[AAACE-NLA] FW: Foundations of research

[SUSAN DEMETRION]

Excuse the poor formatting of the previous note.  I'll send it through 
hotmail this time (GD)

Folks,

I had wanted an opportunity to reflect more systematically on Catherine 
King’s important note of a couple weeks back.  I am now taking that 
opportunity.  The most fundamental point is that the manner in which 
research is named is how legitimacy will be constructed.  Research, 
therefore, has to do  with the manner of how knowledge is constructed as 
well as what is “objectively” there. I put quotes around the root word 
“objective,” not because something real is not there, but because the 
presuppositions of a given research para
digm will help to shape the significance of what the facts of the case are 
in any given situation.

As Catherine (and I) have mentioned from time to time, the subjects of 
educational discourse are the participants of the educational 
enterprise—students, instructors, administrators who shape the reality of 
what is significant from their various vantagepoints.  This subjective 
element is an invariable part of the process, which, if not factored in 
renders the research enterprise problematic from the get go even if it is 
undertaken through the most rigorous random design.  What we have in the 
United States is an obsession with methodology at the expense, often, of the 
substance of the findings.  Moreover, in the positivist design that is all 
too characteristic of current federally-based funding streams, the 
subjective is, if not ruled out of court, marginalized, ipso facto on 
methodological grounds alone.

That is why, at least in one sense it does not matter how thorough or cogent 
one’s scholarship may be.  If it does not pass muster with the 
methodological litmus test, in the most fundamental sense, it does not 
count.  Consider the important monograph by Merrifield, Bingman, Hemphill & 
Bennett de Marrais (1997) Literacy, Language, and technology in Everyday 
Life—a study of 6 adult literacy students in Appalachia and 6 ESOL students 
in California.  If one wants to get a sense of what the issues are from the 
perspective of the students, go to this text, which, while an 
ethnographically-rich case study, is far from that—there’s a politics of 
literacy embedded in this text as well, in which the construction of 
literacy cannot be separated from issues of cultural, political, and 
economic power and the borderland of marginality in which the lives of many 
adult literacy and ESOL students reside in the current structure of things.

The discourse that shapes the positivist research paradigm does not allow 
much space for the exploration of such issues—those on what literacy looks 
like from the grounding point of students and the broader discourse of power 
which shapes the very construction of literacy and its definition.  While 
the study of literacy may be a science—one modeled on the social sciences 
rather than the physical sciences, it is also a form of cultural studies—in 
terms used by French philosopher (yes, French philosopher) Michel Foucault 
as a study in discourse in which language itself is invariably related to 
power.  The point of all this being that methodologies are less important in 
themselves, though research needs to be solidly constructed, than the 
significance of the questions asked and the means derived to most 
effectively get at them.

What are some good questions to ground adult literacy research?  Here are a 
few

* How is learning defined and measured in any given context?

* What is the nature and definition of “significant” learning?

* Why is there a much higher incidence of low level adult literacy in the 
urban and rural as opposed to the suburban context?

* What is the relationship between reading and writing skill development and 
the mastery of significant knowledge or bodies of knowledge that adult 
students define as important?

* How much progress can be made with students at various aptitude and 
ability levels and what is the significance of such learning or the lack 
thereof.  Also, what is the definition of progress and who gets to decide 
the terms?

* Why are fiscal resources for adult literacy education so relatively 
stagnant, if not actually declining?
* Who benefits and who suffers through current literacy/illiteracy rates

Etc, etc. etc

Assume such questions, or a similar set that seeks to get at adult literacy 
comprehensively.  The only methodological question allowed is what sources 
of information will best enable the research sector to get proximate answers 
to them.  The suspicion that underlies my thinking is that the current 
literate/illiterate rates of adults is more or less functional to the 
generalized needs of the predominant societal sources of power, and would 
be, in any event too costly to significantly improve.  Therefore, better to 
live with the 90 million (as NALD defined) adults at levels 1 & 2 literacy 
than do what it takes to substantially reduce these rates.  We can’t start 
from the numbers, but from the nature of the research problem and the 
problems, in turn call forth the methodologies and sources of evidence that 
address them

This supposition on my part would need to be researched.  Where could I find 
funding for such a project?

George Demetrion
Temporarily stepping out of retirement from adult literacy research and now 
stepping back in
______________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Hello Kearney:  (This is long)

The last part of your question is much easier to answer than the first:

You ask:  "At which parties working in education today do you direct your
critique, and why?"

First, using a four part analogy, if we relate (1) students, (2) educational
topics, (3) then methods, (4) then philosophical underpinnings, to (1)
leaves, (2) branches, (3) trunk, and (4) roots, the critique is directed at
the roots (philosophical underpinnings) which, in turn effect in various
ways all of the other aspects of education up-the-line (1-2-3 above), all
the way to the students, whether it be in positive and/or negative
applications to, or ignoring of, those students.

Second, the critique is directed at those in research and other
educational/et al, fields whose philosophical underpinning (referred to in
some research literature as philosophical paradigms) are formed around and
limited to the positivist/post-positivist framework.  As philosophical, that
framework defines (and limits) very basic notions about what constitutes
authentic arenas of research, and its integration with evaluations and
applications.

"Authentic" here refers to what the researcher/educator/etc., means by
various notions and terms, e.g., scientific, critical, good-bad/evaluation,
knowledge, true/truth, reality, etc. basically, the limit is not one of
method, but to a defined data field, e.g., statistics, drawing from the
tenets and expectations/outcomes of the natural/physical data fields and
applying them with little or no mediation to the much more complex, nuanced,
historical, and language/individual-oriented fields of human data, for
instance, education.

Politically?  For the teacher:  In its worst form, it famously regards
teacher insights and wisdom as merely "anecdotal"  (translated:   Not
valid/authentic knowledge, and not harboring a critical approach to
truth/reality, even in their own arena of activity and import),
fundamentally disregarding, disarming, and/or disempowering the teacher as
an authentic operator in the applications field of education.  Here, a
"teacher-proofed" curriculum/programming/assessments is commonly "guided" by
post-positivist principles embraced by well-meaning people who, in many
cases, do not enter the classroom to see how debilitating such principles
can be when a good teacher is faced with real-live students.

For the student:  VERY Complex; however, besides suffering the gamut of
developmental effect of such well-meaning but powerless pseudo-teachers, the
student is left with the vague idea that they--the student--are not the ones
who are important here, but rather the assessments, etc.  Or said another
way, the student is not the end of the educational process, but rather the
means to someone or something else's needs, e.g., getting funding for a
program.  The whole thing is basically backwards when driven by these
principles alone.  There is much more to say to this effect, but this is way
too long already.

Further, there is the matter of the humanity of the researcher and his/her
already-established gamut of foundational background and developmental
horizons.  Whereas positivist principles ignore these, or deny that they
exist, attempting to perform research from a "godseye" presumably humanless
viewpoint (as if the ideal for "objectivity" were to drain all humanity out
of the research situation, e.g., natural/physical data-results), other
paradigms/methods add a self-other critical eye to such backgrounds and
developments, and bring those questions into the research situation as
aspects and nuances of very-human objectivity, acknowledging them--not as
necessarily "biased," but as richly integrative factors in any and all
research and educational situations.  This means that we acknowledge that
ALL research, from raising the question to applying conclusions, has an
ethical-political component to it.  Knowing and stating what that is, though
difficult, is much more **critical** than trying to ignore it or by reaching
for some humanless "objectivity."  (That's only one of the great ironies of
the last century.)

Third, this critique is not to reject this framework and its methods, etc.,
outright.  Rather, it's to secure its' place in the context of a variety of
paradigms and their methods so that the full human reality can be, well,
**realized** in our field of education, instead of trying to put complex and
historical human beings, our critical sciences, and our education into the
too-small box of natural/physical/statistical science data-to-outcome
framework.  Ethics, of course, falls to this limiting paradigm as an
unnecessary adjunct to the "scientific" situation where "scientific" is
defined in the post-positivist philosophical framework.

The argument, by far, is not settled in any of the fields; however, the
effects of the post-positivist framework is particularly relevant and
evident in education--because it's in education that teachers know-so-well
that individual persons/students are worthwhile and valuable in their own
right (and not only as statistical data), are historical (have names and
dates and lasting memories and relationships), and where teachers can know
real progress, regardless of how that progress plays out or doesn't play out
in an assessments situation, especially one governed by statistical orders
alone.

We also know that, like any creative venture, trying counts (guided
process), even if/when we know that sometimes it won't work, or we cannot
say at that point whether it "works" or not.  So the expectations that come
built into the different paradigms come into play here.   Further, if we
knew that it would work every time, it wouldn't be creative, and in the
worst form of working in this framework, the teacher is covertly equated
with a factory worker, and the student an article on an assembly line, the
more "successful" for conforming to a researchers' embedded but
unacknowledged politics and for being just like all of the other articles.

I hope I've answered your question to some degree anyway: "Forgive me, but I
am not fully comprehending the philosophical grounding of your latest post.
Can you please make less subtle what you mean by "a regard for the
not-so-subtle politics at work in education today"?

The problem is that when people talk about leaves or branches, they only
imply the trunk and the roots, e.g., Tom Stitcht's recent and earlier
arguments.  And so if we don't agree with the trunk and the roots, then the
branches and leaves may look good on the surface, and even be quite logical;
however, there's something wrong, even though we cannot put our finger on
it. And we really don't want to answer at the topical level for fear of
having to accept the root with the branch.

Catherine King