[NLA] Practitioner-based research

[George E. Demetrion]

Nancy and others:

This discussion on practitioner-based research is so rich and complex
that it's only feasible (at least for me) to respond to one aspect of the
discussion at a time.

Here I'd like to respond to Nancy's critical probing.

Nancy says the following(I think I did some splicing of texts here)

" I sense there are still too many questions regarding just exactly how
this research project is really going to *change* anything - to say
*nothing* of "meeting these standards" as Eileen wrote above! 

SHOW me I am *wrong*.  Give me solid examples of policy makers
**listening* to
practitioners' input.  Give us *all* a feel of how learner and/or
practitioner input affected a policy - one single policy.

"The point for me is this:  As an administrator and practitioner, and in
my individual view only, before I do the time-consuming task of gathering
yet another particle of documentation or bring into the fray a group of
learners whose reasons for learning and their feelings about their
educational program are going to be included in the inquiry, *I* need to
know that the policy makers give a rip about what we are giving them as
input. 

If the policy-makers come back and say, "Well, this just *isn't* data we
can
use for the specific purpose of increasing funding to literacy programs,"
I have wasted my time in a very busy workweek.  If they come back and
say, "Guess ya learned by doing." I would *have* to tell them that I have
plenty of other ways "to learn by doing" that would positively make this
program more effective than a research project with no benefits at the
end of the long road.

I believe this is called realism and prioritizing.  Or is it called my
being selfish with my over-burdened schedule?  I will "go the extra mile"
for a *lot* of projects within this program - ask our learners.  But
practitioner research wreaks of having too many questions with too few
answers."
________________________________________________________________
Yes, Nancy, this is a profound tension in the field and there are many
good reasons not to engage in any formal-based practitioners-inquiry
project.

Let me do some parsing here of what were referring to as research.

First, there is practitioner-based research which is research by, for and
with teachers for the primary purpose of raising critical issues within
practice that effect our daily work.  The motivation for this type of
research comes from the issues and dilemmas we experience at the ground. 
If we look at the NLA as a playing field for a national
practitioner-inquiry (teacher-research) project, then you are one of the
prime participants in this endeavor.  Notice what you did with your last
substantive post.  You  synthesized 8 (!) messages on this thread and
raised critical issues that are important from the place where you stand
and you put the issues out there for the rest of us to confront.  This is
exactly what is meant by practitioner-based inquiry, which needs to be
seen as a continuum rather than a great divide with that of critical
practice.  Add to that Cochran-Smith and Lytle's emphasis on "systematic
intentional inquiry," then you might see how practitioner-based inquiry
can be highly germane to where you stand.

At the level of practitioner-to-practitioner, there needs to be no higher
systematicity and/or generalizability or applicability beyond where you
and others choose to take in pursuing the thread of any inquiry, though
what's important here is not so much the quality of reflection as an
end-in-itself, but the role of reflection combined with critical action
as a tool or heuristic in progressively moving from problems identified
to problems resolved, however incompletely so.  Based on this assumption,
both data and ideas serve as tools, or in a formal sense, what John Dewey
refers to as propositions.

As a formal school of educational research, practitioner-based inquiry
has roots in Dewey's philosophical pragmatism as well as in the research
of social scientist Kurt Lewin who penned the aphorism "there is nothing
more practical than a good theory," practical in Dewey''s sense in moving
inquiry toward problem identification and resolution forward.

Carr and Kemmis wrote an important book on action research in the 1980s,
titled, "Becoming Critical."

The chief guru (guress?) for our field is Susan L. Lytle, whose book
co-authored with Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Inside/Outside:  Teacher Research
and Knowledge (1993, Teachers College Press) is the most important source
for getting a good handle on this slippery topic of practitioner-based
research.  That book contains several essays by Cochran-Smith and Lytle
where they chart out the broad conceptual framework of this emerging
field, but there is also a major section on teacher research projects
that illustrate the kind of work that practitioners might conduct to get
a better handle on their work.  If you have time this summer, for one
serious book on this topic and if, and only if, this topic is important
to you, I recommend that you give Inside/Outside a very thorough study,
and in the process, push(the collective)  us to put up the goods.

In terms of practitioner-to practitioner inquiry, there is no need to
take teacher research further. Its value will be proved or not in terms
of its efficacy of your own immediate practice.  Better yet, shape any
teacher research project to meet the needs of your own practice.  You are
in control, not the research paradigm.

However, for the field of practitioner-based inquiry to achieve any
enduring legitimacy (maybe your concern, maybe not), the development of
this field cannot rest simply on practitioner-to-practitioner
communication.  Cochran-Smith and Lytle are good on addressing this; it
needs to attain a certain institutional threshold both in terms of formal
networks of participants engaging in this work and publicizing and
documenting it in some visible way, and also, in a more formal
institutional sense, where particularly the major adult literacy
agencies, NCSALL, ProLiteracy Worldwide, NIFL make substantial room for
this type of research within the context of their organizational
cultures.  That's one important level.  

The other level of seeking greater legitimacy for practitioner-based
inquiry is formally linking it with others schools of educational
research.  The closest link is with ethnographic literature based in the
discipline of cultural anthropology.  In this school, the researcher,
typically a university scholar, like Victoria Purcell-Gates, is a
participant-observer, who seeks to critically grasp the multiple meaning
of what is observed from the perspective of the participants, but also
adds a broader framework to the interpretative work than typically
available to the participant, but stemming as an extension or some type
of amplification of practitioner perception.  The tension that the
ethnographer experiences is the temptation of empathy, on the one hand
(going native in the extreme sense) with the need for critical, scholarly
distance on the other hand.  Good ethnographers are able to mediate this
tension.  This type of scholarship has more broad-based legitimacy than
practitioner-based research as it is more formally embedded within an
academic discipline and there is a body of work which establishes the
canonical basis for the field.

Here's an opportunity for some incredible linkages.  Let's assume
research is a collaborative enterprise.  Take your program, take another
program, but your program in particular.  It's one thing for Nancy,
alone, to take on a research project that very well may bury her in work
and take her away from what is really pressing.  It would be another
thing all together if a first rate ethnographer from the University of
South Dakota and Nancy linked up and together they developed a research
project and together, along with key others carried it out.  

In this scenario, both Nancy and the ethnography are equal partners, both
bringing their own intelligence and experience to the table and allowing
the research problems or issues to surface as a result of their
interaction.  Given the electronic medium, others throughout the country
could be brought into the research project from time-to-time.  Also LLA 
specialists could be brought in to help craft and support the project. 
Such research, in turn, could be valuable for the field, which could be
publicized through LLA or ProLiteracy Worldwide as the merger between LLA
and LVA becomes formalized.  That, in turn, could serve as a model for
other research projects.  This could happen, but the envelope for it
would have to be pushed in various quarters.  AND WHY NOT??

A lot of good could come from these field-based projects to the extent
that they:

a)  provide valuable information to the field
b)  gain scholarly credibility by linking practitioner-based inquiry to
other types of educational research
c)  gain institutional credibility in our major adult literacy
institutions, only through which broader legitimization can come..

But for the latter to happen,  the community-based  adult literacy sector
needs to define itself and not be defined by the dominant ABE sector as
ABE light. 

One final comment.  The research that has gone into the EFF project since
1994 or 95 is a major nation-wide teacher research project.  That is
important in itself to highlight, not simply the various outcomes of that
research, but the rich dynamic of its iterative process,  through the
various years among the many practitioners who have taken part in the
work.

Okay, now back to the book.

George Demetrion



That would be doable and could gain a lot of visibility


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