Adult Education Research Conference
Literacy Pre-Conference

Athens, Georgia
June 2, 2005
George Demetrion
gdemetrion@msn.com

The following is an adaptation of a presentation I gave on theorist/practitioner tensions in adult literacy education at the Literacy Pre-Conference of the 2005 Adult Research Conference in Athens, Georgia. For a more extended discussion of this important topic, consult my bibliographical review essay, "Between the Life of the Mind and the World of Action: Explorations into Consciousness, Pedagogy, Politics, and Philosophical Science in Adult Literacy Education" http://www.nald.ca/fulltext/George/biblio/cover.htm. The four topics listed below were framed by the presenters.

1. US government mandates regarding methods and outcomes for educational research
2. The framework of perpetual pragmatism
3. Constant and severe shortages of resources, accompanied by unrealistic expectations about what research can achieve
4. Lack of support from management for practitioner research and inquiry

I experience all of these limitations in any given role or situation, and depending on what I'm seeking to accomplish, in any given research project. These four limitations are obviously interconnected. I take them up one at a time in relation to some of the issues I struggle with both as a practitioner and a researcher/theorist. Because the focus this morning is on problems related to these limitations; in not bringing in proposed strategies/solutions at this point, I take a deliberate and exaggeratedly pessimistic stance for a discussion that nonetheless, will be viewed as useful.

The current USDOE's emphasis on scientific-based educational research as defined by the gold standard hierarchy of experimental design, and the marginality, if not de-legitimization of other schools of scholarship, namely, critical pedagogy, constructivism, feminist and afro-centrist theory, phenomenology, ethnography, and postmodernism, have been an acute problem for the field of adult literacy research in the neo-conservative era of the current administration. Even so, governmental mandates on research, policy and accountability have been problematic ever since adult literacy became linked to ABE starting with the Manpower Development and Training Act in the 1960s, through capital development and competency-based models of policy rationalization. The critical landmarks along this trajectory include, the 1975 APL study, the 1983 Nation at Risk report, and Forrest Chisman's influential report, Jump Start, published in 1989, linking ABE to the human resource needs of the post-industrial economy.