[NLA] RE: Are we doing better than we think?

[AWilder106@aol.com]

Colleagues,

This is in reaction to both Art's and Tom's emails about research, part of 
which touches on the validity of conclusions.

First, Tom's references and abstracts will be invaluable to me as he has much 
wider contacts than I have.

Second, I am speaking as a person who  has gone through the doctoral food 
mill AND as a former teacher. This is not a complete argument, but it is in 
favor of letting the buyer beware.

1)  Last night I was interviewed for the 3rd time re the US census, I guess I 
am part of a random sample.  About 1/2 of the questions I couldn't answer, so 
either the interviewer or I had to say "Well, let's just put down...."  I did 
have answers (buried) to some, but I would have had to spend maybe an hour or 
more to get them.  I wouldn't have been an outlier, either, NOBODY who had 
the answers to these questions would have been able to answer them without a 
lot extra work, and then "n/a" might have been applied liberally even so.

So the questions didn't match my reality.

This is the "grounded research" position problem.

What does the teacher do with discrepant reality which the teacher KNOWS is 
critical, but the form doesn't have a place to include it?

2)  A couple of months ago I went over some writing by Yetta Goodman--Whole 
Language-- which described miscue analysis and the procedures she used to 
refine her categories and to understand what was going on in the heads  of 
her students, how they were making the mistakes they did and therefore how 
she could teach  them better.  I have NO IDEA what happened in California 
because of whole language, I only know it was dumped.  Yetta Goodman built 
from the ground up which is how I taught and I expect a lot of other teachers 
teach.  We take something and refine it.

As is customary in academia, whole language became refined, some was cut out, 
some parts became more developed.   The linguistic models that the Goodmans 
came up with and the pre-test post-test linguistic models are quite similar. 

So the buyer has to beware.

There has to be a place in the adult education data universe for the data 
that Tom cites, which looks really interesting, and for Art's type of data 
and the conclusions he draws from it as an experienced teacher.  How does 
Art's type of data, and other teachers' type of data, enter the data stream, 
or does it?   Are there any ways to help this along?  Any ways to incorporate 
it in what we already have?  How do we avoid the either/or?  How do we build 
credible studies (valid, reliable) that include what teachers know from their 
own experience?  Can it be done?

Andrea