[NLA] Practitioner Research

[Hickson, Holly]

As a newcomer who has not mastered quite all of the acronymns yet, I am
fascinated by the discussion of research and its place in democracy.  It
seems to me that there is a need for both the academic kind of research with
all its rigor, and practitioner research with all its immediacy and more
heart, in general.

Academe was never meant, in the beginning to be elitist, but rather an
answer to a calling.  Its rules and regulations in research and inquiry were
a disciipline imposed upon self.

Democracy was never meant to be anti intellectual but rather to assure that
there were sufficient options in behavior/creed/pursuits that all had equal
opportunity to be at their best.

It seems to me, that in an open society, academic,rigourous research helps
to provide a framework for practitioner research to individualize or make
more general as need be.

As a matter of fact, if we were able to address the overall anxiety
regarding "our" portion of funding and public attention (as opposed to the
issues receiving greater national attention and media play), we might find
that both the discussion of where Adult Education and LIteracy belong and
where research fits in to be more of a dialectic than a desperate fight for
survival.

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