Introduction
The Collaborative Inquiry Process
The practice of collaborative inquiry (CI) has been framed and organised in many different ways: cycles, spirals, stages, and guidelines, just to name a few. Throughout our study of CI we have encountered many of these different frameworks. In our reading of DeLuca et al. (2015) they identified that “Regardless of the number of stages, the literature supporting each cycle acknowledges three core and interconnected structural features of CI: dialogical sharing, taking action, and reflecting.”
Dialogical Sharing – the act of sharing personal and experiential knowledge in a constructivist dialogue which lends itself to deeper, shared group learning. Evidence of our group’s dialogical sharing can be seen under the “Process Journal” section. The sharing was done on many platforms including:
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Taking Action – this core feature can include many different physical actions from collecting data, to adapting new practices, researching, analysing, learning, and involving dialogical sharing in all of this practice.
Our group participated in many action items which can be found throughout our problem brief. Group actions included:
Reflecting – this can occur at an individual level or at the group level and is ‘viewed as fundamental to provoking learning that will change practice.’ (Deluca et al., 2015) They go on to share various reflecting practices which can include reviewing goals, use of a journal or learning log throughout the process, facilitated meetings, or participant surveys. No matter what method is chosen for reflection it should be ongoing and can involve dialogical sharing and should influence the action that is taken during the inquiry process.
Reflection can be found throughout the project’s dialogical sharing and spurred an action within the group.These small and large reflective moments can be found in many of the pieces that have been shared throughout the website.
Our group participated in many action items which can be found throughout our problem brief. Group actions included:
- Extensive research, as seen under the “Literature Review” section,
- The creation and sharing of surveys, analysis of that data, sharing our learning with one another through text format and a group video call. The creation of two collaborative whiteboards were used to both discuss our question, as seen below and in the solution under the “Proposed Solution” section.
- Many small actions and collaborative reframing took place within these spaces
Reflecting – this can occur at an individual level or at the group level and is ‘viewed as fundamental to provoking learning that will change practice.’ (Deluca et al., 2015) They go on to share various reflecting practices which can include reviewing goals, use of a journal or learning log throughout the process, facilitated meetings, or participant surveys. No matter what method is chosen for reflection it should be ongoing and can involve dialogical sharing and should influence the action that is taken during the inquiry process.
Reflection can be found throughout the project’s dialogical sharing and spurred an action within the group.These small and large reflective moments can be found in many of the pieces that have been shared throughout the website.
- Individuals reflected on their own research pieces before sharing them with the group. Group members were able to reflect with each other through comments and in channels within the Slack application.
- A brief reflection written by individual group members on their experience with the problem brief can be found under the “Project Collaborators” section.
When the collaborative inquiry process is being engaged in, these 3 core components are connected together in a way that they cannot be separated. As you can see from the outline of our experience above, we found this to be true. You need each feature to contribute to the others in order to find a result that is both effective and successful.
Defining the Problem
The topic we chose for our problem brief involves bias. Bias, whether conscious or unconscious, is something that we have learned will affect participation with the core components of collaborative inquiry and we may not even recognise it is happening. We know that guarding against bias is important in keeping the collaborative inquiry process intact and fruitful. As Katz & Dack (2014) note, simply using data does not necessarily interrupt biases, nor does it help us to recognize bias (37). Thus, we began our research by addressing the sub-question of our identified problem: How are biases recognized to begin with? We then identified the specific biases that we wanted to include in our study: confirmation; omission; vividness, authority; and unconscious bias. The question that our group developed which has driven our problem brief is, what are some strategies to become more aware of our biases while taking into consideration the realities of time and resources? Our aim is to find some solutions and strategies that collaborative groups can use to maximize their awareness around bias while guarding against the effect of bias within their collaborative inquiry process. Below you will find how we defined our problem for this CI Project.
What are some strategies to become
more aware of our biases
while taking into consideration the
realities of time and resources?