Appreciative Inquiry – a Research Tool for Institutional Change

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) emanated from the PhD work of David Cooperrider at Case Western Reserve University in the 1980s. Founded upon social constructionist theories
(Berger & Luckmann,1966, Gergen, 2009), it is an approach to organizational change that eschews former Organization Development (OD) deficit models in favour of a positive
approach to change that builds a vision for the future based upon what already works well within an existing system. It also provides a framework for researching or evaluating different forms of professional practice, including learning, teaching and the student experience. Its self-empowering philosophy, effected through the ‘4-D’ process (Discover, Dream, Design and Destiny), is realized through the collaborative working of all stakeholders within an institution; through systematic participation in a jointly constructed vision of an organization’s future, they become an integral part of its success. At its core is the unconditional positive
question, which seeks out the best of ‘what is’ in order to prompt the collective imagination to envision ‘what might be’.

The use of AI within higher education in the UK is not yet well-developed and existing studies of the application of AI to this context have tended to focus principally on the areas of teaching and institutional change. It is suggested that through the publication of recent books such as ‘Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education: A Transformative Force’ (Cockell, McArthur-Blair & Schiller, 2013), it will perhaps become more widely adopted in this context.