Working title: Exploring Appreciative Pedagogy: Ingredients, Instances, and Practices throughout a School

What is going right? Over the last several years, I have been witness to a school that appears to be doing things in such a way that its learning community is enthused and proud. The indicators and evidence for such complimentary praise come from the students, parents, teachers and even the accreditation association. Natural curiosity prompts me to ask Why? How is this magic created and sustained? What are the real functional pieces to make it so?

As I have seen the school develop this spirit or identity, I believe that something special has been created. The creation has been and continues to be dynamic with the various stakeholders contributing. Now what has been the guiding set of principles or values to unify, guide and direct such a creation? As my own professional interests and curiosity lead me, I have come across Appreciative Inquiry and marvel at what I consider to be Appreciative Inquiry (as I understand it) in action at the school. What synchronicity in terms of theory and application – and it wasn’t planned that way! Subsequent thinking and reasoning then prompts the question - Might this be an appreciative school which subscribes to a set of guiding principles? And if so, what are they?

I am interested in conducting a case study to look at what might possibly be defined and coined as appreciative pedagogy through the various appreciative sets of lenses in the educational context. The lens through which I would look to examine the school would be through appreciative organizational cultures, appreciative leadership, appreciative intelligence and appreciative pedagogy as described in the current literature. In congruent constructionist fashion, I propose to do this through use of an appreciative inquiry methodology. I am hoping to be able to identify and describe a set of possible educational practices that, though they reach across various disciplines, may be integrated/connected in order to provide for a possible scheme of appreciative pedagogy which extends throughout a school rather than existing in isolated practices.