Donna Frost

The critical creative collaborative inquiries in action 157 5 Working reflexively As outlined in Chapter 4 , working reflexively was integral to achieving a rigorous research process throughout the inquiries. As initiating researcher and facilitator of both the inquiry process and of the development of professional artistry I was explicitly engaged in reflecting on my role within the research: what had been the effect, intended or unintended, of my actions and what was the extent of the alignment with my stated principles? The following sections illustrate how the principles of creativity, working with nature and metaphor, and being rigorous in the research process, came together in this inquiry generally and, more specifically, in my own journey as researcher and facilitator. Three short accounts of experience, my reflective response to the experience at the time and afterwards, and the resulting shift in behaviour or practice are presented. These are followed by a longer reflective narrative bringing together some of the ways I was engaged in coming to embody the landscape of this research and its methodological principles. These illustrations demonstrate working intentionally within nature and with metaphors, emotions, bodily senses and ‘othered’ ways of knowing. They demonstrate, as well, the principles of artistic and cognitive critique and reflexivity contributing to the rigour of the inquiry process. Walking in nature as part of academic supervision, and particularly in the woods, is a practice I learnt from my earliest work with one of my supervisors, Angie. The woods is where I often prepared for and reflected upon my writing, research or facilitation work. In the examples shared here I was away from home for a week on a work related trip. The work days were full and my morning walks in the woods were my opportunity to be alone. I had had some particularly energetic meetings with both the inquiry groups in the period before taking the trip and, as shown in the accounts below, I took my role as facilitator of the inquiry groups with me into the woods. I walked alone at these times, letting my feet take me where they took me and silently noticing what I noticed, sometimes stopping to look at something closely or to take a photo. When the time was right I would record my experiences on paper or in a notebook taken with me for this purpose and then reflect upon them. The common theme in these three stories is the direction my reflections took me after the experience and the puzzling out I tried to do, with respect to the role of my senses, body, emotions and cognition, regarding both the experience and, thereafter, the inquiry into professional artistry. Each story is reconstructed from my journal notes and followed by a short reflection.