This essay tracks and expands upon critical exchanges with graduate students in a course for adult educators, highlighting conflicting perspectives among participants on the relative value of theory in enhancing practice. An underlying focus of the course consisted of comparing constructivist and cognitive perspectives on learning theory and their relationship to corresponding models of instructional design. To gain further insight on the theory/practice dynamic, the essay also highlights Dewey's functional theory of learning underlying his pragmatic philosophy of inquiry. Participants "implicitly" embraced practitioner research frames of reference, drawing out the insider perspective--atopic "explicitly" discussed below--as an essential counterpoint to an outsider stance, that typically orients academic research. The essay calls for critical intermingling of research traditions to facilitate collaborative approaches to problem solving in adult basic education.