In their report about how adults with little formal education learn, the researchers wrote about the "literature review we didn't do" (Niks, Allen, Davies, McRae, & Nonesuch, 2003, pp. 8-9). They made choices about how to spend their time, especially since their research required much more time than anticipated. Although a group member, Bonnie Soroke, looked for literature related to the topic, the little that she was able to find didn't resonate with the researchers. Bonnie's writing about the experience captures themes about knowers and ways of knowing:

As a graduate student doing research, I am trained to situate myself within the current literature-to explain my position and stance, to display how my research builds upon or challenges other research, and to show through the literature, how I've learned about my topic. In contrast, I saw how this group [practitioners] used their practice and their experience in that process. I watched and listened to how these literacy practitioners worked, how they talked about their work, learned from their work-and began to understand the ways they produce knowledge and situated themselves within that. (Niks et al., 2003, pp. 8-9)

Other researchers in practice in British Columbia have taken up the conversation about literature reviews. Ann Docherty (2006) wrote:

The ways in which I interacted with the literature is different than I expected. I have worried that there is a "right" way to conduct a literature review. Using literature has opened up questions for me: Why did I put more importance on academic research? Do I believe that an academic researcher knows more about literacy practice than a practitioner? Why was I placing higher value on what's written about experience than on the experience itself? (p. 6)

Paula Davies (2006) describes the challenges she found in writing about the literature she'd read. She wrote: "I felt awkward as I referred to the work of other researchers. My connections to their words did not feel real" (p. 13). She goes on to say:

While working on Dancing in the Dark (Niks et al., 2003), we struggled to explore why we had balked at doing a literature review for the research project. We talked about feeling that citing names of other researchers and formally referring to other research often felt like we were simply sprinkling our work with a condiment and that these references were not really ingredients germane to our work.