Thinking and re-thinking a plan

Much going on in the skype discussions this week - Tuesday's conversations were around talking about your inquiry plans without just telling us the topic itself. We spoke about (and those in the call tried out) actually trying to introduce your inquiry through WHAT YOU ARE GOING TO DO, to see if getting a sense of what you are planning to do would lead us anyway to what the topic is.

The tendency is to state the topic (that already exists) and not be explicit about what it is YOU plan to do to deepen your knowledge-experience within and around this in relation to your own practice.

I had the visual image of a map from all if this. The map being your inquiry; made up of lots of towns, cities, villages, some bigger/smaller than others, some more inhabitied than others, all with something to offer and all contributing to the overall picture. Trying to look down (take a birds-eye view) of the whole map of your inquiry to see all the parts; what's there already? what parts overlap? where are the contrasts? where are the more sparce areas, the gaps? What are you going to do to immerse yourself in this map, in your inquiry, how do you find out more (beyond asking others in interviews)?? 

Today's discussion had by intention a module two focus and conversations were rich in the areas of data and analysis; what you gather and what you do with it. The what you do with it being most important, recognising that the raw data by itself is not the research. Those in this call spend some time thinking and re-thinking their inquiry plans, what they were intending to do with the information and experiences collected. Asking questions of the data, considering what it's offering you in the context of what you know from the literature and your own experiences. Looking not for the data to be the 'thing', to answer your questions, but to allow you to question more...

Designing an inquiry proposal is like planning any creative project; it needs some stimulus, some background context, questions, thinking, reading, doing, re-thinking, shifting, editing, refining...it's a process and we want to see and hear that process in your writing of the proposal.

Those that were part of these discussions DO comment below with your blog addresses so that we can catch your on-going thoughts and reflections...