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National In my humble opinion by Kate Nonesuch When I first looked into taking part in research in practice, I was suspicious, for reasons that will appear. Later I was seduced into taking part in a collaborative research project that coloured my life for a year and a half, which became Dancing in the Dark: How do Adults with Little Formal Education Learn? How do Literacy Practitioners do Collaborative Research? (Niks et al., 2003). The experience enriched me personally, stimulated me intellectually and brought me into contact with many interesting instructors and researchers, although the process raised many questions for me about the value of research in practice and the way it works in real life. I’ll talk personally here, as a regular, full-time instructor at a satellite campus of a university-college in BC, and coming to my practice from the left, from a feminist perspective, and from a position of trying to elaborate and reduce the power differential between me and the students in my program. 1. Role conflicts: researcher/administrator At planning meetings, whether in Vancouver, on-line, or on the phone, I represented Malaspina University-College (MUC) in making decisions that properly would be made by administrators above me in the College. Who’s making the decisions here? Can I assign work to my boss?
When I initiate a project like this, outside the usual scope of my job description, it often comes bouncing back to me. When we first sent in the application, my co-coordinator was listed as the contact person for the College. (It has to be someone available by phone during office hours, and many of the questions have to do with money.) However, the first time the grants officer called with a question, my coordinator, who hadn’t been to any of the planning meetings, didn’t feel she could answer. She phoned me with the question, and, rather than tell her how to answer, I offered to phone the grants officer myself. Thereafter I became the “contact person” for MUC. Working off the side of my desk
Once we got the grant, and I had release time, this situation was easier. Nonetheless, there was a long period of planning and application, and having to do it off the side of my desk is a barrier to applying for more research at another time. And it is only because I have a regular full-time job at MUC, and paid prep time, that I entertain the idea at all. Other instructors, with less job security, who are doing prep on their own time, would find it even more of a barrier. Does this process of planning and doing research in practice create even more distance between those instructors in the field who “have it all” and those who work at temporary, part-time, ill-paid positions? I’ve always done informal research—why isn’t that good enough? Research in practice is presented as an add-on to practice; yet I say that practice includes this informal research. If you do not reflect, you do not practice. I found, however, that I got much more prestige when my work was labelled “research”. The first indication I had was the article in the local paper that resulted from the National Literacy Secretariat’s announcement of the grants they had given. The headline for the story called me “professor”. For the previous 10 years I had appeared in that same newspaper two or three times a year, always to do with my work in literacy, but I had always been called “instructor”—never had they referred to me as “professor”. And the work of research—being able to bring grants into the College, to publish a report or an article, to present my findings at a conference—all this work seems to be considered more tangible and important than turning out class after successful class, year after year. Why is the work that I am trained to do, and paid to do—classroom instruction—less valuable than this extra piece, research in practice? A different sense of time As a researcher, the “final report” looms large. To put my findings in writing in some final form, for the world to see, is daunting. I know that I could reach conclusions that are more relevant, more accurate, more interesting if I had more time; I know I could write more persuasively, more clearly, if I had more time. In the world of pure research, I think there is more time—surely this is part of the reason that Royal Commissions and theses and final reports routinely come in late. As an instructor, there is never more time. I know that when my time is up for the research project, my time will be filled with something else. I cannot postpone January classes, not even for one day, because I have not finished thinking about the research I did in the fall term. I am used to getting things done to artificial deadlines, but the “final” in final report rings so loud. I am not used to never having a chance to modify or reject conclusions I came to the year before. As a practitioner-researcher, how can I operate in these two timeframes at the same time? How can there be more time to perfect my conclusions when there is no more time? Headwork vs. heart work
Teaching has a combination of headwork and heart work, but for me, the heart work is the driving force. I teach real individuals with real lives and am likely to put their needs before the exigencies of research. The research has necessarily a narrow focus; when I am acting both as instructor and researcher, the teaching may include the narrow focus of the research, but also reaches far beyond it. When there is a conflict, the instructor wins out, and I feel guilty neglecting the research or not doing it well enough. Or conversely, when there is a conflict, the researcher wins out, and I feel guilty about not doing as much as I normally would to put the students’ interest first. We have to do research, the other guy’s area of expertise; why don’t they come and teach literacy? 3. Whose idea was this, anyway? Money, money, money I wondered where we were going. Especially I wondered whose idea it was that limited resources would be spent on practitioner research, whatever that was. I wondered what effect it would have on my program and me. Later I learned that applications to the Cost-Shared grants program would be favourably considered if they had a research component tacked on to the activity that funding was being sought for. I knew that the cost-shared program was also under-funded, and that every year they received applications for much more than the amount of money they had to grant. Were instructors to do the extra work of research for no extra money? Or would money that would otherwise be spent on projects be spent on the research activity tacked on to some of the projects? While I was involved in Dancing in the Dark, I went to two conferences about research, where we reported on our research. For both these conferences, all my expenses—travel, accommodation and conference fees—were paid. Yet instructors who do workshops on some aspect of their teaching at the provincial ABE conference pay full fees for the conference and are not reimbursed by conference organizers for any travel and accommodation expenses; sometimes there is a small gift or an honorarium of $50, but in essence, instructors are expected to make this contribution to the field as a gift. So the Ministry is not a feminist collective…
When researchers came to look at my practice Twice, for two other projects, I was interviewed extensively, one-on-one. What did I gain? Someone to listen to me as I worked out how to articulate my thoughts and actions; someone to ask me questions from new perspectives, some of which I hadn’t thought about before; the luxury of talking about my work from a theoretical rather than a practical approach. Other times I have been part of focus groups facilitated by one or more researchers. Here I also got the opportunity to listen to other practitioners respond to the same kind of thought-provoking questions, and the chance to make new connections with colleagues. How can we make a potentially negative experience positive? 5. Last words As I said at the beginning of this piece, I have benefited a great deal from participating in research in practice, and have played the devil’s advocate here to point to some of the concerns I have. In BC, research in practice has mainly taken the form of practitioners doing research; in other regions, it has taken different forms. I am particularly interested in having research findings made available to instructors, and made available in a more useful way than the formal research report often is. Furthermore, from my experience at research conferences, I think researchers can learn a lot from practitioners about presenting their findings. It seems that someone noticed that (except for a few people who play for both teams) academic researchers and literacy practitioners operate in separate fields, and wanted to remedy that by inviting practitioners over to play in the research field. I think that’s one-sided, and I’d like to invite researchers over to our field, too. How can we collaborate to discover, articulate and record the collective knowledge and wisdom literacy instructors have about their work? What can we do together to move the research findings we already have into the field, to improve literacy programming and instruction? Duncan, BC
References Niks, M., D. Allen, P. Davies, D. McRae & K. Nonesuch, K. (2003). Dancing in the dark: How do adults with little formal education learn? How do literacy practitioners do collaborative research? Nanaimo, BC: Malaspina University-College. Available online: http://www.nald.ca/PROVINCE/ALT/RiPAL/Resourcs/dark/cover.htm Pare, A. L. (1994). Attending to resistance: An ethnographic study of resistance and attendance in an adult basic education classroom. Vancouver: The University of British Columbia. Soroke, B. (2004). Doing freedom: An ethnography of an adult literacy centre. Vancouver: Simon Fraser University.
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