Given the common perception, both inside and outside the academy, that there is a "right" way to do research, perhaps academically trained researchers have the role of a buffer trying to convince both sides that there are many different ways to do research. What counts as knowledge? Another part of the role is to encourage academics to value what practitioners know and learn.

Practice is doing; documenting is another job. Don't you need to do something different than your everyday practise if you're a practitioner doing research? What is the line between being a researcher in practice versus being just a reflective practitioner?

The group had a long discussion about literature reviews that touched on a range of questions. What kind of literature review would make sense for practitioners? What would it take for academics to create literature that takes practice into account? Why does knowledge have to be screened through the eyes of academia in order to "count"? From another angle, what would have to change so that academics would review a body of practitioner knowledge before they did their work? What could academically trained researchers produce, that had coherence, rigour, theoretical seriousness, but also took up questions of practice and resonated with literacy practice?

Literature reviews are about engaging in a conversation with what's already been written to say what you agree with and don't agree with. In practice, we don't necessarily need to link to the academic literature. What would be more interesting would be to review knowledge relevant to what we're doing, tying questions and learning into broader discussions happening within social movements. Maybe practitioner research needs to connect, in different ways. We need to find alternatives that serve our needs.

The discussion then shifted to whether research in practice would create its own literature and whether that literature would be cited in other literature reviews. Does the act of practitioner research create its own literature? Will views shift?

We don't want to fall into the polarity of academics versus practitioners. But how can we support the production of things that can be referred to as building a conversation? How can we help people use knowledge that hasn't been acknowledged? 

Other topics touched on in the discussion: 

• Does SSHRC (the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council) mainly fund the academy to watch practitioners do research? SSHRC funds academically shaped research and so requires the presence of an academically trained researcher in the partnership. The criteria need to be challenged. We should be proactive; we need to move it forward, make it better, and be open about what we're asking for.
• Does research in practice produce interesting research, or is it an object of research?
• Academics have the philosophical clout to tie interest in practitioner research to debates within academia about what counts as knowledge.
• Academics have the luxury to fight battles about the foundation of knowledge. We need an academic voice to link up debates in the literacy field to issues in the academy, to make arguments about the legitimacy of practitioners' voices that even SSHRC can listen to.
• One model of research was used in health projects, which were mandated to do research and also translate the findings into documents for consumers and fact sheets for doctors. SSHRC is interested in the gap in knowledge, in seeing that a larger part of each initiative tries to overcome this divide. We should trust our experience in the field and trust that we can address the problem.
• Transfer journals are in place so that knowledge created in the academy can be disseminated. How do we shift that thinking to recognize that knowledge is made in lots of different places? The journal, Literacies, aims to include material that comes from different places in the field and to frame it all as legitimate knowledge.