[2][not verified in body] Purkey is professor emeritus of counselor education at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro and writes, generally, on the topic of school improvement.
[not verified in body] John Novak and Peter Wong, also faculty members, were also primary contributors to the development of invitational theory and practice, authoring numerous articles and books on the subject.
[1] As the ideas around IE developed, William Watson Purkey,[1] Betty Siegel, John Michael Novak, and Peter Wong founded the International Alliance for Invitational Education (IAIE) to support the work.
"[This quote needs a citation] More subjectively, Purkey and Novak further write, "At its heart, [IE] is an imaginative act of hope that explains how human potential can be realized.
"[3][page needed] One practice that Purkey promotes is that educators create a personal "Fort Knox" in order to recall the positive aspects of teaching, an archive that might include letters from past students, colleagues, etc.