ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the sequencing of inquiry and compares the sequencing of living systems with the sequencing of inquiry. The inquiry cycle casts light on another common problem in research, evaluation and improvement activities. Much conventional social science appears to get stuck in observing and analysing without easily moving on to planning and action—or alternatively may get stuck in experimental action without easily incorporating the relevant field-based generation of that theory. The chapter presents the summary of sequence of research cycle questions. The chapter looks at research and evaluation through the lens of questioning as the dynamic for full cycle inquiry, and uses the metaphor of the house to illuminate ideas about the self-organised, self-organising ‘building in’ of continuous inquiry to relevant field environments. As economic, political and socio-cultural organising has ‘scaled up’ to whole-of-population levels of consideration, research strategies and methodologies and their accompanying techniques have also become ever more specialised and increasingly disconnected from each other.
