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While Cooperrider (2001, p. 32) suggests that appreciative inquiry is about “the artful creation of positive imagery,” most of the literature that describes the process of artful creation explains it as one in which the organizational members simply talk about these new images, vs. actually engaging in the creation of artistic representations of the desired future. This chapter moves the appreciative inquiry literature beyond the metaphorical understanding of the “art of” appreciative inquiry in order to reveal and explain how practitioners are actually engaging organizations in the artful creation of positive anticipatory imagery. In this chapter, the literature that labels and describes the process of artful creation in organizations is reviewed, described, and synthesized into five propositions – ultimately creating a framework for understanding artful creation as a unique organizational discourse: an aesthetic discourse. These five propositions reveal the common characteristics of artful creation: (1) presentational knowledge/language; (2) mediated dialogue; (3) symbolic constructions that act as metaphorical representation; (4) collaborative inquiry/co-creation; and (5) window to the unconscious. The chapter concludes by addressing the implications, seeking to answer the question “What is the value of an organization engaging with the process of artful creation?” Finally, the chapter suggests that the five propositions may guide future research in two areas: (a) the practice of the artful creation of positive anticipatory imagery in appreciative inquiry; and (b) the further development of a theoretical framework for understanding the “art of” appreciative inquiry as aesthetic discourse.

This chapter presents a form of both co-participation theory and artful inquiry methodology as useful approaches in carrying out research into the student experience. Participatory Pedagogy is predicated on repositioning participants as co-producers of knowledge by introducing them to important aspects of the research, providing a platform to foster expression and affording opportunities to co-shape the research process. Artful inquiry can take many different forms, but collage in particular has the capacity to bring new meanings to the surface even in well-researched fields, such as the student experience. In supporting a Participatory Pedagogy approach, collage can unpack powerful testimonies of personal experience. A practical application of this pairing is also presented based on research into the student experience. This gives readers an insight into how it can be applied to a study, what its limitations might be and especially how students, particularly those from under-represented backgrounds, can benefit from being involved.

In this chapter I present a pedagogic encounter with an intense affective scene that occurred at a critical time in my PhD research. The encounter, which I call ‘what happened to data and me’, acts as an illustrative example of what may come from seeking out ways to account for contingency, complexity and contiguity by focussing on affect as a researchable phenomenon and affect as a productive force in a (post)qualitative inquiry. At the heart of ‘what happened to data and me’ is an unravelling of self, prompted by the realization of an onto-epistemological conflict between what my research was trying to do and how I, the researcher, was trying to go about the research. I invite the reader to return with me to ‘the snap’ and together witness how a snap experienced as a pedagogic encounter can create the conditions for transformative learning to occur – a learning that transforms an individual's relations with the world rendering them more capable. In conveying how ‘what happened to data and me’ rendered us (data, me, my supervisors, and more) more capable, I discuss how entering into artful relations with data can reconfigure the researcher–researched–research in affirming ways. I propose artful inquiry to do data in a way that accentuates the art of data, creating the conditions for data to transgress into da(r)ta. I conclude with six insights that researchers interested in ‘the post’ may like to consider. The intention is that hindsight will become foresight, not only highlighting what transgressive data can do but also drawing attention to the potential of critically and creatively engaging with the (post)qualitative inquiry.

The purpose of this chapter is to make visible the similarities and differences among narrative, self-study of teacher education practices, and autoethnographic methodologies to generate clarity about when each methodology might be most appropriate. Using Margery Wolf’s (1992) A Thrice Told Tale as a heuristic to support our exploration, we look at a selected slice of data as if standing within each methodology. As we do that we consider ways that we might engage each methodology to push forward our thinking about powerful research. Our goal is to critically examine the processes that researchers use for the study and to explore the ways using particular methodologies in appropriate ways that can strengthen our thinking about professional knowledge.

This chapter features our innovative endeavors to inquire into an African-American student's potentially sensitive stories in a methodologically fluid and ethically delicate manner through two generative methods: digital narrative inquiry and musical narrative inquiry. Through a meta-level “inquiry into inquiry” approach, this work explores how we engaged in the digital and musical restorying of the participant's “Wounded Healer” narrative and uncovered its dynamism, cultural richness, and nuances. We subsequently represented the findings in humanizing ways using multimedia and music. Drawing on the insights from exploring these novel methods of digital and musical inquiry, our work illuminates noteworthy elements of narrative research: generativity, transformativity, interpersonal ethics, aesthetic ethics, and communal ethics. Additionally, the potential issue of trustworthiness in fluid narrative inquiries is addressed.

This chapter discusses the coupling of High Impact Educational Practices with an Active Learning pedagogical approach applied within an introductory undergraduate Visual Communication course (VC1). The course involves several high impact educational practices, such as collaborative assignments, community-based learning, and ePortfolios as reflective tools. VC1 is also open across the School of Art, Design, and Media and accordingly attracts a diverse, multicultural cohort. This heterogeneity provided an ideal circumstance to encourage the exploration of differing cultural perspectives, life experiences, and worldviews and, subsequently, an opportunity for students to better connect with the subject matter on an intercultural level. While the entire course successfully implemented several high impact practices (HIP), this chapter aims to provide a concise overview of these methods before differing to a more microanalysis; focusing on an integrated, preventing visual plagiarism workshop, which leveraged global knowledge, active learning, and collaborative discourse to facilitate improved academic integrity among the student body. The workshop engaged students by posing ethically driven questions through active learning exercises, such as case study discussions and reflective making activities, to open dialogues and encourage debate on various, and often opposing, ethical perspectives. The overarching objective of this workshop was for students to develop best practice ethical frameworks to subsequently inform and underpin their creative practice, both within higher education and in a professional industry context.