Donna Frost

Discussion and conclusions 269 8 Limitations of the inquiry A weakness of this study is the prolonged period of data analysis in which I worked largely alone. The strengths and advantages of the collaborative process of co- creation of meaning and contestation of understandings were not systematically present during this period. Although I shared my developing understandings with past inquiry members via email and some members of both inquiry groups participated in extra meetings, this was more akin to traditional member-checking than co-creation of new knowledge. I have provided a detailed description of the process followed during synthesis of the entire data set, in Chapter 4 , and made clear throughout the thesis when I am sharing insights generated collaboratively and insights that are mine alone. This aspect of the inquiry would have been strengthened by determining together with inquiry group participants how our collaboration could have been systematically continued once the inquiry activities in practice situations had ceased. I could also have made more use of online and digital ‘spaces’ to facilitate collaboration. This would have enabled continued participation in critical and creative synthesis of the data, for example, for inquiry members who had moved away or who could not for other reasons participate in the post-inquiry meetings. A potential weakness of the inquiry is the degree to which we introduced and considered alternative explanations and the way in which we tested our developing conclusions during the course of the inquiries. Strategies to increase rigor, such as asking critical questions, seeking alternative explanations, playing devil’s advocate and imagining how we would defend our developing conclusions to colleagues or a sceptic were built into the CCCI process. This part of the process was particularly vulnerable to ‘being skipped’, however, due to time constraints or because we considered that we had engaged in contestation as part of the meaning making process. Despite the prolonged engagement in an iterative process, the many episodes of data collection and multiple forms of triangulation, a degree of ‘group think’ cannot be completely discounted. Finally, although the patterns of engagement and the facilitative practices presented in this thesis are useful and meaningful to us, the two inquiry groups, in that they represent accurately our understandings of our own professional artistry, it is possible that another inquiry group would come to different understandings. This is a characteristic of this type of research. To enable readers to determine the transferability of these results to their own settings, detailed information has been given in Chapter 5 about the context of the inquiry groups and the people who participated.