search expand

Author’s blurb


John Heron, Co-operative Inquiry: Research into the Human Condition, London, Sage Publications, 1996
Cloth (0-8039-7683-6) £37.50 / Paper (0-8039-7684-4) £12.95
For credit card orders phone 0044 171 374 2448 or fax 0044 171 374 8741


This is the first book to give a comprehensive account of co-operative inquiry, a way of doing research with people, in which all those involved combine the roles of both researcher and subject. Co-operative inquiry is a wide-ranging and distinct form of participative research in which people use the full range of their sensibilities to inquire together into any aspect of the human condition.

The purpose of the book is twofold. First, to provide detailed practical guidance for any peer group wishing to use the method. The text covers:

The second purpose of the book is to provide a substantial theoretical background to the practice of co-operative inquiry. The topics include:

Co-operative Inquiry will encourage and support the large number of people, at all levels, throughout academia, the helping professions and in the wider community, who are looking for a way of doing research, whether in social or natural science, that is both wide-ranging and has an authentic human face. It commends a form of inquiry which makes participative forms of knowing and decision-making central to its method

Contents

Introduction \ Research Method and Participation \ Overview of Co-operative Inquiry \ Initiating an Inquiry Group \ Stages of the Inquiry Cycle \ Inquiry Outcomes \ Radical Memory and Inquiry Skills \ Validity Procedures \ Validity and Beyond \ A Postconceptual Worldview \ Arguments for Co-operative Inquiry


John Heron is an international consultant, researcher and writer, based in a centre in New Zealand. He founded the Human Potential Research Project at the University of Surrey, and was Assistant Director of the British Postgraduate Medical Federation at the University of London. His other recent books are The Complete Facilitator’s Handbook (London: Kogan Page, 1999), Sacred Science (Ross-on-Wye: PCCS Books,1998), Group Facilitation (London: Kogan Page,1993), Feeling and Personhood (London: Sage, 1992), Helping the Client (London: Sage,1990) and The Facilitators’ Handbook (London: Kogan Page,1989).