Responding to Imposed Policy
Rapporteur: Suzanne Smythe

Policy drives our work. There is a lot of uncertainty about many policy initiatives, such as the new Canadian Learning Institute and what is meant by "evidencebased" research. What can we do about this uncertainty and how can we respond to policies?

• We need to learn about policies and policy objectives, and what is driving current policy. We could use Literacies as a forum to discuss policy.
• We need to situate literacy in a broader social context. We should reach out to places and people and organizations who might not call themselves literacy organizations, but for whom literacy is an important part of their work.
• We need to collaborate with other groups who don't see literacy as an investment model or as an issue of human capital. We also need to create a new way about talking about literacy. Not a new way, but a different way.
• We need to build on the things that have already happened, like the Standing Committee report, Raising Adult Literacy Skills: The Need for a Pan-Canadian Response. That's one way of interacting with policy. We need to find a lot of others!

Alternative Models of Research and Funding
Rapporteur: Bill Fagan

 First, we decided there are some key questions. They are:

• What are the sources of funding for research across Canada?
• What are the different forms or frameworks for doing research?
• How do we generate research problems?
• How do we write a research proposal without using the word research? That has funny implications.
• How do we become creative in overlapping research with some of the practices that we carry on every day?

 We also came up with some ways to raise the profile of alternative research models.

• Create a public profile of alternate models of research, to help develop acceptance.
• Use the Canadian Association of Literacy Educators (CALE) website on NALD. Everyone is welcome to submit ideas for feedback. It would become a sort of a mentoring system. Anyone doing a research project can invite others in from across the country. For that to work, we need a committed group of people.
• Use the journal, Literacies, to create a profile of alternate research models.
• We need a list of ongoing research. Completed research is already a done deal, but we would like to know what's happening presently and what's ongoing.