Return-Path: <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Received: from literacy (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by literacy.nifl.gov (8.10.2/8.10.2) with SMTP id eATFVN918198; Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:31:23 -0500 (EST) Date: Wed, 29 Nov 2000 10:31:23 -0500 (EST) Message-Id: <B24038C0D3E160419E320030D92C22DE146396@hobbes.cal.org> Errors-To: listowner@literacy.nifl.gov Reply-To: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Originator: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Sender: nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov Precedence: bulk From: "MaryAnn Florez" <maryann@cal.org> To: Multiple recipients of list <nifl-esl@literacy.nifl.gov> Subject: [NIFL-ESL:5341] NLA Discussion: Plain English vs. Academic Jargon (long) X-Listprocessor-Version: 6.0c -- ListProcessor by Anastasios Kotsikonas Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Content-Type: text/plain; Status: O Content-Length: 7738 Lines: 161 NIFL-ESL Colleagues: This cross-posting from the National Literacy Advocacy (NLA) Public Policy List that gives some particularly thoughtful and well-articulated comments on issues of research and practice. For those of you who are not on the NLA list, I thought it was worth sharing. (For those of you who are on the NLA list, my apologies for duplication.) A word of warning: it's slightly lengthy, but well worth the read! Thanks to George Demetrion for these insights on research, theory, and practice in adult education. MaryAnn Florez NIFL-ESL Moderator ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ---- A More Serious Response:Plain English vs. Academic Jargon This issue really is related to the split between theory and practice which extends back at least to the Platonic tradition in Ancient Greece. The life of the mind and the world of action have their own integrity within their distinctive spheres and have only at best been mediated in the West by quests for practitioner-based research or experiential knowledge. Much of Dewey's entire life search was a quest for what he referred to as the "intellectual organization of experience" and he spent much of his enormous talent attempting to heal the theory/action split through his instrumental logic based on inquiry and an aesthetics based on the quest for the "consummation" of experience. At best, he was only partially successful, though his work might be profitably examined in an effort to work through these tensions. In our field, there has been a strong effort to bridge the polarity between theoretical and practical knowledge through practitioner-based inquiry, which Cochran-Smith and Lytle (Inside/Outside: Teacher Research and Knowledge) sought to move from the "fringe" to the "forefront." While their work echoed a certain promise, the cumulative impact on the field has been of little avail* as of yet.* While it is true that theorists need to be more focused on the practicality of their work stemming from their theories for practitioner-based inquiry to have impact, practitioners (in my judgment) need to focus more on theory, but sifted through issues raised in experience rather than those identified within the academic discipline. That is, for the integrity of practitioner-based research, neither theorists *nor* practitioners should colonize the field. Rather, problems need to be identified, ideally by communities of practitioner/scholars (practitioners and scholars who are simultaneously practitioners and scholars), that require multiple lenses for the quest for really usable knowledge, through and for the working out of specific issues and problems. Such an approach requires a lot of responsibility on the part of readers of research, particularly if such texts are viewed less as the seat where truth resides than as a tool or heuristic for the purpose of working through/resolving problems/issues as determined by communities of practitioner/researchers themselves. The search, then, is for the knowledge that clarifies whatever issues a person or a group of persons may have. Specifically: * What are your questions/issues? * What do you really want to know? What sources of curiosity consume you? * What problems deeply perplex you? * What sources of information and insight most fully stimulate your imagination? * What do you have to resolve even to go on? * What do you wonder about, perhaps in a more reflective mode that sparks your intellectual curiosity? I suggest that it is questions like these which might stimulate the quest for relevant research as well as other information that may provide clarity for the purpose of resolving or making headway with them. Anything else is just information and there's endless streams of that available. On a related issue there is a good amount of available information in our field that is accessible, though it may take time to find it and it is the job of the reader and not the writer to ascertain the relevance for his or her particular purposes. There is also a lot of good information on the archives of the various listservs. I was reviewing some of the recent discussions on the NIFL-ESL list and found some very valuable insight shared on what is and what comprises a relevant curriculum for ESL. The issues raised were very clear and to me quite relevant. There's been a lot of other excellent discussions that are housed in the archives that become available if we make time to study them. I also would agree that the potential of the listservs have not yet seen their day and a much more concentrated list on issues related to instruction, learning, curriculum, materials development, etc., would be extremely worthwhile *if* people are willing to commit the time and energy to sustain high level discourse that truly gets at the learning and knowledge that matters. Certainly much of the reports and studies from NCSALL, NCAL, NALD and ERIC are written at a generally accessible level, though, whether relevant or not, that's another story. Monographs, studies, and essays by Fingeret, Merrifield, Sticht, Quigley, Auerbach, Lytle, Beder, and Hayes -- among the top writers in our field, are often accessible, but it does take work, commitment and a sense of purpose in going to a particular text in the first place in order to mine the wealth of knowledge that does not lay statically in the text, but is dynamically poised in the interactive relationship between the reader and the text in quest for specific knowledge, insight, and information. Other broader knowledge from an array of fields and disciplines *may* be relevant depending on your background, current interests, and specific issues with which you are dealing--feminism, critical theory, Afrocentrism, spirituality, for example, might be viewed as highly relevant for those who have an interest in such topics and want to establish some interdisciplinary links with our field. Still, one person may find one text or a particular field of study highly illuminating while it is a sleeper for another. In this reader-response era in which we operate, that cannot be the responsibility of the author. It helps if the author is clear, to be sure, but what the author defines as clarity is sifted between his or her own background, interests, and set of problems which stimulate the writing process. In short, I agree with you that there's a lot of stuff out there which may be neither highly accessible or relevant. Given the overload in the informational era, that's inevitable. At the same time, there is a lot of good work available, generally accessible to the hard working practitioner who is able and willing to spend the time to search for it, with the recognition that it's not so much the text which is going to bring illumination, but the interaction between the text and the reader. The writer of such potentially informative materials cannot foresee all of the many ways that his or her work may be appropriated by others. Most likely, what one writes will be of value to some and irrelevant to others. The challenge for the reader is to discern what to spend time on with no guarantees that the effort will produce the desired payoff. It may or may not, or it may open new channels. Reading, like writing, is as much a matter of faith as it is a matter of knowledge generation. As much as anything, commitment through faith (and experience) to certain research traditions provides the needed force to sustain the learning process. Tonight I gave up academic writing to write this. This was an exercise both of faith and commitment. George Demetrion Literacy Volunteers of Greater Hartford GDemetrion@juno.com
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Tue Jan 16 2001 - 14:45:14 EST