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The purpose of this article is to reintroduce and describe the processes and phases of heuristic inquiry and to illustrate how the method can advance nursing science. Heuristic inquiry is a rigorous, systematic, phenomenologically orientated research method developed by Clark Moustakas for investigating, discovering, and understanding the nature and meaning of living experiences. Heuristic inquiry invites the inclusion of the researcher's autobiographical living of experience being investigated honoring the personal experiences of the phenomenon from self and each participant in the research study. The author proposes that heuristic inquiry be used in nursing science by including a theoretical interpretive process connecting the thematic essences of the nursing conceptual framework guiding the study. Nursing theory-guided heuristic research advances the study of caring for persons experiencing human-environmental-health transitions to enhance human betterment and wellbecoming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we draw on an example of heuristic inquiry – (Re)imagining becoming a physiotherapist: a phenomenological approach – to illustrate the role that reflexivity and representation can play in physiotherapy research outcomes and the meaning they might have for moving the profession forward. Qualitative research in physiotherapy tends to acknowledge reflexivity as a route to objectivity by making researcher biases overt, yet the debate about data representation (a researcher’s decision-making about how data are represented in a text) barely feature. This contrasts with qualitative research in other fields, including other health professions, where matters of representation (i.e., how knowledge is conveyed) are routinely debated and contested. Reflexivity, in fact, is much more than being transparent. Together with representation, reflexivity helps to position both the voices of participants and researchers within the research. The heuristic inquiry described in this paper offers new insights about learning to be a physiotherapist; it challenged assumptions about care in physiotherapy practice and it changed the first researcher’s identity and practice. These insights were generated through the synergies between reflexivity and representation, and we argue that physiotherapy research has an opportunity to be more expansive by taking a commitment to reflexivity and representation more seriously. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Futures focussed paper shares my creative response to a reflexive ricochet of being researcher, to unexpectedly becoming the researched and back again. I am currently using phenomenologically art-led and heuristic research methods to explore the implications of the Futures Senses in tertiary career education. The field of career theory is holistic and multidisciplinary. It draws from psychological, sociological and cultural fields to contextualise human action across the lifespan. Therefore, I work with people in transition and anticipation. This paper emerged from my immersion in the Futures Sense of Yearning and the moment I recognised the futures sense of Yearning in myself. This unexpected epiphany initiated a reflexive response as spectator of, and traveller on, my own transitional and anticipatory experience which was hovering in the spaces between the inner and outer self. Using a Jungian spontaneous drawing technique I set to give voice to what Jung noted as the '... two worlds: the world of the external perception and the world of the perception of the unconscious...'. This process revealed latent embodied knowing that surfaced through dialogue with the artwork. The layered emergent data of the artwork is analysed using a Causal Layered Analysis (CLA). The CLA invites diverse and layered perspectives of the subject of inquiry by examining it from the perspectives of litany, systems, worldviews and metaphor. Inayatullah uses an iceberg analogy, to illustrate the layers of an inquiry that are simultaneously exposed and discrete; known, unknown and 're-known'. Thus, a CLA of self is used, to reveal the 'iceburg in the room', with intention to explicate the meaning of the personal, as it relates to the collective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This is a self-as-subject heuristic inquiry on using documentary film making as a therapy approach to treat emotional blocks. Film making process is similar to systematic evocative unfolding (SEU) technique in EFT which evokes emotions and episodic memories. Camera can be regarded as an extra eye capturing something one may not notice. The documentary film in this research records and tracks the process of me: in an encounter with a wild swan, my previously numbed bodily feelings were awakened, which led to a discovery of cultural and personal influence that prevented me from feeling protective anger. Camera witnessed my therapeutic change which supports the effectiveness of emotion-focused documentary making as one way of therapy. In this research, data were footages collected regularly during a period of a few months. Watching footages helps one recollect and unfold what had happened, while editing footages again and again is a re-experience, re-narrative / re-telling and making sense of one's experience, which is therapeutic and serves as data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The women who aspire to the role of a local government councillor in rural and regional areas of Australia are still breaking new ground. This paper presents research findings, by a woman who stood for election, concerning some of the barriers women face in achieving public leadership in regional and rural local governments ('councils'). It explores the motivation and leadership styles of six women candidates campaigning in two neighbouring all-male councils in regional New South Wales in 2017. The study used heuristic inquiry in which the researcher and participants share a personal lived experience of the issues being studied. Heuristic inquiry allowed for an intimate and creative presentation of the research. Key findings were that gender disparity was not a significant motivator for five of the six women. The main motivator was service to their community with all six women favouring a servant leader style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The women who aspire to the role of a local government councillor in rural and regional areas of Australia are still breaking new ground. This paper presents research findings, by a woman who stood for election, concerning some of the barriers women face in achieving public leadership in regional and rural local governments (‘councils’). It explores the motivation and leadership styles of six women candidates campaigning in two neighbouring all-male councils in regional New South Wales in 2017. The study used heuristic inquiry in which the researcher and participants share a personal lived experience of the issues being studied. Heuristic inquiry allowed for an intimate and creative presentation of the research. Key findings were that gender disparity was not a significant motivator for five of the six women. The main motivator was service to their community with all six women favouring a servant leader style.

Homeplace (hooks, 1990) is a social construct wherein Black people can aspire to healthy existence and wholeness in an anti‐Black world. Describing experiences of their annual writing retreat, seven Black male counselor educators explored their experience of homeplace through coautoethnography using the six phases of heuristic inquiry (Moustakas, 1990). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]