An Appreciative Circling Approach to Equity: Cultivating Leadership in a Doctoral Wellbeing and Growth Project

Appreciative Circling is a novel hybrid practice that contributes to wellbeing, growth and leadership of doctoral students in tertiary settings. Systemic structures that promote opportunities for leadership enactments champion wellbeing as a way of framing the doctoral experience. Participatory action research contributes to a research design of ethical partnerships and relationships with participants. Reimagining equitable potential, leadership opportunities as student-initiated with faculty support showed how these emerged and evolved through the hybrid collective practice of Appreciative Circling. The study found that Appreciative Circling provided doctoral students with a space to develop leadership-as-practice. While addressing the equity of the system in which it lies, Appreciative Circling enhances individual and collective wellbeing, growth and leadership capacity.