Sets forth a new paradigm for the philosophy and practice of research in fields of human activity: a collaborative, experimental approach in which inquiry is firmly rooted in subjects' experience of their lives. Covers the philosophy, methodology, practice and prospects of the new paradigm, showing how to do research with people rather than on people. Synthesizes material from researchers pursuing similar paths in Europe, North America, Africa and India as well as relevant reprints and appreciations of classical material.

Focused on exploring human experience from an authentic researcher perspective, Heuristic Inquiry: Researching Human Experience Holistically presents heuristic inquiry as a unique phenomenological, experiential, and relational approach to qualitative research that is also rigorous and evidence-based. Nevine Sultan describes a distinguishing perspective of this research that treats participants not as subjects of research but rather as co-researchers in an exploratory process marked by genuineness and intersubjectivity. Through the use of real-life examples illustrating the various processes of heuristic research, the book offers an understanding of heuristic inquiry that is straightforward and informal yet honors its creative, intuitive, and poly-dimensional nature.

An important practical sourcebook for new ways of undertaking research, this volume presents both an up-to-date assessment of the state of theoretical and methodological debates in collaborative human research and a summary of projects undertaken using collaborative methodologies. It addresses some of the difficulties involved with the collaborative approach: when the researcher is no longer separated from the researched, questions about how to collaborate and how to manage power relations become important. When people are inquiring into their personal experience, questions of subjectivity and validity are raised. These methodological problems are addressed in the first half of the book, while the remainder resolves them in research context

This is the first book to provide a comprehensive account of co-operative inquiry: a way of doing research with people where the roles of researcher and subject are integrated. Co-operative inquiry is a distinctive and wide-ranging form of participative research in which people use the full range of their sensibilities to inquire together into any aspect of the human condition. This book offers both an extensive exploration of its theoretical background and a detailed practical guide to the methods involved. Topics covered include: a critique of established research techniques; the underlying participative paradigm of co-operative inquiry; the epistemological and political aspects of participation; different types of co-operative inquiry and the range of inquiry topics; ways of setting up inquiry groups and enabling their development; four kinds of inquiry outcome and the primacy of the practical; the main stages of the inquiry cycle, highlighting key issues for practice at each stage; and special skills and procedures used for enhancing validity.

The book deals with research for and with people

Yoland Wadsworth’s ground-breaking proposition is that the act of inquiry is the way by which every living organism and all collective human life goes about continuously learning, improving and changing. Building in Research and Evaluation explores this new approach, a basic theory of human understanding and action. By deepening our understanding about the cyclical processes of acting, observing, questioning, feeling, reflecting, thinking, planning and acting again, Wadsworth identifies how new life might be brought to what we do, both professionally, and personally. Far from being dry academic theory, she shows how this practice-derived evaluative inquiry process can drive progress toward social justice and human betterment. This book will open new vistas of thought and new methods of inquiry for the reflective practitioner in health, human services, education, social sciences. It is the theoretical capstone of a trilogy of best-selling books by Wadsworth, which also includes Everyday Evaluation on the Run and Do-it-Yourself Social Research.

Studies of human development have taken an ethnographic turn in the 1990s. In this volume, leading anthropologists, psychologists, and sociologists discuss how qualitative methodologies have strengthened our understanding of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral development, and of the difficulties of growing up in contemporary society. Part 1, informed by a post-positivist philosophy of science, argues for the validity of ethnographic knowledge. Part 2 examines a range of qualitative methods, from participant observation to the hermeneutic elaboration of texts. In Part 3, ethnographic methods are applied to issues of human development across the life span and to social problems including poverty, racial and ethnic marginality, and crime. Restoring ethnographic methods to a central place in social inquiry, these twenty-two lively essays will interest everyone concerned with the epistemological problems of context, meaning, and subjectivity in the behavioral sciences.