Welcome to the inaugural issue of the International Journal of Collaborative Practices. The Journal is a space for the members of a growing international community to share, explore and expand their collaborative practices. This community aims to respond to the important questions in social and human sciences:
How can we make our theories and practices have every day relevance and how can our ordinary experiences have relevance for our theories and practices, for as many people as possible in our fast changing world? What will this relevance accomplish? And who determines it?
The idea of the Journal grew out of meetings of practitioners, scholars, educators, researchers, and consultants from around the world interested in collaborative practices. We shared an interest in using collaborative practice in our work, and connecting with other collaborative practitioners. We were also inspired by the feedback of participants at the International Summer Institute on Postmodern Collaborative Practices, convened in Mexico by Harlene Anderson, the Houston Galveston Institute and Grupo Campos Eliseos in Mexico City. All Institute participants were eager to learn about others’ practices and share their own experiences, so we held several informal conversations during the week to decide how we should proceed. The result was our Pre-Institute workshop series, and dynamic cooperative efforts around the world. These experiences and conversations then led to the next idea: the Journal.
The Journal publishes articles on a variety of practices from various disciplines and contexts, including education and training, research, clinical practice, organizational development, leadership, and coaching among others. Sections of the Journal include: Articles, Frequently Asked Questions, From the Bookshelf, and The Back Page. Unique to the Journal are its open-access and interactive features, as well as it is published in English and Spanish.
This Issue
This issue features five articles from practitioners and scholars from Canada, England, Mexico, and Sweden. The articles inspire us to pause and reflect on the ways we make our professional and personal lives relationally centered and relationally responsive. The authors focus on the value of collaboration as a lifestyle, in work with prisoners, in paraprofessional staff development, and with cancer patients, and on the role of “context” and the “other” in dialogical communication. The Frequently Asked Question section responds to, and invites readers’ responses to this issue’s question: “What is not-knowing?” This issue closes with reflections on Roizblatt’s Terapia Familiar y de Pareja and Borges’s The Approach to Almutasim. Check out the Back Page for upcoming events and news.
Harlene Anderson and Saliha Bava
V:5/9
International Journal of Collaborative-Dialogic Practices 