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The research outputs within this portfolio demonstrate sustained inquiry over seven years which has added progressively to the understanding of collaborative educational research contribution. This research developed out of my work with the iPED (inquiring pedagogies) research network which I co‐founded in 2005. The portfolio contextualizes and critiques four journal articles and two peer‐reviewed book chapters published between 2007 and 2012. Through these studies of educational research at Coventry University, I make a significant and original contribution to knowledge, firstly by synthesizing evidence of the facilitators, drivers and barriers to contribution within collaborative educational research; and secondly by offering three new models which help to make the contribution of collaborative educational research more transparent. The Influence Wheel provides a visualization of research contributions as an interactive image. The model can also reveal gaps in contribution, and can be adjusted to display the aspects of contribution of interest to an intended audience. Product‐Based Analysis provides a holistic view of the strategic drivers, goals and interim outcomes of research. This model can be used to analyze, develop, track or communicate a research strategy. Finally, the Enhanced Three‐Phase Model articulates the social and cultural transitions through which a collaborative educational research community may evolve. Used alongside an analysis framework I devised using themes from works of fiction, this model exposes the problems and opportunities a collaboration community may encounter. These three tools exemplify my creativity in devising new ways of visualizing information, an approach adapted from the field of management where graphics are commonly used to supplement text. Methodologically, all the portfolio outputs employ insider inquiry strategies which capture different perspectives on the research context. Conceptually, all the outputs offer social representations of collaborative educational research. These studies offer questions and interim findings which provide opportunities for future research.

In the last fifteen years and particularly since the rise to media stardom of self-proclaimed "spiritual counsellor" Ehara Hiroyuki, ―"the spiritual" (supirichuaru) has become a buzzword in Japanese popular culture. A look at the shelves of every bookstore reveals that by now, in Japan, almost anything can be ―"spiritual" (for example, spiritual spot, spiritual money, spiritual motherhood or spiritual cuisine). This "spiritual boom" has stemmed from the popularisation of what this study calls spiritual therapies, which correspond to the group of alternative therapeutic techniques that, in the West, are characteristic of the New Age Movement. Examples of spiritual therapy include past-life regression therapy, reiki, channelling and re-connective healing. The increase in demand and consumption of such techniques has recently attracted criticism from local researchers who warn against the pitfalls of the ―"spiritual business"; yet, so far, everyone has failed to take into account the voices of those who are supposed to gain from these transactions: the spiritual therapists. Using information collected during interviews with 68 practitioners and participant observation of spiritual therapy sessions and promotional fairs, this study argues that the popularity of the spiritual therapy phenomenon epitomises deeper changes in contemporary Japanese society. A critical analysis shows that, in order to avoid biased support for, or criticism against spiritual therapy, the phenomenon should be seen through its point de capiton, where the interaction of its four aspects, the business, the therapeutic, the ideological and the social, gives us a full and meaningful view. Consequently it becomes clear that spiritual therapy has developed according to the fundamental features of a globalising new spirituality culture and expresses the morality of the fundamental this-worldly-benefit-seeking character of Japanese religious culture, which is adapted to express the physiomorphic, ideological and socio-economic changes in contemporary Japanese society.