The Challenge of Creating a Community of Inquiry

Abstract

This chapter offers a “blow-by-blow” account of a small group of scholar/consultants that referred to itself as a “Community of Inquiry” (Torbert, 1976; 1991). The general model of a “Community of Inquiry” can potentially be recreated in a variety of settings—businesses, schools, or government agencies— where the aim is to improve the congruity among mission, strategy, members’ practices, and outcomes (and to question what each of these terms means). (1985) propose the creation of “communities of inquiry within communities of social practice” as a social change process, and we see a variety of illustrations of this approach in this book, particularly in Chapters 4, 8, and 11.