Tell the story of the whole inquiry process

In our Module Three session today we talked about the three ways you are reporting on your inquiry:

1. Written essay
2. Professional artefact
3. Oral presentation

Each of these are forms for telling the whole story of your inquiry.

• They all should include:
• why you did it
• what you intended to do
• What happened (the data collection)
• What the data told you when you analysed it and triangulated with the literature and your own Professional practice experiences.
• How it has impacted on your professional practice.

So the artefact is not the result of the inquiry - The artifact is another way of saying what you say in the essay. It is just a professional artefact - 'a thing' that other professionals like yourself can engage with and understand.

Remember in Module One: Howard Gardner’s work: 

Communication that responds to different learning styles such as naturalistic, bodily kinaesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, verbal linguistic, logical mathematical, existential, spatial visual, and musical. 

In your professional practice do people use verbal linguistics to explain things OR do they move, sing, act feel, chat, draw to explain ideas to each other. Use the language of your practice NOT WORDS. The Professional Artefact is your opportunity to use the language of your practice. 

We talked mostly about the Professional Artefact. This was about how you can start to envision what it will be. However you cannot really start to work too much on the artefact until you have done some analysis. Here are two really important points:

Firstly, analysis is not just summing up your data. Analysis is a critical look at the whole experience comparing three things – the literature (the ideas other people have said), your own experience including your experience of collecting the data, your reflective diary, and the experiences before the inquiry that led you to be interested in doing it in the first place, and lastly the data you collect. Looking at themes and resonance and contradictions across all three of these is called triangulation. Doing this is how you can critically look at the questions you posed at the beginning of the inquiry. Doing this unpicks everything and is always (whatever level of work you are doing), always disorientating, somewhat frightening and confusing because it is the point where you are opening yourself up to look for something new, to stretch yourself beyond what you know you know. But that is the heart of the inquiry; be brave. Because it is after data collection you might feel you need to tidy everything up not make a mess in your head but the data collection is not the climax of the inquiry it is just getting something to do the inquiry with. After collecting data, it is not time to tidy up, its time to get mixing all the ingredients.

The artefact is NOT the result of the inquiry, like the answer to the whole thing. The artefact is as much about the process as the critical review paper you are writing. So please think as if you are in fact handing in Two things that explain the inquiry - TWO artefacts. 

• The first is in the form of a formalised academic artefact – a critical review.
• The second is in the form of something that is found in your professional practice (culture) it is a professional artefact. (We cannot say what this will be because it is different for each person according to their work / profession.)

We can help in telling you what the first artefact (the critical review looks like – in fact we give you guide-lines on what it looks like how many words etc… and we also give you guide-lines on how to start making it – when to start drafting etc…). But just because we help out with what the academic artefact (the critical review) looks like doesn’t mean the critical review IS the inquiry. It is a result of the inquiry just as the professional artefact is too. The Inquiry – what you are documenting with the two artefacts is the activity and reflective thought you do.

Think of the Professional artefact as another way of explaining your inquiry. You can see you need to do the whole inquiry before you can be really clear about the content of the critical review or the professional artefact.

In fact you will explain your inquiry in three ways through writing (critical review), through talking (oral presentation) and through x (x=professional artefact). Each of these ways of sharing offer unique advantages for communication and have things that cannot be communicated very well through them. Think about how you will use the three forms to give us a full rounded understanding of the whole inquiry process.

Adesola