[NLA] Are You Being Served?

[Andres Muro]

Tom:

Good questions. I was involved in an advisory committee with NCSALL and this may give me a different perspective, but here it goes. I have read some of the reports from NCSALL because of my involvement with the organization. If I were a practitioner at large w/ no involvement, I doubt that I would have looked at anything that NCSALL does. Their topics of research did not seem that appealing to me, but this is just me. 

I found two pieces of work interesting. One was the paper commissioned to Juliet Merrifield (Contested Ground) several years ago. I think that this was a significantly important paper, and while it may have not had a direct impact on daily practice,  It has helped me get a much better understanding of the field. I think that overall, it has helped my work in subtle ways.

Mary Beth Bingham was working on an article on the impact of literacy on Quality of Life. I read a preliminary version of the paper with a very good literature review. This paper has also shaped the way I think of literacy and I try to envision what our program should strive to accomplish, how we can assess gains, etc. I think that the issue of  quality of life is central to literacy questions but often ignored. 

I have not been particularly interested in dwelling much more into the rest of the work that NCSALL has done, even though, our program was involved in a couple of other studies. The titles of the studies simply do not appeal to me. However, this is not necessarily the fault of the studies themselves. Rather, it is my own particular orientation and my interest in looking at research that addresses philosophical, ideological, anthropological and sociological issues that deal with hegemony, race, gender, culture, class, etc. 

I believe that literacy work is embedded in social, cultural and ideological contexts, and decontextualizing the research is meaningless. However, this has been the approach that NCSALL has decided to take in conducting their research. I can understand why. Possibly, had they addressed this, they may have lost their funding. 

In conclusion, as you may have already figured out, I have an interest in social theory. NCSALL has chosen to ignore social theory in their research. So, from my own (and I realize, unique) the bulk of NCSALL's work does not address the needs of the field. 

Something that is very interesting is that NCSALL is housed at Harvard, home of Harvard  Ed. Review. Harvard Ed Review has published research that has appealed to me but has not overtly informed NCSALL's work. 

Andres 


>>> tsticht at znet.com 12/09/02 08:15PM >>>
Are You Being Served? *

A new report from the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and
Literacy is available (NCSALL Report No. 23). Entitled "The First Five
Years," the report summarizes the research projects, major findings, and
recommendations for the years 1996 * 2001 (copies of the report are
available at http://ncsall.gse.harvard.edu). According to the report,
total funding for the NCSALL for the first five years was around
$13,500,000. Funding for the next five years is anticipated to be about
$16,500,000.

The report says that "The mission of the National Center for the Study of
Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) is to conduct and disseminate
research that helps build effective, cost-efficient adult education and
literacy programs." (p. 3)  Regarding how the NCSALL determines whether or
not it has achieved these goals, the last page and last sentence of the
body of the report states that, over the next five years,  "Its
measurement of success remains the same as well: Practitioners can cite
ways that NCSALL has helped them to improve practice."  (p.100)

Unfortunately, as I looked through the report, I could find no evidence
presented to suggest that practitioners had thought that the research of
the first five years had helped them improve their practice.  I'm
wondering if any of the NLA list members can cite ways that they or their
program or someone they know has been helped by the first five years of
the NCSALL work. And if so, in what specific ways.

I'd also be interested in knowing if NLA list members feel that anecdotal
reports by practitioners is a suitable way to evaluate the success of our
only federally funded, national adult education and literacy research
center in achieving its stated mission of helping to "build effective,
cost-efficient adult education and literacy programs."

And parenthetically, does anyone recall how the previous national research
center, the National Center on Adult Literacy (NCAL) whose work for five
years before the NCSALL took the federal R& D center contract must have
cost over $10,000,000, helped improve their practice and/or the operations
of the AELS?

All this is to say, I wonder just how we might go about deciding how well
our national R & D center research funds are serving the needs of the
field? What do NLA list members think?

Tom Sticht
* With a nod of thanks to Brit Night on the Public Broadcasting System (PBS)



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