[NLA] "breaking news"

[AWilder106@aol.com]

Dear Eileen,

You say that practicioners' experience won't be convincing to others, like 
policymakers.  I don't know how you can say that.  Is it because the 
experiences incorporate "feelings?"  How do you know policymakers wouldn't be 
convinced?

You know, scientific research does not have to ignore feelings!  This is such 
a gigantic research topic I can only make a couple of very humble remarks.  

Validity.  Any type of research has to defend itself against threats to 
validity. This defense is built into the study design. Feelings can indeed 
lead to erroneous conclusions, and that is certainly a threat to validity, it 
can be countered in different ways. 

Reliability.  This also incorporates the training of the researcher.  If a 
medical doctor is doing an operation, is  it more or less likely, that a 
doctor with the same training and experience will also do the same operation 
with the same result?  Suppose a non-doctor were doing the operation?  I am 
picking an analogy to illustrate what I mean, granted in an imperfect way.

When ethnographers go into the field they must defend in all sorts of ways, 
one is by getting as much therapy as possible, because of the chances of 
projecting their own anxieties onto the people being studied and recording 
this as "data."  

I would bet my bottom dollar that if an educational researcher like Sarah 
Lawrence-Lightfoot were to go before policy-makers she would be given 
extraordinary respect, and her opinions would be carefully listened to.  I 
know her field is NOT adult literacy, but ALL of her work is qualitative 
(words) with not one speck quantitative (numbers).  Read her stuff and see 
how she incorporates feelings.

The point of this research--adult literacy--is prediction:  given x 
condition, what can we predict as an outcome?  Or, given explicit teaching of 
phonemic awareness, what can we predict as an outcome?  Or, not given 
explicit teaching of phonemic awareness, what can we predict as an outcome?

Experienced teachers are very good at prediction, they have to be, they are 
on the front lines every day. They'd be out the door if they couldn't predict 
what actions would lead to what consequences. Tacit knowledge and implicit 
learning are their bread and butter.  I mentioned on an earlier post there is 
such a thing as "consensual validity," when experienced teachers, in this 
case, agree on an outcome and what lead to that outcome.  Read an "oldie but 
goodie" article "The Forms and Functions of Educational Connoisseurship and 
Educational Criticism," Elliot Eisner, 1979, "The Educational Imagination," 
Macmillan.

The above comments are just on the fringes of the topic, others can add the 
rich detail. 

Andrea