A View from the Other Side of the Great Divide:
Personal reflections on
practice and academic research
by Nayda Veeman
After working in the field of adult education and
literacy for over twenty years, I became a full time
doctoral student at the University of Saskatchewan
almost three years ago. It has been an interesting and
challenging leap and I want here to share some personal
reflections and observations. Despite serious efforts to
bridge the divide between the literacy
field and research, such as the Valuing
Literacy Initiative, the divide seems
even wider to me from this side than
it did from the other side.
I learned that academics
have been asking hard
questions and discussing
the very issues that were
puzzling me.
I left my job as executive director
of the Saskatchewan Literacy Network
in 2000 after eleven years in the
position. As my former colleagues in
the other provincial coalitions will attest, there never
seemed to be time to stop and think, let alone to read
in depth. Staff in organizations that depend on project
funding and that try to secure funding through
promotion and partnerships inevitably have ever-expanding
work loads and commitments. While I
realized the importance of reflecting on my work and
on social changes, research in practice remained for me
a goal to be achieved. I was never able to consistently
block off time for reading or thinking in the face of
multiple urgent demands to meet and opportunities
to be seized.
Through my work and participation on the board of
the Movement for Canadian Literacy, I had established
a network of contacts throughout Saskatchewan and
Canada. Whatever I had accomplished in the literacy
field did not count as a credential on this side of the divide. Once I became
a graduate student, I had to again establish my credibility and build a new
network
in the academic world. On this side of the divide,
credibility depends on publications and conference
presentations as opposed to the things I was
comfortable with such as op-ed pieces in the
newspaper, talks to service clubs or
workshops for adult educators.
Along with the issue of
credibility goes the issue of
funding, whether in the field or in
academia. While still working for
the Saskatchewan Literacy Network
I tried unsuccessfully for several
years to get funding to study the
difference between adult literacy
levels in Canada and Sweden. I was
told that the Valuing Literacy
Initiative was my best research
funding option, but felt I could not
do that successfully as a
practitioner because the Social
Sciences and Humanities Research
Council is an academic body. Now
that I have developed a successful application with
the help of two university professors, I am certain that
I could not have gotten this funding as a practitioner.
Only a small fraction of Valuing Literacy grants have
been awarded to non-academics. I am convinced that,
in the eyes of the review committee, my extensive
field experience would not have compensated for my
lack of academic research experience.
So at age 58 I began the application
process for graduate school. Somewhere in the process I was
asked if I had a MAT score. I did not even know
what a MAT score was! I needed to take the Miller
Analogies Test instead of the more familiar Graduate
Record Exam. Needless to say this caused me some
anxiety! I did a two week crash course in order to
schedule the exam so the results would be available
by the university’s application deadline. I was accepted as a full time
student in May 2001 on a
student stipend.
In July 2001 I took my first graduate course: a
summer literacy institute. This came with a large
binder of readings. I had heard of some of the
authors, but most I had not. It was a challenge to
learn and understand the academic vocabulary and I
wondered if I would be able to master this academic
literacy. Would I be able to do the research
successfully? I long ago had realized that language in
the literacy field is about communication, for
example “plain language”, whereas in the academic
context, it is more about hierarchy or vocabulary
specific to a given research field. Learning the
vocabulary is a prerequisite for acceptance in any
context, academic or otherwise.
The courses and support that I have
received from the university have
broadened my knowledge and
understanding of literacy issues.
Through the reading I have done since beginning
graduate school, I learned that academics have been
asking hard questions and discussing the very issues
that were puzzling me. For example, why is there such
a mismatch between the 40% of adult Canadians at
Levels One and Two in the International Adult
Literacy Survey and the numbers of individuals who
actually want to get in to upgrading programs? What
surprised me most was the volume of research that
has gone into this topic that I and, I believe, most of
my literacy colleagues never had time to seek out. I
was equally unaware of the large body of work related
to informal learning. The gap between the literacy
field and the research community seems even larger
to me from my current academic viewpoint than I
thought as a practitioner.
I was never able to consistently block
off time for reading or thinking in the
face of multiple urgent demands.
Over the past eighteen months, I have completed the
nine compulsory courses required by my department.
Once I passed my comprehensive exam and defended
my research proposal in 2002, I was finally able to
concentrate on the research I had wanted to do for two
years. While I was busy with classes on organizational
theory, policy, research methodology and statistics,
activity in the literacy field continued. Important
meetings happened in Saskatchewan and in Canada
that I either did not know about or could not afford
time or money to attend.
In conclusion, I feel privileged to have the
opportunity to read and think about issues that are
important to me. I am confident that the research I
am doing is better than it would have been because I
am doing it within an academic context. The courses
and support that I have received from the university
have broadened my knowledge and understanding of
literacy issues. There is a lot of academic research and
writing going on that could benefit the literacy field,
but who in the literacy field has time to read this
literature? Is it written in a language that
practitioners would understand? How can research
knowledge be made accessible to busy practitioners?
While I do not know the answers to these questions, I
hope that my research and the regional consultations
that follow will help in a small way to bridge the gap
between the literacy field and academia.
Nayda Veeman grew up on a farm
in
Saskatchewan and attended a one-room school. Since 1980 she has
worked in adult education. At the Saskatchewan Literacy Network,
Nayda supervised several studies of literacy issues and was
instrumental in establishing family literacy in the province. She served
as President of MCL from 1997 to 1999.
