Today I see myself facilitating the emergence of new ways of doing research by practitioners, questioning assumptions about how research "should" be done and by whom. I recognise that my academic training shapes how I approach research but I also believe it does not necessarily determine it. I believe that universities teach particular ways of doing research and that these are constructed by many as "the ways" to do research. People who have not been trained to do research in academia do not traditionally feel capable of generating knowledge through research.

The following quotations come from two long-time adult literacy college instructors. We were discussing the possibility of including university professors in a project so that they could apply for a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant to compensate for a shortage in funding for the practitioners' research project.

If we can have academics do research to backup what we are saying, all the better.

If academics can make it look good... it's better for all of us. Research needs to be done, it doesn't matter who does it.

This conversation clarified a point I had not been able to articulate in previous conversations with practitioners. While they wanted academics to do research to validate what they already knew, they did not readily see the difference between academics doing the research or them doing it. I did see a difference. To me, it makes all the difference.

Today, when I meet a group of practitioners who are interested in learning about research, I start by having a conversation about research: What is research? Who is a researcher? My main goal is to make assumptions explicit and to generate a sense that everyone brings a different perspective to the generation and validation of knowledge through research. I understand that collaboration creates spaces where these different perspectives can be articulated. Through a relationship based on trust and respect, researchers can explore ways in which these different perspectives can or cannot complement each other.

As I was getting involved in the literacy field as a research friend, I began collecting the data for my doctoral research. Although still looking at relationships between university trained researchers and community researchers, I wanted a different focus for my research. I was interested in talking to people who work as researchers in different locations. I wanted to talk to individuals who think of themselves as researchers even when they do not work in universities and even if they have not had academic research training. I assumed that they would have developed their own ways of doing research that might or might not be similar to the ways I had been trained to do research. I was interested in learning how these researchers worked together with university-based researchers. In the next section I state the research objectives and questions I posed for this inquiry.