A New Generation of Researchers

MAURICE TAYLOR

I’M REMINDED OF A RECENT INTERNATIONAL conference in adult education where the organizers made some serious attempts to bring literacy educators together with academics to talk about research. This event was scheduled as a symposium and advertised as a key pre-conference activity at a university. Having a hand in facilitating the event, which drew over sixty participants, I was struck by several clear messages voiced at this meeting. First, literacy educators believe there is a gap between the kind of research that is conducted by academics in universities and its usefulness in the field. Second, the language that is used to conduct the more scientific literacy research is alienating to many practitioners and is often not given a chance to affect everyday practice. And third, literacy educators have an interest in doing research if they are given some tools, some time, and some assistance. Although each one of these points is worthy of further elaboration, I want to focus in on the most important one — this new generation of researchers — the literacy educators.

Before attending this conference, I had been sketching out some ideas for a national project proposal in workplace literacy to be reviewed by the National Literacy Secretariat. Having listened to the voices from the field, I now found myself struggling with elements of the project design. What is the relationship between practice and practical knowledge? What would make a practitioner pick up the results of this applied research project and read it? Was my discourse or language inviting people into the work? How much training and professional development for workplace educators was actually being built into the design? Who was going to disseminate the findings?

With some advice from a reference group, many of these questions were addressed in the design, and several months later, this national project was launched. Since two researchers from that team write about their action-based research projects in this newsletter issue, I thought readers might be interested in how eight literacy educators were transformed into researchers.

Phases of the Action Research Project

To begin with, the underlying premise of the project was crafted around the idea that action research can help change literacy practices in teaching and learning. The project itself was designed to help instructors to use action research in various types of workplace practice settings. It was also intended to train instructors on how to use the methodology and actually carry out a research project that focused on getting a better understanding of a problem or achieving a real change or improvement in a practice context. Eight instructors were selected from across the country who were currently teaching in a workplace literacy program. Using the Conference Board of Canada Awards for Excellence in Workplace Literacy Directory, these programs were chosen from small, medium and large businesses. In the first phase of the project, the instructors were brought together in a two-day training workshop where the techniques for the methodology were taught and a supportive network established. During this professional development activity, instructors identified a pressing workplace issue, question or concern and decided where and how to intervene in this problem area.