[NLA] Practitioner-based research

Tue Jun 25 16:29:42 EDT 2002

George, Andrea, Eileen and others on this thread:

I didn't want you all to think I was ignoring your quest to discuss the very
important topic of research as related to the decline of the AELS and the
pros/cons of testing/the NRS.  It's just been a busy day for me.

Know that I have scanned all your posts.  I will sit down at the keyboard
and share my thoughts after-hours when I have the time.  Tonight I do have
family plans.  I'll try to get back to you as quickly as possible.

I sincerely appreciate your response to my post (6/23/02).  I would very
much *liked* to have heard from other practitioners/administrators, though.
You s'pose they are even "out there" lurking?  Surely makes a person wonder.
I CAN'T be The Only One!!  Or AM I???

Nancy Hansen
a little S.D. hayseed & apparent leader of the cow herd
Sioux Falls Area Literacy Council
Nashansen at aol.com
and
sfliteracy at mcleodusa.net

----- Original Message -----
From: "George E. Demetrion" <sophocles5 at juno.com>
To: <nla at lists.literacytent.org>
Sent: Monday, June 24, 2002 9:27 PM
Subject: Re: [NLA] Practitioner-based research

> 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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