Cooperative Inquiry (CI; Heron 1996) is an experiential and participatory approach to research, learning, and psychospiritual growth (Sohmer 2020a, 2020b; Heron and Sohmer 2019). Founded by John Heron1 (1996) and elaborated with Peter Reason (Heron and Reason 1997, 2006), CI is a radically collaborative and non-hierarchical means to generate knowledge and facilitate transformation regarding topics of mutual interest within small collaborative groups of co-inquirers. Unfolding through multiple cycles of action and reflec- tion, the approach draws upon the full range of human faculties (e.g., somatic, emotional, intuitive, imaginal) and creates opportunities for experiential learning and transformation throughout the research process itself. Action phases are open-ended – granting co-inquir- ers access to a variety of possible inquiry tools (e.g., contemplative, interpersonal, creative- expressive practices) as collaboratively determined most relevant to their research questions and goals. Reflection phases provide recursive cycles of personal contemplation, collabora- tive research design, and intersubjective meaning-making. Originally positioned as a human research approach within spiritual, subtle, and transpersonal domains (Heron 1996, 1998, 2001), and in professional practice, CI is gaining validation across disciplines (e.g., Godden 2017; Ospina, Hadidy, and Hofmann-Pinilla 2008; Ross 2019a, 2019b; Sohmer 2020a, 2020b) and is well poised for continued application and elaboration in spirituality and contemplative studies.
Foundations and Presuppositions
The preliminary form of CI emerged in the context of a phenomenological investigation of mutual gazing in 1968–69, during which founder John Heron was compelled by his aware- ness that a researcher of human experience was best served to enter an inquiry fully from within, as a participating subject in collaboration with others mutually engaged, unlike the typical “external” researcher stance that was prevalent in human research at the time (1970, 1996). After about ten years of informal workshop application, collaboration within the New Paradigm Research Group (founded by John Heron, Peter Reason, and John Rowan
as a forum for new-paradigm research development and application; Heron 1996), inquir- ies exploring altered states of consciousness (Heron 1988) and co-counseling (Heron and Reason 1981, 1982), Heron and Reason (1984, 1985) initiated a more comprehensive inquiry into “whole person medicine” with a group of doctors in London and began shar- ing the approach with a broader audience (Heron 1996). Around this time, Heron began his independent research career, initiating numerous spiritual and contemplative inquiries in Italy, New Zealand, and the UK (Heron 1998) while Reason catalysed a variety of CI research projects emphasising professional practice as director of the Centre for Action Research in Professional Practice within the School of Management at the University of Bath (Heron 1996). In their numerous publications, Heron and Reason positioned CI as an experiential, intersubjective, participatory research approach to the human condition, emphasising that CI offers a way of doing research with rather than on or about people (e.g., Heron 1985, 1992, 1996; Heron and Reason 1984, 1986, 1997, 2006, 2008; Reason 1988, 1994a, 1994b; Reason and Heron 1995).
CI stands amongst a diverse and growing family of new paradigm (cf. Guba and Lincoln 1994, Lincoln and Guba 2011) research methods, including a variety of collaborative, par- ticipatory, action, and transpersonal approaches. Located specifically within what Lincoln and Guba (2011) acknowledge as the fifth major paradigm in qualitative research2 – the participatory paradigm (following Heron and Reason 1997), after positivism, postpositiv- ism, critical theory, and constructivism – CI adopts and furthers the participatory world- view (e.g., Ferrer 2002, 2017; Hartelius and Ferrer 2013; Heron 2006; Reason 1994a, 1994b; Skolimowski 1994; Tarnas 1991, 2006). Namely, participatory perspectives hold experiential reality as a dynamic cocreation between interdependent players within living systems (i.e., a participatory, relational, intersubjective, or subjective-objective ontology). A participatory epistemology follows from this worldview, forwarding a theory of knowledge as enacted (e.g., Ferrer 2002, 2008, 2017; Hartelius and Ferrer 2013) between a knowing subject; their domains and methods of inquiry; and the social, ecological, and spiritual contexts that contain them. CI adopts a participatory methodology through active, experi- ential, and collaborative learning cycles, often embedded in real-life contexts and grounded in shared experience.
CI also utilises an explicitly extended epistemology (e.g., Heron 1996; Heron and Reason 1997, 2006, 2008), recognising four interconnected ways of knowing – conceptual/propo- sitional (statements about the nature of reality), imaginal/presentational (creative expres- sion), and practical (skills and abilities), all of which are grounded in experiential (direct personal experience) knowledge.3 Moreover, CI invites multiple ways of knowing (e.g., contemplative, embodied, intuitive, emotional, and creative) within inquiry-action cycles, thus, leveraging intelligences beyond the rational mind as well as possible state-specific knowledge (i.e., knowledge accessed through psychospiritual practice, intentionally culti- vated states of consciousness, or spontaneously arising expanded states of consciousness; Cunningham 2015; Ferrer 2014, 2017; Tart 2009). Following the movement of herme- neutic phenomenology (e.g., Abram 1996; Merleau-Ponty 1962), in CI, direct experience is considered the ground of knowledge. Given the interpersonal and collaborative dimen- sions of CI, the approach utilises the intersubjective knowledge that arises synergistically between people (see Ferrer and Sohmer 2017; Gunnlaugson 2009a, 2009b, 2011; Heron and Lahood 2008; Osterhold, Rubinart, and Nicol 2007; Sohmer, Baumann, and Ferrer 2019) and honours the cultural linguistic context(s) within which knowledge is inherently embedded (Heron and Reason 1997). From another vantage, CI can be conceived of as an
intersubjective – or relational – phenomenology comprised of recursive group experiments and reflections. Finally, a participatory axiology upholds healing, growth, and transfor- mation as the ultimate purpose of research; thus, asserting that both research outcomes and process should meaningfully transform researchers, their spheres of study, the research audience, and the wider world.
Research Approach
Within this broader context of new paradigm research and the participatory worldview, Heron in collaboration with Reason developed CI as an experiential, participatory, inter- subjective approach to human inquiry (e.g., Heron 1992, 1996; Reason 1994a, 1994b; Heron and Reason 1997, 2006, 2008; Reason and Heron 1995). In its full form, the method is conducted between two or more researcher-participants or co-inquirers – opti- mally a small group of 5 to 12 – who collaboratively design all dimensions of the research, from the inquiry question to the inquiry tools, as well as data analysis and meaning- making. Alternatively, in the partial form of CI, the initiating researcher or facilitator is only involved in part as a co-subject because they may not participate in action-reflection cycles and may maintain leadership in some stages of the research process (Heron 1996). Importantly, Heron clarified that this partial form is valid only when the non-participating researcher(s) begin and remain outside of the inquiry culture, such as a facilitator hired into an existing professional group or learning community (John Heron, email communication to author, 2 May 2017). In both forms, CI differs from conventional qualitative research by involving co-inquirers in all stages of research decision and meaning making. As Heron and Reason (2008) described:
All participants work together in an inquiry group as co-researchers and as co-sub- jects. Everyone is engaged in the design and management of the inquiry; everyone gets into the experience an action that is being explored; everyone is involved in making sense and drawing conclusions; thus everyone involved can take initiative and exert influence on the process. (p. 1)
Consequently, CI is radically participatory in both content and method, fully dissolving the boundary between the researcher and the “subject” – hence, the “subject” and the “object” (e.g., Heron and Reason 1997, 2008; Reason and Heron 1995). Within this frame, co- inquirers engage in multiple cycles of action and reflection to enact experientially grounded knowledge and personal transformation regarding issues of mutual interest.
The highly participatory nature of CI design and implementation makes it difficult to generalise the inquiry process, which is best understood by looking at examples like the case study discussed below, Heron’s (1996, 1998) texts containing numerous practical exam- ples, or contemporary CI reports. That being said, CI typically progresses through three phases: (a) initiation, (b) action-reflection cycling, and (c) overarching meaning making – with attention to the inquiry validity throughout (see Table 15.1). Under optimal condi- tions, CI in any domain engages the interplay of autonomy and cooperation, thus foster- ing the capacity for authentic relationship among individuals united by a shared concern. Importantly, the ultimate goal of CI is not to provide informational outcomes alone, but to facilitate transformational outcomes that support human flourishing in an interconnected, living Cosmos (Heron 1996)...