Abstract
This chapter reflects on an Appreciative Inquiry research project undertaken at Bethlehem Tertiary Institute (BTI) in Aotearoa New Zealand. The project explored how staff at BTI journey together to nurture more conscious and intentional attachment with God, resulting in transformed lives and communities. The five steps commonly associated with Appreciative Inquiry, namely, define, discovery, dream, design and destiny were implemented in a manner intended to be highly collaborative and fostering of consciousness-raising and commitment to what participants corporately love as Christian educators and researchers. In pursuit of these outcomes, the project took on a multivocal, multimodal and multipurposeful character, which was not initially anticipated but which did affirm participants’ creativity, resourcefulness and commitment to their shared vision. This chapter describes the ways in which this process unfolded, and how it assisted BTI staff to engage in collaborative research, reimagine their core values and identities and to really think through what Christian higher education means to them.
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Arkwright, J., Chihota, C. (2018). Using Appreciative Inquiry and Multimodal Texts as Transformative Tools Within a Christ-Following, Missional, Learning Community. In: Luetz, J., Dowden, T., Norsworthy, B. (eds) Reimagining Christian Education. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-0851-2_17
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