Inclusive Spaces: Using Appreciative Processes to Transform Social Structures

Guest editors: Jeanie Cockell and Joan McArthur-Blair

Focus of the Issue:

This issue will focus on how the practice of Appreciative Inquiry (AI) fosters and opens inclusive spaces in organizations of all kinds. We invite Appreciative Inquiry practitioners to share articles, stories, case studies, reflections, art, images, poetry, research, models and theory regarding creating inclusive spaces. We are particularly interested in how Appreciative Inquiry has generated those inclusive spaces with emancipatory and social justice frameworks such as transformative education or critical theory.

Editors:

Jeanie Cockell, an educational and organizational consultant, ‘makes magic’ through engaging her clients in collaboratively co-creating authentically appreciative and transformative relationships. As a presenter, writer, facilitator, teacher and consultant, she inspires individuals and organizations to create positive futures and respond effectively to change by building on strengths and successes. Contact: Jeanie@jeaniecockell.com; www.jeaniecockell.com ,

Joan McArthur-Blair is a writer and speaker who grounds her Appreciative Inquiry and leadership work in her love of words and in the possibilities of higher education. Her background is in higher education, a world where she spent 28 amazing years, most recently as a college president. Contact: jmcarthur-blair@ns.sympatico.ca

Joan and Jeanie are currently co-authoring ‘Learning Magic: Appreciative Inquiry in Higher Education’ to be published in 2012. Joan is also writing ‘The Quivering Heart: Hope, Despair and Forgiveness in Education Leadership.’

To contribute

To get a copy of the Call of Articles contact Jeanie Cockell, jeanie@jeaniecockell.com. Send a proposal (300 words maximum) for the August 2012 issue of AI Practitioner by December 1, 2011 to Joan McArthur-Blair, jmcarthur-blair@ns.sympatico.ca or Jeanie Cockell, jeanie@jeaniecockell.com.

Your Proposed Contribution

Here are some questions that may be useful as you think about your contribution to the issue.

• How and where do you practice awareness of and respect for the diversity of others?

• How do you positively address the issues of who has power?

• Who gets included in AI processes and what processes facilitate that?

• How do you create spaces that foster transformation?

• How do you use reframing and dialogue to move from a problem focus to a possibility focus when working with the profound issues of exclusion?

• What have you considered, as an AI practitioner, as you have blended critical theory and AI?

• How do you reflect on or find space for your own differences and world views?

Some possible topics:

1. AI and creating inclusive spaces

2. AI across differences – culture, ethnicity, gender, race, sexual orientation, ability, religion, class

3. AI and power and privilege

4. AI in highly diverse organizations

5. AI and conflict transformation

6. AI and social justice

7. AI and holistic organizations

8. Critical theory, AI and organizational change

9. Personal reflections on diversity and being an AI practitioner

10. Others related topics

Download the Call for Article PDF here.