Donna Frost

86 In the previous chapter I argued that the assumptions of critical creativity provided a framework suited to studying professional artistry and offered principles for action for working collaboratively with the practitioners who joined the inquiry. I introduced the specific methodological principles bounding and shaping this study. In this chapter the focus moves to design and methods. The research design, critical creative collaborative inquiry (CCCI), is introduced and located in relation to the collaborative inquiry literature. After explaining the procedures for identifying potential participants and setting up the inquiry groups, ethical issues are discussed. The specific steps in the CCCI process, presented as a CCCI lemniscate cycle, are explained. Research methods for capturing experience, generating data and co- creation of meaning are described. In this research nurses and nurse practitioners (NPs) who were interested in developing the particularly effective aspects of their practiceworkedwith me in one of two collaborative inquiry groups. The nurses in each group worked individually and collectively with the other members of their group to generate and interpret data about professional artistry within their nursing practice. I was the initiating researcher and a member of both groups. Datawere also generated and interpreted about my practice and my developing professional artistry as a facilitator of the inquiry groups. The processes of meaning making and generating new knowledge were begun collaboratively, in the inquiry groups. Making sense of the data set as a whole across both the inquiries, including the information generated about my practice as a facilitator, was my responsibility and work, during the inquiries and after the collaborative processes had come to a close. From principles to design and methods: a work in progress The CCCI design and aspects of the methods were emergent: they came into being during the life time of the research and partly as a result of the collaboration with the nurses and the NPs who participated with me in the inquiry groups. Over time, as we worked together, the term ‘Critical Creative Collaborative Inquiry’ became an accurate description of the groups and of our ways of working together. Such a process is congruent with the philosophy and assumptions of critical creativity, and with the four methodological principles introduced and examined in chapter three. The design described here, therefore, was a work in progress throughout much of the study and it did not look exactly the same in both the inquiry groups. In this chapter the CCCI design and methods are presented in their polished and ideal form; the form best suited to inquiring into the nature of professional artistry and its facilitation. This is how we intended and tended to work and investigate together