[NLA] Are You Being Served?

[Catherine B. King]

Hello Tom:

You ask: "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."

In a word, yes.

I know in many research fields the term "anecdote" is still
a bad word, and  presents a closed door to any further
questions that are considered critical in any way.   But that's
an old idea that needs to be rethought--it's only problematic
in statistics.  It's not problematic but rather is a highly potent
area, and can be extremely enlightening:

(1) in a dialogue,

(2) as a window on a wealth of relevant intelligence, depending
on the kinds of questions we bring to it,

(3) in the qualified experience of the person telling it--as
personal evidence that informs our own developing wisdom.
Without it, teachers would never develop.

(4)  as providing the data source of changing parameters of
research range as well as for the potential new questions that
may emerge for researchers from the dialogue with detail.

(5)  As giving reasons why someone would say "yes" or "no"
to a specific research question.   You might find a number of yes
or no answers, but you will also find that each yes or no has one
or more anecdotes behind it.  But the anecdotes themselves
provide the general grounds for   <<what an intelligent speaker
takes>>   as reasonable evidence for their yes or no answers.

Responders are intelligent persons, not inert, "data."  The fact
that responders give anecdotes for evidence tells you that their
intelligence is at work in the field of concrete living (and teaching)
where specifics count, and where their intelligence makes
connections (applications) between (a) what they have learned
and (b)  the myriad details that they are charged to work through.

(6)  This area of "anecdotes from the field" is, whether we like
it or not, political.   If researchers and policy makers don't listen
to anecdotes from the field, then they are not paying attention
to the data (bad science); and they are not listening to the voices
in a democratic milieu that they claim to embrace, then  are
not listening to a broad band of (a) their constituents and (b)
the people who are keeping the relationship between
democracy and education together--teachers and
administrators of adult education programs (bad politics).

The field of the anecdote (history) is a separate and distinct
metaphysical field--where we ALWAYS must have one more
connecting insight between (1) what we have come to know and
(2) the event that is going forward.  Here, anecdote is king and, I
would argue, has more effect on people's lives than any
statistical evidence ever did--because it holds the potential
of paradigmatic form of personal character.

So, to your question, Are anecdotes suitable for evidence from
teachers in the field?:  An unqualified YES.   The same applies
to students.  The field of statistics is a valuable field.  But it's
up to the field to deal intelligently with the data as it is, rather than
trying to make a centurial Procrustean bed out of the human
sciences and research in education because of holdovers from
the defunct philosophical position of positivism.

Regards,

Catherine King
Adjunct Instructor
Department of Education



---- Original Message -----
From: Thomas Sticht <tsticht at znet.com>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Monday, December 09, 2002 7:15 PM
Subject: [NLA] Are You Being Served?


> 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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