Human Inquiry for Living Systems

If we don't have the kinds of health and human services or even the kinds of lives, communities and organisations we want, then we need to think differently. Yoland Wadsworth offers an inspired insight and radically new proposition: that the act of our 'inquiring', of researching and evaluating together, is the way by which every living organism and all collective human life goes about continuously achieving the conditions for life. Human Inquiry for Living Systems: Building in Research and Evaluation for Life explores this new approach for bringing about both wanted change and stability. By inquiring around 'full cycles' of acting, observing, questioning, feeling, reflecting, thinking, planning and acting again, Yoland identifies how new life might be brought to what we do. All three of Yoland Wadsworth's best-selling books have been brought together in this Routledge trilogy to offer for the first time a coherent body of work addressing the pressing needs of people to 'inquire their way' to the future.

Yoland Wadsworth is a pathbreaker in research methodology and its use in social research in health, community and human services for over forty years. She has been an applied sociologist and consultant to community-based non-government organisations, self-help groups, and state, federal and local governments; an Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Applied Social Research, RMIT University; Principal Fellow in the McCaughey VicHealth Centre for Mental Health and Community Wellbeing, University of Melbourne; and deputy to the Director of the Policy & Research Branch in Premier & Cabinet, Victorian government. She is also author of the best-selling Do It Yourself Social Research (Vol 1 in this 40th anniversary Routledge trilogy), and Everyday Evaluation on the Run (Vol 2 in this 40th anniversary Routledge trilogy).

1. Some introductory foundations to build on 2. Living systems 3. Cycles of research, evaluation and inquiring for life 4. More (truly) living human services 5. Ten examples of building in inquiry for living human service systems 6. Concluding words Appendix 1. Applying living systems inquiry to evaluation facilitation - an example Appendix 2. Applying living systems inquiry to organisational improvement - an example Appendix 3. What's the Myers-Briggs® indicator got to do with it? Appendix 4. An example of use of the sequence of 'whole cycle' strategic research questions-in health promotion practice Appendix 5. Other integral theories of change