The potential of practitioner-led action research (PLAR) to contribute to professional development in adult literacies work is considered from two perspectives. First, a recent initiative in Scotland is examined to illustrate PLAR implemented as professional development. The structural factors needing to be addressed for PLAR to contribute to…

Increased use of practitioner research in literacy education is opening new vistas for grassroots knowledge. Such research affords new possibilities for professional growth, an improved image of literacy, and the potential to reduce illiteracy to minimal levels. (JOW)

Describes a participatory research project that involved adult education practitioners in the Caribbean in collecting, analyzing, and interpreting data. Explains how participatory research is the process by which knowledge is generated and skills are acquired, by both the researcher and the researched. (SK)

Practitioner research strengthens teachers as they learn how knowledge is made. The right time for teacher research is after initial training and some years of experience. (SK)

A teacher and a researcher provide alternate interpretations of the teaching and learning that occurred in an adult English-as-a-Second-Language classroom. They conclude that mutual collaboration must include all phases of a research project. (SK)

This section's thematic heading includes "University Continuing Education Units' Commitment to Research: Program Development as Scholarly Work" (Blaney); "An Invitation to the Dance: The Importance of Practitioners Undertaking Research in Adult and Continuing Education" (Thompson); and "Research in University Continuing…

To be of value to practitioners, research must be personalized and dictated by the occurrence of events, exploratory, inductive, and grounded in practice. Submodels in which (1) research agendas are suggested independently by theory and by practice or (2) practice leads to research that leads to theory will enable practitioners to engage in…

This document presents the personal narrative of an adult literacy practitioner who has worked with Literacy Volunteers of America and a reading center in Connecticut and who signed up for the National Center for the Study of Adult Learning and Literacy (NCSALL) Teacher Research Project on Learner Motivation, Retention, and Persistence in 1998.…

This document, which is described by its author as a "critical autobiography", traces one adult educator's 15-year journey from graduate school and into the field of adult literacy and the process of his development into what he calls "an American scholar." The autobiographical narrative is developed against the backdrop of the…