What is critical appreciation? Insights from studying the critical turn in an appreciative inquiry
通过研究一个大型彩票研究项目中的批判转向，探讨了在欣赏式探究中引入批判性欣赏的过程，即先批判解构经验，再通过欣赏式循环构建新经验，以促进社会创新。
Appreciative inquiry was developed in the late 1980s as a process to encourage social innovation by involving people in discovering the ‘best of what is’. Recent research has suggested that appreciative inquiry practitioners’ focus on positivity is now inhibiting appreciative inquiry’s focus on generative theory. This article responds by asking the question ‘what is critical appreciation?’, then seeks answers by studying the critical turn in a Big Lottery Research project. By tracking the narratives of research assistants as they describe the ‘life worlds’ and ‘systems’ in their community, we clarify the recursive processes that lead to deeper levels of appreciation. We contribute to the development of critical appreciative processes that start with a critical inquiry to deconstruct experience and then engage critical appreciative processes during the remainder of the appreciative inquiry cycle to construct new experiences. The initial critical inquiry establishes which system imperatives colonize the life world of participants whilst subsequent critical appreciative processes build participants’ aspirations to design new social systems.