Mindful Inquiry: A Learner-Centered Approach to Qualitative Research (paper)

With thanks to Adair Linn Nagata

Mindful inquiry combines the Buddhist concept of mindfulness with phenomenology, critical theory, and hermeneutics in a process that puts the inquirer in the center(Bentz & Shapiro, 1998, p. 171). Mindful Inquiry helped me develop both reflexivity and voice and resulted in personal transformation especially valuable in researching intercultural interactions.

Mindful Inquiry (MI)

MI is based on 13 philosophical assumptions that are listed here.

1. Awareness of self and reality and their interaction is a positive value in itself and should be present in research processes.


2. Tolerating and integrating multiple perspectives is a value.


3. It is important to bracket our assumptions and look at the often unaware, deep layers of consciousness and unconsciousness that underlie them.


4. Human existence, as well as research, is an ongoing process of interpreting both one’s self and others, including other cultures and subcultures.


5. All research involves both accepting bias––the bias of one’s own situation and context––and trying to transcend it.


6. We are always immersed in and shaped by historical, social, economic, political, and cultural structures and constraints, and those structures and constraints sually have domination and oppression, and therefore suffering, built into them.


7. Knowing involves caring for the world and the human life that one studies.


8. The elimination or dimunition of suffering is an important goal of or value accompanying inquiry and often involves critical judgment about how much suffering is required by existing arrangements.


9. Inquiry often involves the critique of existing values, social and personal illusions, and harmful practices and institutions.


10. Inquiry should contribute to the development of awareness and self-reflection in the inquirer and may contribute to the development of spirituality.


11. Inquiry usually requires giving up ego or transcending self, even though it is grounded in self and requires intensified self-awareness.


12. Inquiry may contribute to social action and be part of social action.


13. The development of awareness is not a purely intellectual or cognitive process but part of a person’s total way of living her life. (Bentz & Shapiro,1998, pp. 6-7)

MI is based on four knowledge traditions which Bentz and Shapiro describe as follows:

• Phenomenology: a description and analysis of consciousness and experience


• Hermeneutics: analysis and interpretation of texts in context


• Critical Social Theory: analysis of domination and oppression with a view to changing it


• Buddhism: spiritual practice that allows one to free oneself from suffering and illusion in several ways, e.g., becoming more aware (1998, p. 6)

Originally I thought that I would produce a competency model that could be the basis for training courses, but the main result of my efforts is an appreciation for a different way of being and relating. Simply stated, a transformation occurred while I was immersed in trying to understand how to relate more skillfully.

I do not have time to really go into what I came to understand about resonance, but let me try to summarize it in three points. I was particularly interested in three aspects of the phenomenon of resonance.

• Intrapersonal Level: Promotion of an internal state that can contribute to a
  kind of inner peace, pursued through self-cultivation


• Interpersonal Level: Relational attunement, an experience of synchrony
  between two people that provides the basis for mutuality


• Research Application: A characteristic of good qualitative
  research

I want to emphasize again the advantages I see of using MI for intercultural communication research. It offers a learner-centered approach to personally important questions, a holistic approach for inquiring into complex, multilayered interactions with the added bonus of providing a method of self-cultivation for you as an interculturalist. Because MI allows you to investigate phenomena that really matter to you, it can also help reveal the real, deeply personal meaning of your research.

Bentz, V. M., & Shapiro, J. J. (1998). Mindful inquiry in social research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Nagata, A.L. (2002) Mindful Inquiry: A Learner-Centered Approach to Qualitative Research,Keynote at 2002 SIETAR Japan Conference.