Background
O'Fallon and Kramer wrote in a 2002 paper about their work:
Insight Dialogic Inquiry is a combination of spiritual practice and
Western research approaches. A question we had to ask ourselves
was, “To what extent can a meditation practice be a research
methodology?”
To answer this question we began to look at spiritual inquiry and how our work relates to developments in this field. We began by looking at existing research methodologies and when we found none that matched the assumptions upon which our work was based, we moved to meditation as research. Finally we developed a combination of meditation and a formal research methodology with the help of Annie Brooks, our spiritual research consultant.
Rothberg supports the idea of multidimensional inquiry which will demand critical transformation of the “...present ideas of spirituality, scholarship, and educational institution... Spiritual inquiry is only at the beginning” (p. 9).
We see Insight Dialogic Inquiry as being part of this beginning, on the cusp between Western sciences and Eastern meditation practices, with the emphasis on meditation practice as a method of inquiry. The Eastern component brings mindfulness, contemplative sweeps, and deep inquiry through engaged meditation in the place of analytical or discursive. The Western approaches involve processes and methods that are transparent and systematic, valid, triangulated, credible and capable of pointing toward transformations in the researchers.
References
O'Fallon, T. J., & Kramer, G. P. (1998). Insight dialogue and insight dialogic
inquiry. Dissertation Abstracts International, 59 (02), 515A.
(UMI No. 9824352)
O'Fallon, T, & Kramer, G. (2002). Insight dialogic inquiry: A collaborative,
meditation-based research methodology. Unpublished manuscript.
Rothberg, D. (1994). Spiritual inquiry. ReVision. 17(2). 2-11.
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