Researching Women's Literacy in Mali: A Case Study of Dialogue among Researchers, Practitioners, and Policy Makers

In this article Puchner reflects on the dialogue between her as a researcher in Mali and other practitioners and policy-makers. Her fieldwork in Mali revealed that the adult literacy programs she observed had little impact; few women became literate, and those who did learn to read did not gain any significant benefits from this. Puchner emphasised, in her research findings, that narrow literacy programs therefore need to be reconsidered and changed. However, she experienced that dialogue between her as a researcher and policy-makers and practitioners had little effect. In sum, the research/policy dialogue was insufficient to bring about change. Puchner holds herself responsible for this, and puts forward possible reasons and suggestions.

• First, the research topic and process was initiated by her, and therefore based on her interests, rather than being initiated by practitioners/ policy-makers in Mali.
  
• Second, the traditional format of the dissertation she was required to write up is not amenable to communicating with practitioners/ policy-makers, and the work of transforming it into shorter articles takes a long time. She reasons that she should have written it in a different format.
  
• Third, since she spent some of her time in Mali assisting practitioners, she understood the difficulty of their situation, and was therefore a bit more hesitant to make controversial or 'impractical' policy recommendations. This was also linked to cultural differences between her as an 'outsider' and the local practitioners/ policy-makers.

She concludes that although her research may be of interest to other scholars in the field, it would be far more useful if the research contributed to practice and policy. In order to bring this about, there needs to be changes in the relationships between researchers, practitioners and policy-makers, so that each of them incorporates the others in their own projects.