Appreciative Inquiry: A Path to Change in Education

Appreciative Inquiry (AI) introduces a new approach to educational change. Most state and federal initiatives for educational change grow out of a deficit model of what is wrong with schools and what is needed to fix them. Implementation of new reforms has historically been mandated by administrators with little impact. The emphasis of AI is upon what is right with the organization and forms the basis for new initiatives and further change. This model proposes a cycle of inquiry used by leaders who distribute leadership across their constituents. Organizational learning is a process of individual and collective inquiry that modifies or constructs organizational theories-in-use and changes practice. Using AI as a process to implement the Common Core State Standards (CCSS), embraces a distributed leadership structure, produces organizational learning opportunities, and creates the conditions for a more impactful implementation of the next reform.