Inquiry-centered staff development requires that adult literacy practitioners (adult educators, tutors, and administrators) function simultaneously as learners, researchers, and reformers performing the following actions: forming research communities within program or across program sites; using literature and their own experiences to investigate issues in the field collectively; generating research questions and conducting systematic inquiries into teaching, learning, and administration in their own program settings; organizing their research as social and collaborative processes; and disseminating their findings through oral and written presentations. The beginnings of inquiry-centered staff development may be traced to the action research movement of the 1950s and 1960s. The Adult Literacy Practitioner Inquiry Project, which features biweekly seminars, has provided a strategic research site and research method for practitioners to conduct program-based inquiries into daily practice. A study of the design and initiation of inquiry projects by adult literacy practitioners has confirmed that practitioner research identifies and investigates a distinctive set of problems in practice and demonstrates that understanding practice cannot be accomplished by university researchers alone. (Appended is a table detailing practitioner researchers, programs, positions, and research questions. Contains 44 references.) (MN)