Inquiry Based Learning
Here you will find an outline of the research areas for 2007 which are currently seeking participant researchers. You will also find information about the inquiries that are on-going within Oasis.
Overview of Research Inquiries
New Inquiries
Researching the Research
Inner Man Inner Woman
UK Leadership Inquiry
On-going Inquiries
Transpersonal Learning Community
Collabor8
By Invitation
Whole Person Learning - Feeling and Personhood
Overview of Research Inquiries
Co-operative Inquiry is one of a number of participative approaches to qualitative research (and the most radical). There is an increasing recognition that we need to promote more and better ways of creating dialogue that bridges differences without willing them away; that acknowledges differences without competing for one set of differences to triumph over another and yet for the engagement of those involved to be purposeful, strong and committed.
Many people are beginning to recognise that the kinds of challenges we face are not to be solved by individuals or even select groups coming up with answers for the rest of us, but since we are all part of the problem we all need to find ways to engage in how we discover together something of the solutions that are needed.
This is a move to a ‘we’ based form of social action; personal change and ecological transformation. We cannot know our problems until we work out what ‘we’ agree enough they are. I cannot ‘know’ what ‘we’ need without you joining in the dialogue about how you see the ‘we’ that ‘we are’.
These are what are often termed Meta questions about the position we are in and the influence they have upon developing dialogue and participative approaches.
Oasis has spent over twenty years pioneering Whole Person Approaches to Learning (WPL) and peer based methods of assessment. For over a decade we have been engaged in Co-operative Inquiry. During that time our connection with John Heron has increased (John pioneered many of these approaches as well as designing the method of cooperative inquiry with his colleague of the time Peter Reason (now professor at Bath) and have worked closely with him on a number of inquiries, beginning with an inquiry into Integrated Practice and Holistic Learning in Italy in 1998.
Since then we have had three inquiry groups visit and work in New Zealand where John is now based at the South Pacific Centre for Human Inquiry where he continues to evolve the inquiry approach with groups and the workshops he offers there.
New Inquiries
Inner Man Inner Woman
This inquiry is intended to act as an introduction for those interested in finding out about how inquiry processes work in practice and explores questions that arise in the participants centring around Inner Man Inner Woman.
When men and women come together, how much they have to abandon. Robert Bly
There can never have been a time when so many men and women, on the face of it, have had so much choice, so many opportunities to decide who, how, where they want to be; what they want to do with their time. Social mobility; economic freedom; lifestyle choice have exploded in the last forty years making the limitations and obligations of the past less and less influential upon who we choose to be.
How women and men relate together however is still an area conflicted and challenging for all of us (a great deal of the time). How to be open to the other who is so different often confronts the man/woman relationship. And it is this outer aspect of the man/woman relationship that gets most attention. Less discussed and explored is how we relate to the inner man and the inner woman inside each of us: how we connect to the masculine and the feminine elements inside of us no matter what gender we are ‘on the outside’. Jungian psychology, particularly, helped revitalise the idea of the ‘inner marriage of male and female’ that comes from the world of Alchemy. And modern psychology has begun to demonstrate a greater interest in how we bring these two aspects of our inner life into more awareness and balance and thus help us in our relationship to men and women in the world.
The relationship of man to woman and to his own femininity has been regulated throughout most of history by law, custom, convention. Only recently has man gained the capacity for personal decisions in these matters, a very great step in evolution. This freedom is as new as our modern world and brings some new demands on consciousness that have never been experienced before.... There is little room for the feeling function in a society that worships rationality and abstraction as deeply as we do. Every woman suffers this lack of feeling from her man - both inner and outer - and is mostly inarticulate in her complaint of the one-sidedness of modern life.
Taken from Lying with the Heavenly Woman. Robert A. Johnson. Harper Collins; New York. 1994.
The inquiry will begin when sufficient numbers express an interest. Anyone wishing to participate is asked to register their interest with Bryce Taylor, who will be the inquiry facilitator.
Researching the Research
Following discussion at our last visit to the South Pacific Centre for Human Inquiry (see above) in the autumn of 2005 and thanks to a participant from the USA who is also involved in Co-operative Inquiry, the South Pacific Centre and The Oasis School are looking into the ways in which the method of Co-operative Inquiry is evolving – hence researching the research.
To this end we are forming a more conscious link together and exploring how the two sites at either end of the globe can interact and work more collaboratively together between inquiries and how we might be able to foster links with other inquirers wherever they may be – the USA being one.
It is clear that the method of Co-operative Inquiry is both simple to outline, variable and flexible in its application and a rich source of learning about the self-generating cultures of groups – since each inquiry group has in effect to design the culture it will adopt to inquire into the topic that it has chosen to pursue. This new initiative promises to liberate a great deal of learning for all those interested in how dialogue and community-based initiatives may develop in the future.
We recommend you consider taking part in the Inner Man Inner Women inquiry if you have not been involved in co-operative inquiry before.
If this interests you directly or indirectly and want to either know more or how to contribute, contact Bryce Taylor at Oasis.
UK Leadership Inquiry 2007/08
This inquiry is linked to the Globally Responsible Leadership Foundation and ususally begins in the Autumn of each year. We are currently developing a Masters Award with Leeds Metropolitan University for this inquiry. For further details please contact Nick Ellerby.
On-Going Inquiries
Transpersonal Learning Community
The Transpersonal Learning Community (TLC) has been meeting for ten years. It is an ongoing group that explores the ‘inner life’ of those involved as well as providing a space for individuals, as part of such a group, to extend their transpersonal experiences collaboratively and collectively
The community arose out of the first Oasis Transpersonal Diploma and built upon the format of a cooperative inquiry model of shared decision making; agenda planning; reviewing and reflecting. Over the years individual membership has changed though only two people have left from the original group who formed TLC.
Currently TLC meets for twenty days per year over six weekends with three of these meetings as residential time together. From time to time we have been more ambitious and travelled further afield. We visited Cyprus (in connection with the group EREVNA) in 2001 at the time of the Twin Towers attack (when we should in fact have been going to the USA). We went to the USA in 2002 and most recently have been to Lindisfarne (Holy Island) in the North East of England.
The group combines a deep commitment to its own interpersonal life as well as its emerging transpersonal understanding. Administration is kept to a minimum and the focus is upon how individual working in the world but with a dedicated commitment to the inner life can share their differences overcome their conflicts and continue to explore the vast realms of the transpersonal together.
We have been the subject of one research study and individuals have contributed to the research of a number of people looking at the future of spirituality the modern world.
To find out more about this on-going inquiry and how you might be able to become involved please contact The Oasis Office.
Collabor8
Collabor8 has been meeting for one year. It grew out of our first Leadership Inquiry and explores the true meaning and practice of collaboration within and between organisations and communities. It builds upon the work undertaken in 2004/5 in examining collaborative approaches to globally responsible leadership. The members are each leaders or directors in not-for-profit or public sector organisations.
If you are interested in working with these kinds of issues and with this approach to research, we recommend you consider taking part in a UK Leadership Inquiry. For more details please contact Nick Ellerby or Bryce Taylor
By Invitation
