessary to provide culturally competent emergent care. However, there is still scarce evidence demonstrating the use of interprofessional education in emergent care settings. This paper explores the training and education of health care professionals in a primarily minority serving hospital located in New York City during the first phase of COVID-19. Guided by the appreciative inquiry framework, two focus groups were conducted with administrators and health care workers who provided care to COVID-19 patients in an emergent care setting. It was found that a positive work environment that emphasizes knowledge sharing, collaboration, communication, and continuous on-the-job training facilitates culturally competent care. The implementation of interprofessional education and collaboration has the potential to transform clinical practice and improve health outcomes for under-resourced communities.

Rethinking leadership approaches for community-wide opioid crisis intervention: harnessing positive inquiry to unearth front-line insight

Background/AimThe opioid crisis presents a complex and widespread health challenge for communities, necessitating a deeper exploration beyond simple solutions. To address this crisis, it is crucial to identify and disseminate...

A Conceptual Design of an AI-Enabled Decision Support System for Analysing Donor Behaviour in Nonprofit Organisations

Analysing and understanding donor behaviour in nonprofit organisations (NPOs) is challenging due to the lack of human and technical resources. Machine learning (ML) techniques can analyse and understand donor behaviour at a certain level; however, it remains to be seen how to build and design an artificial-intelligence-enabled decision-support system (AI-enabled DSS) to analyse donor behaviour. Thus, this paper proposes an AI-enabled DSS conceptual design to analyse donor behaviour in NPOs. A conceptual design is created following a design science research approach to evaluate an AI-enabled DSS’s initial DPs and features to analyse donor behaviour in NPOs. The evaluation process of the conceptual design applied formative assessment by conducting interviews with stakeholders from NPOs. The interviews were conducted using the Appreciative Inquiry framework to facilitate the process of interviews. The evaluation of the conceptual design results led to the recommendation for efficiency, effectiveness, flexibility, and usability in the requirements of the AI-enabled DSS. This research contributes to the design knowledge base of AI-enabled DSSs for analysing donor behaviour in NPOs. Future research will combine theoretical components to introduce a practical AI-enabled DSS for analysing donor behaviour in NPOs. This research is limited to such an analysis of donors who donate money or volunteer time for NPOs.

Evaluation of a charge nurse leadership development program.

Evaluation of a charge nurse leadership development program.

Neil Diamond: A Personal Educational Appreciation of an Excellent Artist’s Live Performances

In this article the performances of the singer Neil Diamond in South Africa are studied to enable the author, a lecturer at a South African university, to learn from Diamond how to develop on professional level. Since the singer announced in 2018 that he would, because of a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease, no longer be performing live, the study was conducted in reflection on his performing career, which stretched over more than four decades, and the effect that it has had on the lecturer’s professional development. Embedded in the theory of transformative learning, the methodology that was used, namely the 5D framework of appreciative inquiry, was selected because it provided the scaffolding for the reflective research process. After conducting interviews with six people who attended one of Diamond’s performances, five themes were identified and are presented and discussed in this paper: the interaction between Diamond and his audiences; keeping up with the latest technology; Diamond’s enjoyment of what he did and his enthusiasm about his performances; his neat black clothes and professional appearance; and his passionate immersion in those performances. To capture the essence of Diamond’s performances, the author wrote a poem and painted a painting to represent what he learned from Diamond. The effect that his engagement with Diamond has had on the technology and decoration in his lecture hall is also explained.

Guru Penggerak and Transforming Schools Withing the Framework of Appreciative Inquiry

The “Guru Penggerak” program is one of the most important parts of the “merdeka belajar” policy. Mobilizing teachers are designated as agents of transformation to reform the education system from the smallest unit, namely schools. This study aims to find and examine important discourses about the role of agents in the process of organizational transformation by focusing on the role of the guru penggerak in driving school transformation process by appreciative inquiry framework. The method used is a qualitative method with a constructivist approach by referring to theoretical analysis and document study. The results of this study indicate that the guru penggerak program shifted the management of change in education from a centralized pattern towards decentralization with activating teachers as agents and schools as centers of transformation. Guru penggerak plays a role in bringing the new vision of learning and spreading this vision to all stakeholders. The process of transformation that is driven by the guru penggerak is carried out using an appreciative inquiry approach to explore the potential and strength of change from within the school through a dialogue process so as to minimize the occurrence of counterproductive resistance.

Investigating the use of Appreciative Inquiry as a process for coach development within a National Governing Body talent development programme

ABSTRACT Coach development continues to be positioned as a ‘problem to be solved’ for national governing bodies (NGBs) with policy makers persisting in their quest to find an effective solution to bring about sustained change. Here, we suggest that coach development should instead consider a strength-based approach to change in an effort to build on current practice. This study, conducted ‘in-situ’ by the Head of Performance, focused on coach development within a NGB field hockey talent development programme. In a shift from the traditional ‘top down’, cut and paste approach to change interventions synonymous with coach development, this study adopted an appreciative inquiry (AI) approach that focuses on strengths and collaboration within groups and has been found to assist in the identification of new ways of working. The results showed that by adopting an AI framework to coach development, the themes of positivity and collaboration leading to generativity were integral to coach development within a NGB talent development programme. Positivity was clearly a highlight in this context as findings indicate that coaches were highly motivated to interrogate new ideas through a positive mindset. Similarly, results show that the collaborative approach to change and personal learning ensured a sustained movement towards the collective vision for the programme. Interestingly, results also show the theme of complexity when adopting an AI approach to coach learning and the need to maintain an element of flexibility that does not follow a ‘clean’ approach to AI that is often reported within the literature. Lastly, the importance of facilitation from the researcher was highlighted within the inquiry and sheds new light into the complexity of coach learning in a collaborative setting. This investigation highlights the potential of strengths-based inquiry in relation to coach development and provides a rich insight into context specific personal development within coaching.

A Vision for Rehabilitation Counseling: Appreciative Inquiry Through the Eyes of Our Legacy Leaders

Rehabilitation counseling (RC), which grew out of vocational rehabilitation legislation in 1920, has quietly developed and expanded its range of services for people with disabilities. As a smaller specialty of counseling, RC has faced challenges to being recognized and valued for its diverse expertise within the counseling field, as well as the broader social service and allied health fields. With a changing landscape of accreditation, state licensing, and service reimbursement requirements, there is now a need for guidance, leadership, and collaborative planning to preserve the vitality of the profession. The purpose of this project was to capture the positive history of the profession through its leaders, utilizing an appreciative inquiry framework, to become more aware of strengths and opportunities, to begin drafting a blueprint for the future of RC. The authors conducted semi-structured interviews with 18 leaders in rehabilitation counselor education and research. Four main themes emerged: (a) formative influences, (b) threats, (c) current assets, and (d) future direction. Focusing on the influence of threats to the RC profession, a solution-focused response model is presented toward a vision of the future of RC practice, education, and research.

Promoting a culture of openness: Institutional open access policy development and evaluation at a Canadian university

Institutional open access (OA) policies can act as a solid foundation on which to build university-wide support for open access. This is the first paper to reflect on the entire process of developing, implementing, and reviewing an institutional open access policy at a Canadian post-secondary institution. Simon Fraser University (SFU) is one of a few Canadian universities with an institutional open access policy. As a leader in open access, SFU is well positioned to share observations of our experiences in the first three years of our OA policy. Throughout this paper, we reflect on the role that the policy plays in the broader culture of openness at SFU and on the OA resources and supports provided to SFU researchers. Other institutions may find our observations and adoption of the SOAR (strengths, opportunities, aspirations, results) appreciative inquiry framework useful as they explore future policy development or review and work to promote a culture of open access within their university community.

Silver linings: A thematic analysis of case studies describing advances in health professions education during the COVID-19 pandemic

Purpose In addition to the damaging public health, social and economic effects of COVID-19, health professions faculty around the world have faced staggering upheaval in the education of their students and junior doctors. Despite the formidable challenges, some silver linings have emerged in health professions education. The paper aims to describe themes from reflections of international health professions educators on these silver linings using an appreciative inquiry framework. Materials and methods We performed a qualitative analysis of written reflections from a group of 115 international educators from medicine, nursing, dentistry, and the allied health professions describing a personal experience with an educational approach or work strategy arising during the COVID-19 pandemic that should be sustained. Results We identified 13 thematic units of reflections regarding advances in health professions education during the pandemic. The most notably optimistic and pioneering were Advancement of the Profession, Professional Connections, and Accelerating Change. Other frequent themes included unexpected successes in Virtual Teaching and Clinical Teaching. Conclusion Several points of optimism from this otherwise catastrophic world event have emerged. This analysis serves as a useful guide for further research to understand, sustain and promote positive changes during a global pandemic on health professions education.

Stories of Hope and Resilience: A Multimodal Project

This multimodal project, influenced by an Appreciative Inquiry framework, aimed to elicit stories of hope and resilience amidst the Covid-19 pandemic. Thematic analysis was employed to analyse twenty collected stories. A multimodal method that combined linguistic and visual language (non-fiction comics) was adopted in order to present the research findings. In Elli’s case, as with other participants, engaging with customs and rituals turned out to be an important source of hope, joy and resilience.

Development and preliminary testing of the collaboration for leadership and innovation in mentoring survey: An instrument of nursing PhD mentorship quality

BackgroundHigh-quality PhD nursing student mentorship facilitates student and program success. Extant literature recommends evaluating and improving mentorship to foster optimal PhD student development. However, a comprehensive measure capturing all aspects of mentorship salient to PhD nursing student wellbeing and success is not available. ObjectivesThe purpose of this pilot study was to develop a new instrument - the Collaboration for Leadership and Innovation in Mentoring (CLIM) - for quantifying important components of PhD student mentorship in nursing, and to preliminarily test its psychometric properties (content validity, sensitivity, test-retest reliability). DesignThe study employed a cross-sectional design. SettingThe CLIM instrument was administered to nursing PhD students at a public state university in the United States. ParticipantsSixteen nursing PhD students at various stages in their degree progression completed the instrument. MethodsPhD nursing students developed unique items based on qualitative data collected by the University using an Appreciative Inquiry framework. Seven nursing and non-nursing experts with experience in PhD mentorship evaluated content validity. After revisions, the final 44-item instrument was administered at two time points (one month apart) to allow assessment of test-retest reliability. Test-retest reliability was evaluated using Spearman-rank correlations and data from students with ≥1 year of experience with their mentor. ResultsResponse rates were 94% for both administrations (n = 16). The instrument's overall Content Validity Index (CVI) was 0.91 (p = 0.05). Test-retest analyses resulted in high correlations (r = 0.91, p < 0.001), further supporting reliability of the CLIM instrument. ConclusionsPreliminary evidence suggests that the CLIM instrument is a reliable instrument of PhD mentorship in nursing. However, additional testing in larger and more diverse graduate student populations is needed to evaluate internal consistency reliability, among other psychometric properties.

Busting myths in online education: Faculty examples from the field.

The shift in learning environments due to the COVID-19 pandemic necessitates a closer look at course design, faculty approaches to teaching, and student interaction, all of which may predict learner achievement and satisfaction. Transitioning to an online environment requires the reinvention, reimagining, and applying of "e-flavors" of general learning theory. With this shift to online learning comes the opportunity for misunderstandings and "myths" to occur, which may stand in the way of faculty embracing online learning and fully realizing its potential. This article seeks to address several myths and misconceptions that have arisen in higher education during the rapid shift to online teaching and learning. While not comprehensive, these myths represent a snapshot of common challenges. These are we can transfer our in-person course design to online; adult learners do not need an empathetic approach; and online teaching and learning is socially isolating. Through an appreciative inquiry framework, we present each myth in the context of relevant literature and invite faculty with varied online teaching experience to share their own case studies that illustrate how they have "busted" these myths with the goal to identify existing examples of locally effective practices for the express purpose of replication that leads to positive change.

Peer reviews of teaching as appreciative inquiry: learning from “the best” of our colleagues

Research on peer review to date has focused on its role as a formal compliance mechanism, a process for enhancing and developing teaching practice, and as a considerable source of anxiety for educators. In this paper, we draw on scholarly reflections from our experience of undertaking a reciprocal, formative peer review in an Australian higher education setting. Our findings provide novel conceptual, empirical, and practical insights by providing the first application of an appreciative inquiry framework to the process of peer review. We argue that adopting an appreciative inquiry framework assists us in learning from “the best” aspects of our colleagues’ teaching. Moreover, it offers a framework for understanding and responding to some of the challenges long-associated with peer review. In doing so, it presents potential benefits pertaining to student retention and learning outcomes, while opening up new possibilities for researching and practicing peer review.

Adopting an Appreciative Inquiry approach to propose change within a national talent development system

ABSTRACT The subject of talent in sport continues to fascinate and intrigue as organisations seek to identify and deliver an effective talent development programme in an effort to ensure systemic success. In the quest to deliver an optimal national governing body talent development programme, this paper investigates the role that Appreciative Inquiry can play in addressing change within a complex landscape. The coaches (12 talent coaches) and researcher (Head of Performance) utilised an Appreciative Inquiry framework to identify a ‘routemap’ for change within the programme. Results highlighted the challenges and benefits of adopting a strength-based approach to programme development within sport, particularly the generative capacity of Appreciative Inquiry amongst coaches. Results also indicate some complexities of strength-based collaborative change, namely the need for time to break through semantics and coaching rhetoric. Through the design and delivery of an Appreciative Inquiry summit, key themes for an optimal development environment were identified. Namely, coaches felt that when at its best the programme adopts a mastery focus. Findings indicate that to achieve this, participants felt that for the programme to become optimal, the themes of leadership, coach–athlete relationships and player autonomy were integral elements to build on going forward.

Community development transformation of Cooper neighborhood: a Rutgers-Camden University and LEAP Academy school collaboration through sustainable development

ABSTRACT Comprehensive community initiatives integrating holistic educational approachs for children and families are vital to building and sustaining 100% high school graduation rate in a distressed urban setting. Despite numerous social, economic, and cultural barriers, the Rutgers-Camden University and LEAP Academy partnership has not only provided hundreds of children with a comprehensive education and access to opportunities, but it has also empowered them and their families as individuals. This university-driven community development intitiaitve was able to trasnform the entire city oif Camden, NJ through the expansion of an integrated pipeline model that prepared students, trained families and nurtured neighboring communities. Utilizing a case study methodology and appreciative inquiry framework, this study explores these university-driven programs when community members are included in the planning stages and are benficieries in the operations and governance. This collaborative case study provides many insights into best practices that can be upscaled within other community-based educational models.

Learning From Practice: The Value of a Personal Learning Coach for High-Performance Coaches

Multiple actors and roles are now recognized and promoted to support the development of coaches. Personal coaching is an emerging industry in many professional fields yet remains insignificant in sport coaching. The purpose of this study was to document and assess the value of a 12-month collaborative action research in which a high-performance rugby coach, with the support of a personal learning coach, aimed to learn from her coaching practice. This research was operationalized using an appreciative inquiry framework. Personal coaching was conducted according to the principles of narrative-collaborative coaching. Data collection included interviews, video observation, audio recordings of coaching conversations, notes from phone calls, and email exchanges. Results showed that this partnership created a safe and challenging learning space where different coaching topics were addressed, such as reflective practice, leadership, and mental preparation. A deductive analysis of the debriefing interview was completed using the value creation framework developed by Wenger and colleagues. This analysis indicated that the high-performance coach’s relationship with the personal learning coach enabled the development of five types of value: immediate, potential, applied, realised, and transformative. Therefore, it is suggested that narrative-collaborative coaching can complement existing formal and non-formal learning activities.

A Multifaceted Approach to Improve Physician Communication Scores.

Improving patient satisfaction scores has become a key focus of health-care organizations nationwide but can be a struggle for community hospitals with constrained resources, and particularly challenging for hospitalist programs due to provider variance and turnover. Using the framework of appreciative inquiry, we implemented a multipronged intervention including a rounding model whereby hospitalist leaders rounded on patients and relayed commentary back to their hospitalist providers. We communicated positive feedback preferentially over negative feedback to the entire hospitalist group through regular communication. Providers were encouraged to employ best practices including sitting with the patient, reviewing recommendations using teach back, and providing business cards. Scores improved in the physician communication category by approximately 1% annually from fiscal year 2015 through 2018, with our percentile rank improving 35 percentile points during that time. These findings indicate that a multifaceted approach including best practices is associated with improved patient experience regarding communication with physicians.

Appreciative inquiry and shared values: A case study

In this case study, the author offers an example of using an appreciative inquiry framework to intentionally articulate shared values to actively cultivate trust and foster a nimble, dare-to-fail organizational culture.