Educational Action Research

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Theoretical Resource
The soul of teaching and professional learning: an appreciative inquiry into
the Enneagram of reflective practice

Tim Luckcock

To cite this article: Tim Luckcock (2007) Theoretical Resource, Educational Action Research,
15:1, 127-145, DOI: 10.1080/09650790601151483

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Educational Action Research
Vol. 15, No. 1, March 2007, pp. 127–145

THEORETICAL RESOURCE

The soul of teaching and professional

learning: an appreciative inquiry into
the Enneagram of reflective practice
Tim Luckcock*
Macclesfield, UK
Educational
10.1080/09650790601151483
REAC_A_215076.sgm
0965-0792
Original
Taylor
102007
15
Dr
tim@ai-consulting.co.uk
00000March
TimLuckcock
and
&Article
Francis
(print)/1747-5074
Francis
Action
2007Ltd
Research (online)

This paper makes a contribution to the theory and practice of educational action research by intro-
ducing two theoretical and methodological resources as part of a personal review of sustained profes-
sional experience: ‘appreciative inquiry’ and the ‘enneagram’. It is more than a theoretical exercise,
however, because it also constitutes an action-oriented reflection on the transitional nature of the
author’s professional situation, moving from work as a school-based primary school teacher and head
teacher to work as a consultant. It is thus a distillation of past experience and a vision of how profes-
sional learning might be supported in the future. In the first part, appreciative inquiry is introduced
as an associated form of action research methodology that follows four successive stages of discovery,
dream, design and destiny around an affirmative topic choice. The author then explains his choice
of the enneagram as a useful life-affirming tool for self-understanding in personal and professional
development and how it might be used to stimulate reflexive awareness of the inner work of teaching.
Thirdly, in the discovery stage, the author uses the enneagram to engage in a sequence of nine short
mediations that seek to appreciate the positive core of teaching from the inside and celebrate the
intimate experience of teaching according to nine distinct modes of consciousness. Fourthly, the
author builds on the range of teaching strengths revealed by the enneagram by engaging in the dream
stage of appreciative inquiry that evokes an imaginative envisioning of the kind of reflective practice
the world is calling for from teachers. Finally, the author concludes by looking ahead to the design
and destiny stages, reflecting on the need to explore the implications of the inquiry for systematic
forms of practitioner research and appropriate kinds of tutorial support for professional learning.

Keywords: Celebration; Emancipation; Method; Practitioner research; Professional

development; Spirituality

Introduction
This paper seeks to make a contribution to the theory and practice of educational
action research by introducing two theoretical and methodological resources as part

*8 Eddisbury Terrace, Macclesfield, Cheshire SK11 7EY, UK. Email: tim@thinkingforachange.co.uk

ISSN 0965-0792 (print)/ISSN 1747-5074 (online)/07/010127–19

© 2007 Educational Action Research
DOI: 10.1080/09650790601151483
128 T. Luckcock

of a personal review of sustained professional experience: ‘appreciative inquiry’ and

the ‘enneagram’. It is more than a theoretical exercise, however, because it also
constitutes an action-oriented reflection on the transitional nature of the my own
professional situation, moving from work as a school-based primary school teacher
and head teacher to work as a consultant in professional learning in higher education
and independent consultancy. It is thus aims to be both a distillation of past experi-
ence and a fresh holistic vision of how professional learning might be supported in the
future. Such an aim might fall somewhat short of Ruth Leitch and Christopher Day’s
call for a ‘holistic view’ of action research and reflective practice (Leitch & Day,
2000), but it does take seriously their suggestion that the insights of other paradigms
such as ‘counselling, psychotherapy, human relationships, personal growth and
systems theory’ (Leitch & Day, 2000, p. 187) should be included within educational
action research. These authors also note the relative neglect of attention paid to
‘mind-set, motivation, attitudes and emotion’ in the study of action research or reflec-
tive practice, an area in which I consider both appreciative inquiry and the enneagram
might prove especially helpful.
I write in the context of a policy initiative in the United Kingdom that currently
supports forms of practitioner research among serving teachers at the same time as
developing a more coherent strategy of professional learning. Although I broadly
support this initiative, I also believe it is timely to remind ourselves that practitioner
research is intrinsic to our own innermost vocation as teachers and not merely a
response to the latest policy initiative acting on the profession from outside. For the
purpose of this article, I am calling this innermost vocation and its inner artistry the
‘soul of teaching’.
In order to explore the soul of teaching and professional learning I have adopted
the method of appreciative inquiry (Ludema et al., 2001; Cooperrider et al., 2003) to
frame my own first-person research (Torbert, 2001) into this topic. My selection of
appreciative inquiry means that my writing is structured by beginning with an affir-
mative topic choice that then leads me into four phases of reflection, typically referred
to as the four Ds: discovery, dream, design and destiny (Whitney & Trosten-Bloom,
2003). This process is mapped out in Figure 1.
There is only scope for me to concentrate on the first two phases in this paper, leav-
Figure 1. The 4D cycle (based on Whitney & Trosten-Bloom, 2003, p. 6)

ing the second two for subsequent treatment. Appreciative inquiry is normally used
as a participatory form of action research, strength-based evaluation and organisa-
tional development. In this paper I use the method to engage in first-person research,
which means my writing is characterised by a personal focus on my own subjective
experience of practice and is largely written in the first person about my own aware-
ness. However, this does not mean that I do not want to communicate with others.
On the contrary, it is my hope that my own thinking in this area is intrinsically open
to second-person research, positively inviting others to engage in dialogue about the
inner experience of our shared practices. In this respect, exploring the subjective
aspects of teaching is not incompatible with seeking to understand objective themes
of the human condition. This concern resonates with the goals of ‘existential reflec-
tion’ discussed by Alan Feldman (2002), which are to:
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 129

Affirmative Topic
Choice

Discovery Dream
Appreciate What Is Imagine What Will Be

Positive Core
of Teaching

Destiny Design
Create What Will Be Determine What Should
Be

Figure 1. The 4D cycle (based on Whitney & Trosten-Bloom, 2003, p. 6)

● illuminate assumptions about oneself as a teacher

● bring to light assumptions, theories and myths about the outside systems that affect
teaching
● work towards a transformative and transcendent experience and emancipation.
(Feldman, 2002, pp. 247–248)

It is important to me that I am able to speak to teachers at all levels in a way that is

existentially credible because it is grounded, authentic and broad-based. And I want
to encourage colleagues towards a model of soul-friendly practitioner research that will
be congruent with their own experiential understanding of reflective practice in the
‘real-world’ as we participate in collaborative research and reflective practice together.
130 T. Luckcock

Affirmative topic choice and the enneagram

It is perhaps unusual to talk about the ‘soul’ in either academic or professional

contexts, possibly because it is regarded as either too nebulous or too antiquated a
subject. Indeed, it is not my concern to provide a metaphysical definition of the ‘soul’
that would necessarily lend precision to its use as a technical theological term. Nor do
I attempt to propose a modern psychological theory of personhood that would revive
interest in ancient philosophical conceptions of self. While I would not wish to
discount the relevance of such interests, my main reason for wanting to talk about the
soul is that, for me, this is an intrinsically affirmative topic choice that reaches to the
core of our humanity as professionals. It affirms a sensibility towards the inner dimen-
sions of teaching and practitioner research that would include the imagination,
emotion and passion involved in our reflective practice, what Marion Dadds (1995)
has called ‘passionate enquiry’, as well as philosophical capacities such as insightful-
ness, creativity, openness toward experience, meaning and purpose in living. The
importance of emotions in the research process has been addressed by Colleen
McLaughlin (2003) and, following Polanyi, the importance of personal participation
in knowledge creation combined with intellectual passion by Bridget Somekh (2003).
Talk of the soul also resonates with a ‘transpersonal orientation’ to reflective prac-
tice that emphasises inner self-development and the relationship of internal to exter-
nal self (Wellington & Austin, 1996). It is pertinent that Peter Reason (2000) goes so
far as to encourage action research as a transpersonal method of ‘spiritual practice’.
Similarly, my use of the term ‘soul-friendly’ is intended to be affirmative in registering
the need to care for this dimension of our being in professional discourse and practice.
This is a potentially fruitful term that can be generally attributed to anything which
benefits and enhances our own and others’ inner lives as persons during the course of
our professional work.
My reason for choosing this affirmative topic was to explore the positive core of
teaching. I have always been professionally interested in the animating dynamic of
my own practice that this phrase encapsulates. And the ‘soul of teaching’ is not
perhaps too far removed from appreciating the ‘soul of teachers’ as we experience the
sense of purpose, inner identity, beliefs and values that animate our own practice as
persons. The special importance of the inner intellectual and emotional drive of the
calling to teach has recently been articulated well by Christopher Day in his book A
Passion for Teaching (Day, 2005), and in order to reflect on this for myself I deliber-
ately draw on strands of personal development that have illuminated the inner work
of teaching for me.
The foremost form of personal and professional development that has impacted
on my own self-understanding has been gained through studying the enneagram.
The enneagram has been developed as a personality typing system for psychological
and spiritual development, and depicts nine basic structures of our inner life that
affect our predispositions to feel, think and act in certain ways. (Enneagram is
derived from two Greek words meaning nine-sided model.) As far as I am aware this
model has not been applied to education in the United Kingdom, although there is
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 131

one work in the USA relating it to teaching and learning styles (Levine, 1999). The
Enneagram differentiates nine aspects of our inner selves in terms of ‘nine faces of
the soul’ (Maitri, 2001). It is often compared with other personality typing
approaches which are perhaps more familiar in the world of education, such as the
Jungian-based Myers Briggs Personality Type Indicator. This approach was recom-
mended recently by Harry Tomlinson as one important means of self-awareness in
educational leadership development (Tomlinson, 2004), and it was also validated by
Osterman and Kottkamp (1993) in their work on the reflective practice of educators.
Unlike Myers Briggs applications, however, the enneagram tends to be used more
psychodynamically and transpersonally as a tool to facilitate processes of personal
transformation, from our ‘passions’ to ‘virtues’ (Maitri, 2005) as well as our ‘mental
fixations’ to ideals often referred to somewhat platonically as ‘holy ideas’ (Almaas,
1998). There is an undeniably esoteric dimension to the enneagram’s focus on
inner-work that might appear unusual to an academic and professional audience.
One of my tasks will be to introduce the theory of the enneagram in a grounded and
practical way so that is becomes both more accessible and open to critical appraisal
in an educational context. In applying the enneagram as theory to educational action
research I do not wish to imply the primacy of theory over practice, and it is helpful
to remember the definition of theory usefully elucidated by Richard Winter as
‘conceptions of general significance, initially located outside the immediate events
we wish to interpret, but with a potential bearing on how we may eventually decide
to explain them’ (1998, p. 369).
I have been a student of the enneagram for four years, attending several retreats and
workshops, and I have completed professional training with the Trifold School for
Enneagram Studies in Berkley, California, led by David Daniels (Daniels & Price,
2000) and Helen Palmer (Palmer, 1995; Palmer & Brown, 1998). One advantage of
this school’s approach to the enneagram that makes it compatible with the form of
participatory action research that I have adopted here is its emphasis on narrative as
an oral tradition. This is not so much a claim to esoteric knowledge passed on by word
of mouth, but rather an invitation to first-person reflection and lived inquiry in a
process of mutual second-person ‘cooperative inquiry’ into spirituality (Heron, 1996,
1998). Such an approach to social and political transformation beginning with the self
and group-work is illustrated by Claudio Naranjo’s work on The Enneagram of Society,
which is subtitled ‘healing the soul to heal the world’ (Naranjo, 2004).
It is important to emphasise that the model could easily be misconstrued as a means
of categorising and describing other people using methods of third-person research
about and on people, implicitly regarding people as abstract stereo-types. Indeed, this
misuse of the enneagram would be to replace one hegemony with another, with the
additional danger that psychometric approaches to personality and personal effective-
ness might be used intrusively to control or exploit teachers further. It is wise to be
critical of any construction of ‘the self’, and especially in the context of an increasingly
managerialised profession such as teaching tat has been re-constructed around partic-
ular notions of human effectiveness and enterprise. In this regard, it is helpful to
recognise the significance of one of the metaphors of organisation proposed by Gareth
132 T. Luckcock

Morgan; namely, the organisation as ‘psychic prison’ (Morgan, 1997). This particu-
lar ‘image’ of organisation, ‘encourages us to dig below the surface to uncover the
process and patterns of control that trap people in unsatisfactory modes of existence
and to find ways through which they can be transformed’ (Morgan, 1997, p. 245).
Such a perspective positively requires us to become more aware of the unconscious
drives in our working life, to appreciate that organisations may have become over-
rationalised and also draws attention to the ethical dimension of work. Negatively,
this perspective can overemphasise an individual unconscious dimension at the
expense of underemphasising collective ideological interests. It also ‘raises the spectre
of an Orwellian world where we attempt to manage each others minds’ (Morgan,
1997, p. 249). My own experience of the enneagram is that it is not concerned with
managing people’s minds, but more with facilitating self-understanding for the
purpose of personal development and team learning.
There is not scope for me to provide a detailed theoretical exposition of the ennea-
gram here other than to indicate its potential for illuminating the multi-faceted inner
drives and perspectives that are part of the soul of teaching as I have experienced it
over time. While I presuppose insights gained by previous study of the enneagram,
my portrayal of teaching is not an exercise in abstract conceptualising, as important
as this may be. It is rather a matter of ‘baring my soul’ in a fresh attempt to review my
own experiential and practical learning about the core of teaching since 1988 when I
first qualified to teach. The period since this date has seen an intense process of
continuous educational reform, a chief feature of which has been a concerted attempt
to reconstruct the identity and agency of teachers and head teachers in a way that one
commentator has called a ‘struggle for the soul of teachers’ (Ball, 1999). I fully reso-
nate with Ball’s moral concern for the well-being and authenticity of teachers, and
especially the way he demonstrates an ideological collusion between postmodernist
deconstruction of the ‘depthless self’ and the teacher as ‘spectacle’ and ‘object’ of
reform. I have chosen to engage in this struggle by using the enneagram to reflect on
the positive aspects of teaching with soul. I would contend that there is something
about the human spirit in first and second-person research and practice that is not
reducible to the somewhat soulless technologies of third-person mass change and
surveillance that have predominated in most of the educational reform I have experi-
enced during my career. If anything, the enneagram in my experience has proved an
antidote to being personally overwhelmed by this kind of process.
I therefore approach the enneagram in this paper as a tool for self-discovery, using
it as a prism to help differentiate nine distinct qualities that I can discern operating
within myself as an educationist. Indeed, I hope that introducing it for the purposes
of intrapersonal and interpersonal enquiry is more likely to avoid the dangers of its
potential misuse as a tool of management for ideological control.

Celebration: (re)discovering the soul of teaching

Following on from my affirmative topic choice of soul-friendly practitioner research,
with the help of the enneagram I now proceed to the first phase of appreciative inquiry
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 133

known as discovery. I have asked myself the ‘unconditional positive question’

(Ludema et al., 2001, p. 191): what is life-affirming in my approach to teaching? And
in answering this celebration-focused question I have written appreciatively in the
form of short meditative descriptions of my inner experience so as to articulate nine
life-affirming dimensions of the soul of teaching. I hope that readers likewise will take
a moment to reflect on each of these phenomenological-style portraits, not so much
with critique uppermost in mind but seeking to appreciate which aspects they partic-
ularly recognise in themselves, if not all.
Meditation 1. I am very aware of being attentive to evaluative issues of right and wrong. I
assess the quality of pupil learning by making judgements against criteria. I catch myself
in moments of self-criticism, kicking myself for mistakes made in my lessons. I am engaged
in formal processes of self-evaluation designed to perfect my practice. I find myself making
harsh personal judgements about the deficiencies of working conditions or the limitations
of aggressive parents. I complain about the lack of adequate car-parking facilities and I can
spot litter on the other side of the playground as easily as spelling-mistakes that jump off
the page. Deep within I am attuned to diagnosing competencies, behaviours and environ-
ments with a view to making improvements and correcting faults in my desire to make the
world a better place. I sense in all this that I am motivated as much by my own inner-critic
as by externally-imposed standards.
Meditation 2. As I gaze on students as they shuffle into my presence, I am aware of a sense
of compassion and a deep caring of others. The look on one’s face and demeanour of
another may evoke a special sympathy, particularly when I already know something of their
difficulties. I know that I am privileged to be able to do something to help, in however
small a way. I am aware of a calling to be a caring professional and crave to benefit and
nourish the people with whom I work. Academically, this involves me caring for the educa-
tional potential of students in a passionate commitment to eliciting, affirming and enhanc-
ing existing learning in them. I also care for students pastorally, ‘in loco parentis,’ with a
loving concern for their welfare and wellbeing, looking after their physical safety and
emotional security together with their needs for personal, social and health education as
well-rounded people.
Meditation 3. I can hardly catch my breath as I move frenetically from one task to another,
but as I do I realise my teaching is intensely busy and much hard work goes into successful
outcomes through my inner drive to achieve. I also like to be recognised for the results I
get. I am engaged in implementing multiple strategies, projects and initiatives. I have
action plans, performance indicators and success criteria coming out of my ears. I am
aware of an immense desire to achieve challenging practical goals and learning objectives
as effectively and efficiently as possible. I seem to be constantly doing in order to maximise
learning in the classroom, manage behaviour, encourage attendance, combat disaffection,
reduce exclusions etc., etc. Bring it all on.
Meditation 4. I am aware of hidden depths within myself that others seem to be oblivious
to and I feel a yearning to be emotionally intelligent in respect of knowing myself and
making myself understood by others. I reckon my best work is done with personal flair and
expressiveness, often dramatically motivated by deep personal values and an inner desire
to make a significant contribution to the lives of others beyond the ordinary and mundane.
I am attuned to what’s missing in education and am well aware that the most significant
learning is beyond measurement. I also sense my own personal inadequacy but with it a
desire to teach authentically. When I muse about the ultimate purpose of teaching in this
moment I am sensitive to what’s uniquely special about the eternal influence teachers can
134 T. Luckcock

have just through being in the company of students, longing to awaken pupils to a higher
purpose and the richness and beauty of life.

Meditation 5. My head is bulging with knowledge and I appreciate that teaching is an

intrinsically knowledgeable calling. I compartmentalise the curriculum into subjects and
domains which require specialised knowledge to do them justice. As well as trying to
achieve a manageable curriculum broken down into neat units of study I apportion time
slots of limited duration to deliver the material. I also take advantage of a viewpoint above
that of learners which enables me to be highly observant and relatively private. Even in the
midst of engaging with a large group of pupils in the classroom I can stand back dispas-
sionately from the situation to think about what’s going on, to notice things about us in a
moment of self-observation or of searching the understanding of pupils. However person-
able I may be, I realise I am also more private about what I have to reveal of myself in
comparison with the information I abstract from pupils and amass about them through
listening, watching, marking and testing etc. I also realise that after the moment of teach-
ing has passed, in a time of retreat from the fray, I engage in a kind of extended observation
in the process of assessment, accumulating and organising factual data about pupils. I
perceive that such information can be useful for my own immediate educative purposes,
but that it is also part of a nationwide research process attempting to capture objective
evidence about the progress of learning.

Meditation 6. As I go about my work I feel a strong sense of professional loyalty and dedi-
cation to the cause of education but I recognise that I am also tentative, wanting reassur-
ance that both the political governance of education and local leadership is sound and
trustworthy. I know in myself that I am well placed to question the merits of policy. In a
way which is critical to policy implementation, and not just critical of it, I am able to test
the wisdom of policy on the inside of the arena of practice. My concern for education
entails me carrying out educational risk-assessments (above health and safety) to minimise
the damage of ill-considered change. I am motivated to challenge authority because, serv-
ing on the front line in a fast changing policy nexus of multiple innovations, I want as much
certainty and reliability as possible. When I look closely, I notice that this same challenge
to authority is extended to myself, knowing that in the courageous moment of teaching
itself, daring to commit my own self, I am full of self-doubt, knowing my own authority
can at times be fallible regardless of how confidently I must behave. And I am incredulous
about the huge confidence trick involved in just me, on my own, managing so many kids,
if only they knew how insecure I sometimes feel.

Meditation 7. I may be prone to criticising policy but the desire to envision and initiate fresh
ideas myself really inspires me. Yes, I do routine planning for the sake of effectiveness and
efficiency but I also conceive and initiate my own creative options and imaginative ways of
doing things. I enjoy being stimulated by the lively minds of students and relish the spon-
taneity of teaching and learning, and the fact that ultimately I am not constrained or strait-
jacketed by my own or other people’s plans. I view the curriculum as an infinite array of
possibility and inter-connectedness. And the joy of teaching over-rides any of the grief and
strain that may also accompany it. I am positive and enthusiastic about my work and posi-
tively envision the ideal with a rich sense of imagination and fun.

Meditation 8. There are times when interpersonal conflict breaks out between students
and sometimes with pupils (not to mention parents and colleagues, etc.) I often find
myself having to assert my own authority in protecting the vulnerable, combating bully-
ing, anti-social behaviour etc. I can act impulsively when defending the weak and I’m
committed to championing justice in the classroom, struggling for fairness and fighting for
the truth of the situation. Even when I am caught up in such conflict I perceive that life
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 135

itself is a struggle and that the struggle in school reflects the struggle for life in the wider
local community and the anguish of the world at large. Beyond the classroom, I sense that
education itself is a struggle for social justice and access to opportunity from which many
are excluded through no fault of their own.

Meditation 9. When I’m in the thick of teaching all these other thoughts can fly out of the
window as I gather my energies to concentrate on the exacting task of communicating. Just
to get by in the classroom I merge with my pupils. And it’s exacting, to be so immersed in
order to orchestrate proceedings harmoniously. My mind is focused on whatever the task
demands in the present moment, responsive to the unceasing mental and physical activity
of pupils in the course of their learning. The emphasis of practising with attentiveness to
others brings a kind of self-forgetting because my innermost self is caught up in being given
out to others (and depleted in the process). I am tuned into the agenda of others and even
my teaching plans and learning objectives, which I thought were my own agenda, I dimly
perceive are actually someone else’s that I am obliged to mediate in a way that bypasses
my own inner significance. Although it is true also that I can obstinately resist any pressure
to change and do things differently, wanting to stay with the comfortable routines I know.
Anything for a quiet life.

In presenting these short meditative reflections, which reveal qualitatively distinct

inner orientations, I have focused on the life-affirming and generative nature of teach-
ing as I know it first hand. They reveal habits of mind and passions of the heart that
I have shared candidly in order to reveal the positive core of my own sense of vocation
and in order to appreciate the best of what I have grown to recognise and cherish in
colleagues over the years. Having tried to encapsulate the positive core of my own
purpose and identity as a teacher, in the next phase of appreciative inquiry I go on to
reflect more on its implications for positive change in teacher development and reflec-
tive practice.

Emancipation: dreaming about the reflective practice the world is calling for
In this section I move from the mood of celebration towards the mood of emancipa-
tion, by asking the more imaginative question: what might be? Here I turn my atten-
tion to imagining what the world is calling for in relation to the soul of teaching as I
have described it. The focus is on envisioning a better future, reflecting my personal
hopes and dreams in the spirit of first-person research. The method of the dream
phase of appreciative inquiry leads me to take the positive core of teaching and to
think more specifically about the importance of reflective practice. I want to elicit the
inner qualities of reflectiveness that are embedded in practice, which I sense the world
needs of teachers. But at the same time I also dare to face the ‘shadow-side’ or the
‘psychic prison’ of educational systems (Egan, 1994; Morgan, 1997; Sullivan, 2003)
as I reflect hopefully and optimistically on how to make the world of teaching and
children’s learning more humane and respectful of the human condition.
I begin with my concern to prevent the pedagogical experience from becoming
‘soul-destroying’ and pick up on the issue of reform as a ‘struggle for the soul of teach-
ers’ to which Ball alerted us. I feel that my portrayal of teaching illustrates the complex
nature of our work and suggests some of the creative tensions that we now live with
136 T. Luckcock

after a process of continuous reform. I expect many colleagues will resonate with one
or more of the nine meditations more than with others, reflecting particular interests,
talents and dispositions of their own. I also imagine that many will find some less
congruent with their own values and beliefs about education. And we may even recog-
nise perspectives that have caused us difficulty that we have also learnt to internalise
and appropriate as part of our practice. Yet there may be some teachers who perceive
one or more facets to be contrary, and even hostile, to their view of the true purposes
of teaching. My experience is that there is a great deal of tension and conflict between
values at work, and that the above nine-fold characterisation of the soul of teaching
may be able to help us objectively understand such differences at a subjective level.
For example, challenging authority in Meditation 6 does not easily sit with the
need to be pragmatic and get a job done expressed in the dynamic of Mediation 3.
Caring practically for a group of highly vulnerable children inspired by the ethos of
Mediation 2 is not easily compatible with the need to correct behaviour and maintain
orderly conduct reflected in Mediation 1. It is admirable to want to get stuck into the
brilliance and depth of higher-order thinking stimulated in pupils doing Philosophy for
Children, which might be the kind of approach that Meditation 4 invokes. But this
passion to reach new depths of affective thinking with pupils is held in tension with
the need to stick with comfortable routine teaching habits, that do not demand too
much of the self, as depicted in Meditation 9. These are just a few examples of the
dilemmas or creative tensions in our pedagogy and indicate the remarkable inner
wisdom involved in the art of teaching if the diverse variety of our interests is to be
appreciated and reconciled as an integrated whole. This illumines an emerging hope
of mine that the nine different facets of teaching need not be construed competitively
as a ‘struggle’ of any one to dominate and convert all the others, despite accepting
real tensions between them. Rather, I want to value the diversity of our passions and
modes of thought by adhering to an inclusive approach that values the respective
insights and stances of each facet working together.
I would argue that it is important to recognise the validity of all nine aspects of
teaching and that achieving a balance between them all is what is required for our
teaching to be rounded and soul-friendly. An inclusive and comprehensive approach
to pedagogy would recognise the need to ensure teaching is constructed in propor-
tion to the human soul as a finely balanced whole. Conversely, it is when one aspect
gets out of balance that the whole becomes distorted and where ‘struggling for the
soul’ becomes appropriate terminology. For example, the kind of concern that Ball
was addressing can be helpfully illuminated by the nine aspects of soulful teaching
that I have explored. The imbalance that he and many others have highlighted in the
reform of education is that teaching has been re-conceived predominantly as an
instrumental task oriented to results (cf. Meditation 3), that it has been modified and
corrected through being forced to internalise alienating definitions of standards (cf.
Mediation 1), and that teachers have been subjected to regimes of surveillance as
objects of investigation (cf. Meditation 5).
The same kind of imbalance caused by the dominance of only three perspectives
can be appreciated from the point of view of school leadership, although I have here
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 137

only focused on the core of pedagogy and left out any appreciative treatment of
leadership and management in my meditations above. Yet the same three inner
dynamics can be seen to be at work. The prevailing discourses that have been
combined in informing the reconstruction of identity and agency of head teachers
have been those of ‘managerialism’, which includes limited forms of enterprise within
the constraints of what Clarke and Newman (1997) have called the ‘managerial state’
(cf. Meditation 3); the perfectionist ideology of constant ‘school improvement’
(cf. Mediation 1); and ‘inspection’, which has now become distributed and interna-
lised in the form of OFSTED-led models of school self-evaluation (cf. Meditation 5).
If these are reasonable illustrations of the inner thrust of prevailing orthodoxy, my
hope is that it may help explain some of the particular stresses that some teachers
will have suffered during such a period of continuous reform. For example, has due
care been given to ensure that teachers motivated primarily by compassion for the
needs of others are included (Mediation 2) or those motivated by the struggle for
social justice and interested in genuine democracy in education and civil society
(Meditation 8)? Is the ideology of reform soul-friendly towards teachers who want to
challenge misguided policy, whose criticism is construed as trouble-making rather
than intelligent feedback from the chalk-face (Mediation 6)? And is it not soul-
destroying to inhibit the free flow of creative ideas that practitioners often have at the
local level and which can often result in more inspired innovation than can be
conceived by systems of centralised planning and control (Mediation 7)?
However critical these questions are and however serious the concerns raised, a
reactive critique of policy is not my main task here. In line with the constructivist logic
of appreciative inquiry, I do not want to over-emphasise the negative side of this
evident bias, which might result in me demonising the three modes of teaching legit-
imised by official constructions of the teaching profession. My purpose is rather to
highlight a need, indicating the shadow-side of policy-making bodies that may inad-
vertently (or otherwise) cause other perspectives essential to teaching to become
diminished and under-appreciated. Another way of stating this problem more
constructively would be to ask in a spirit of hope whether it might not be wiser to
acknowledge the relative importance of these three perspectives while helping them
keep in proportion to the rich insights and values of the other six aspects of inner prac-
tice? Let us celebrate these three, but not at the cost of excluding the rest in a quest
for the ideal teacher. In my dream of a better future, such distortions will be less likely
as policy-makers, practitioners and educational researchers learn to work with a more
soul-friendly sensitivity and synergy. I sense that the world is calling for a balanced
range of values in education that are congruent with inner qualities of reflectiveness
implicit within the soul of teaching.
First, the world is calling for reforming teachers displaying the quality of reflective-
ness elicited in Meditation 1. This mode of reflection is predominantly corrective,
concerned with thoughtfully diagnosing problems or difficulties encountered in prac-
tice in order to meet or maintain standards. There is a reflective preoccupation with
evaluation that directs awareness and concern to getting things right and doing the
right things. But the world also recognises the shadow-side of this sensibility where
138 T. Luckcock

failure is built into the system through excessive levels of criticism. This can be true
of students learning to fail whose self-esteem can become so reduced through over-
attention to their short-comings. But it can be just as true for teachers operating
under inspection regimes and self-evaluation processes that cause demoralisation
because their own imperfections come to be magnified out of all proportion to their
contributions.
Second, I dream of renewing teaching as a helping profession that is not only
supportive of others, but also receives appropriate levels of support from others. The
world in its suffering and need does cry out for help. And the quality of reflectiveness
implicit in Meditation 2 is unreservedly supportive—concerned with caring thinking
that is designed to thoughtfully meet the needs of significant others in one’s sphere of
concern and influence, and thinking about how to help them maximise their capacity
for sustainable life-long learning and fulfilled living. But I also want to address the
shadow-side of such caring, which is an inability to care enough for ourselves, resulting
too frequently in burnout and breakdown (Cosgrove, 2000). I envisage such support
being proactively built into professional practice (Gold & Roth, 1993), and similar in
approach to forms of ‘supervision’ valued in the helping professions as a whole from
which teaching has unwisely become dissociated (Hawkins & Shohet, 2003).
Third, I also hear the world calling for a hardworking profession that is enterprising
and devoted to achieving practical outcomes. The inner quality of reflectiveness elic-
ited in Meditation 3 is productive—concerned with instrumental thinking dedicated to
meeting targets and facilitating practical strategies that result in measurable prag-
matic performance. This is a kind of creative thinking preoccupied with employing
effective techniques and resulting in products and outcomes that can be appreciated
by others. However, the shadow-side of such activity is overwork and the need to
preserve a successful image. It is all too easy to become unbalanced in our dedication
to tasks and so concerned with successful outcomes for others that we do not recog-
nise the need for work–life balance or we neglect the inner life that sustains us as ‘resil-
ient practitioners’ (Skovholt, 2001).
Four, there might hopefully be more recognition of teachers who bring an artistic
flair to their practice and for whom teaching is no ordinary job but rather a sacred
vocation of engaging the hearts and minds of students at the deepest levels of personal
fulfilment. The inner quality of reflectiveness elicited in Meditation 4 is predomi-
nantly poetic—concerned with thinking and feeling deeply and lyrically, expressing
authentic subjectivity in a unique voice and exploring personal meaning in a refined
and creative manner. The shadow-side of such reflectivity could be a moody self-
absorption or a preoccupation with interiority at the expense of actively engaging with
the concrete lives of people in order to make a real difference. There might appear to
be little tolerance for this almost romantic expression of teaching in the current utili-
tarian climate, although calls for greater creativity and emotional intelligence will
hopefully tend towards a fuller appreciation of this kind of sensitivity amongst prac-
titioners once again.
Five, there will be teachers who are valued for the profound knowledge they have
mastered and are continuing to research, which they can convey to others with clarity
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 139

and precision. The inner quality of reflectiveness elicited in Meditation 5 is largely

observant—concerned with extending our grasp of subject knowledge or with
detached observation of practice with a view to collating and analysing data outside
the concrete situation. The shadow-side of this is a dispassionate and distant
approach to education that values knowledge more than people, and that fails to
communicate insights empathically. I dream of the time when information about chil-
dren and schools is based less on abstract quantitative data and more on personal
knowledge of the immeasurable. I dream of educators who inspire a thirst for knowl-
edge and wisdom that transcends the surfeit of knowledge-bites in an ‘information
age’ and ‘audit society’ (Power, 1997).
Six, I look forward to confident teachers being able to channel their professional
concerns back to policy-makers with the recognition that, in the spirit of servant-
leadership, policy-makers learn to facilitate the profession. The inner quality of
reflectiveness elicited in Meditation 6 is that of being sceptical—concerned with
thinking sceptically and critically about received ideas, orthodox opinion, policy and
procedures. This critical quality is fundamentally security-conscious, scanning for
danger, questioning and doubting. Its shadow-side is a lack of trust in people includ-
ing oneself, expressed in a habitual mentality of suspicion, fear and permanent
critique. I envision a time when policy-makers and practitioners can work apprecia-
tively together, recognising the value of one another and also adding value through
joint lived-inquiry, on the basis of mutual trust, dedicated to sound educational
purposes.
Seven, I foresee greater appreciation of teachers who are trusted to be free-spirits,
intelligently connecting the multiple aspects of their practice and radiating a sense of
enthusiasm and enjoyment in their work and life. The inner quality of reflectiveness
elicited in Meditation 7 is predominantly optimistic—concerned with conceptualising
positive futures and enjoying the free play of speculative ideas. Thinking positively
entails enjoying the life of the mind and all the generous possibilities that life offers.
The shadow-side of such an approach is that free-spiritedness can become escapist in
the sense of being premised on avoidance of the world’s suffering and a refusal to
accept the limitations and ambiguities of the human condition. In balance with the
other modes of reflectiveness, however, this is a crucial dimension of practice that
I hope will become increasingly recognised as essential if the morale of teachers is to
be sustained, and for teachers once again to take a leading role in society as convivial
intellectuals who enthuse people about the life of the mind and our creative imagina-
tive potential.
Eight, the world is crying out for teacher-activists (cf. Sachs, 2003) who have the
drive to intervene in situations of injustice and take control of systems that exploit the
vulnerable and excluded. The inner quality of reflectiveness elicited in Meditation 8
is emancipatory—concerned with raising consciousness about freedom from oppres-
sion, actively immersed in the praxis of liberating people from structures of control
and contesting distortions of the truth. The shadow-side of such reflectiveness is that
it can become unreflective, predisposed towards action more than systematic think-
ing, and our gut sense of urgency in situations of struggle may well on occasion
140 T. Luckcock

precipitate action that seems to bypass rational reflection at all. Nevertheless the
mission to secure justice on behalf of the disadvantaged and to make the world a fairer
place contains an important reminder about the primacy of practice. Ultimately, the
purpose of reflection is for the sake of committed action, and the purpose of action is
to exert a beneficial influence in the world.
Nine, I dream of a peaceful existence for teachers that is not caught up in the
turmoil and turbulence of continuous change and social disharmony. The inner qual-
ity of reflectiveness elicited in Meditation 9 is consensual—concerned with mediating
the agendas of others, in comfortable harmony with our environment and resonant
with the people around us. The shadow-side of this form of reflection, however, is
that it may seem the least reflective of all nine aspects and the most complacent. It
does not instinctively focus reflexive awareness on self, and devotes itself to the
perspectives of others at the expense of holding an identity or position of its own. But
there is nevertheless an important form of attentiveness and concentration in this
disposition, which is best encapsulated by the Buddhist practice of ‘mindfulness,’ a
form of reflectiveness advocated as ‘mindful inquiry’ (Bentz & Shapiro, 1998). And
implicit within mindfulness is a compassionate and peaceful approach to right action
that many teachers bear witness to, by quietly getting on with the day-to-day work of
education, which at the end of the day is not about themselves primarily but every-
thing about doing the right thing in caring for students. The inner quality of reflec-
tiveness in this last mode indicates the continuing importance of the potential for
Buddhist contributions to action research in the caring professions as discussed by
Richard Winter (2003).
This visionary and aspirational reflection has constituted the dream phase of my
appreciative inquiry. My principal concern here has been to elicit and envision an
important level of intentionality and reflexivity that is implicit in the ‘ordinary’ work
of teaching, flourishing within the hearts, minds and guts of teachers. Perhaps a better
way of categorising these nine qualities is to conceive of them as nine modes of spirited
inquiry, as this captures the sense of passion and virtue revealed in each of them.
Nevertheless, I perceive that such qualities of reflectiveness, however much they are
implicit within the soul of teaching, still need to be cherished and nourished as whole.
If any were to dominate or exclude others, then the soul of teaching would be dimin-
ished and their modes of reflective practice become distorted.

Looking back on the process of appreciative inquiry into the enneagram of

reflective practice
In looking back at the process of appreciative inquiry so far, it might appear that there
is a lack of critical rigour in a method claiming emancipatory potential. It is true that
appreciative inquiry is a relatively ‘young’ approach to action research, evaluation and
organisational development that has burgeoned in the country of its origin—the USA.
It is beginning to be used academically and professionally in the United Kingdom,
with signs of a maturing methodology (Reed, 2006). However, it must be emphasised
that its deliberate underplaying of criticality is an intrinsic part of its philosophy of
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 141

research. Indeed, one of its distinctive insights is the recognition that positive ques-
tions lead to positive change whereas critique tends to prematurely focus on the
negative in a way that closes down conversation and obscures creative opportunities
for change.
At a personal level, one affective explanation for my interest in opting to use the
logic of this approach to explore the soul of teaching is due to the emotional exhaus-
tion and demoralisation of operating in an educational system biased towards deficit-
based evaluation, inspection and change management. With a recent cultural shift
towards self-evaluation in official inspection regimes, I am encouraged that there are
grounds for greater trust and increased autonomy of educationists. However, I am
still concerned that approaches to school self-evaluation and self-review in personal
and professional development can all too easily internalise a deficit-based model of
evaluation rather than a positive strength-based one such as appreciative inquiry
offers. It is arguable too that much action research has become preoccupied with
technically solving problems rather than creatively raising human aspirations and
capacity for transformation. While I do not wish to present appreciative inquiry as a
panacea to the problems of deficit-based approaches, I am persuaded that it is worth
considering as a refreshingly new approach in which critique does not dominate but
becomes a moment in a wider dialogical and constructive conversation.
To my mind this methodological approach is itself a soul-friendly procedure. It
has enabled me to focus on the subjective consciousness of my own first-person
research/practice as an important first step in generating life-affirming, aspirational,
constructive and sustaining conversations with colleagues. I hope that the reflexive
engagement offered here will initiate conversation that involves both first-person
and second-person research into our individual and shared practices, and that it
will eventually engender positive change in third-person research/practice, encour-
aging a soul-friendly approach to policy in the governance, leadership and manage-
ment of education at organisational levels. As a contribution to the theory and
practice of practitioner research, my aim here has been to share my personal
thoughts as seed-ideas and to invite reflection that is both celebratory of our inner
work as teachers and emancipatory of the emotional and intellectual range of
passions and cognitive approaches at the heart of our call to teach (Day, 2004).
This approach picks up Susan Groundwater-Smith’s concerns about educational
action research needing to move beyond celebration and utilitarian function in
order to recover the critical and emancipatory dimension of practitioner research
(Groundwater-Smith & Mockler, 2005).
My choice of the ‘soul of teaching’ as an affirmative topic, refracted through the
prism of the enneagram, has enabled me to present a portrait of the inner work of
teaching as a distillation of my own subjective experience of reflective practice. This
has a celebratory dimension to it that is not motivated by pragmatic complacency but
expresses the hope that colleagues will actually appreciate themselves more. I hope
that readers will intimately recognise the value of the interior dynamic and reflexivity
that lies at the heart of our calling as I have expressed it. I have also evinced a more
emancipatory dimension in expressing my hope for a better balanced appreciation of
142 T. Luckcock

a wider range of inner teaching qualities than the current orthodoxy legitimates. This
suggests that the enneagram can be used positively as one way to acknowledge the
diversity of the inner work of teaching and help to prevent any premature closure on
constructions of the personal or professional self biased towards any one of the nine
qualities to the exclusion of the others. It also demonstrates how the deliberate strat-
egy of focusing on the strengths of teaching in the discovery phase of appreciative
inquiry enables the indirect criticism of weaknesses the dream phase in a way that
remains psychologically positive about what might be achieved in principle. Here, I
implied that the contemporary construction of teaching by the managerial state priv-
ileges certain inner modes of teaching at the expense of others, but I was also able to
both affirm these qualities as strengths and qualify them by holding them in balance
with other qualities that deserve fuller expression. While for some this will not be crit-
ical enough, it is worth reflecting that the predisposition to retain a permanently
critical and questioning attitude throughout the process of research and scholarship
is revealingly indicative of the sceptical qualities suggested in Meditation 6. The
enneagram suggests this inner stance is both understandable and valid but also poses
the challenging question as to whether this should be elevated to a supreme value,
even in academia. In this way the enneagram pre-empts this kind of criticism, not
disingenuously, but by asking the radical question as to how a psychological lack of
faith in self, others and the universe can be held in balance with other modes of
inquiry without it resulting in a self-absorbed quest for epistemological certainty and
intellectual security.
Although my reflection has been a genuinely open-ended enquiry, it obviously did
not begin in a vacuum. It has drawn on a substantial background in teaching and
school leadership and has also grown out of interests in spirituality and education that
I have pursued at doctoral level (Luckcock, 2004). It has drawn directly from my own
personal development through studying the enneagram, which is a far more sophisti-
cated model of human consciousness than I have been able to convey in this intro-
duction. As well as looking back, this enquiry also looks forward to new ways of
supporting the professional learning of teachers in ways that respect the deep interi-
ority of teaching. Dadds (1997) talks of the need to ‘nurture the expert within’ and
this leads me to conclude this paper by looking briefly ahead to some of the ways in
which these inner qualities might be deliberately supported.

Looking ahead to the design and destiny phases of appreciative inquiry

In order to complete a full cycle of appreciative inquiry I will need to continue my
reflection in the design and destiny phases in future writing. The design phase would
entail carrying forward the visionary imagination of the dream phase into more prac-
tical reflection about how to design soul-friendly forms of practitioner research and
professional learning. This task would involve me asking the more pragmatic ques-
tion: how can it be? However, this task would not be a matter of re-inventing the
(common) wheel but of considering how existing forms of practitioner inquiry already
presuppose and evoke the nine aspects of inner reflectiveness that I have treated in
 The soul of teaching and professional learning 143

this paper. My aim will be to show that the step towards systematic forms of practi-
tioner research on the part of serving teachers is a relatively easy and natural progres-
sion from witnessing the kind of emotional and intellectual activity that practitioners
are already committed to in practice. I believe that there needs to be congruence
between ordinary forms of reflexivity implicit in teaching and more systematic forms
of practitioner research so that there is a natural progression from one to another.
Professional development through practitioner research is not a matter of mastering
apparently attenuated and alien forms of research on and about education. Ultimately,
I believe that teaching will be served by achieving a practical congruence between the
soul of teaching and soul-friendly reflective practice in and for education.
Secondly, the destiny or delivery phase would require thinking about how tutors,
mentors, coaches and consultants concerned with teacher development and profes-
sional learning can best support practitioners’ engagement with practitioner research.
The key question here would be to ask: what will be? The answer will involve thinking
practically about what kind of coaching and tutorial support is needed in order to
sustain optimal professional learning that is owned and appreciated by practitioners
themselves. Again, I think the way forward here will be for continuing professional
development professionals to be able to discern and resonate with the same inner
qualities of reflectiveness in ourselves that we can encourage in teachers. Such reso-
nance, I believe, is achievable by approaching the matter in a soul-friendly manner,
looking to find commonalities of spirit at the heart of a shared sense of vocation that
recognises no intrinsic pedagogical gap between educational sectors. Indeed, looking
forward to this activity causes me to anticipate a global action research community in
which professional learning is both informative and transformative as it engages in the
nine modes of spirited inquiry that I have presented here as embodying the soul of
teaching.

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