Academic Reading and Practitioner Reading
Dear Reader,
Today’s piece was prompted, as I suppose many are, by an experience of mine. This experience, or reminder, was a more recent one.
I’ve been working through some literacy and reading comprehension projects, alongside a few other things, but one of those projects in particular distilled something for me: there was a question about the research behind some practices.
And in that question, and the related discussion, I realized that I was running into a sort of dividing line between reading for academic purposes and reading as a practitioner. Both types of reading involve reading research, so both require a genuine intellectual engagement. And yet the way in which one reads as an academic and the way in which one reads as a practitioner are not the same thing.
While for an entirely different project I have necessarily been reading as an academic—slowly, painfully, achingly—my literacy research has largely been that of practitioner: I don’t much care for citation practices and the reference game. Since I’ve been interacting with an academic for a reading comprehension project, however, my reading as a practitioner has presented some hindrances to my contributions.
And so I thought a piece outlining some of the general differences between the two might be of benefit to others.
Reading as An Academic
Reading as an academic can in many ways be like reading as a writer. You’re sourcing information, keeping detailed notes on stray references that might be employed down the road, and so forth.
(The sympathies between reading as an academic and reading as a writer may have something to do with why I struggle with both.)
Reading as an academic can also include the following reality:
As a species of academic writing, much of philosophy is characterized as a genre engineered for epistemic justification, not for engagement, entertainment, and most certainly not for the task of holding the attention of an arbitrary reader. As Michael Lewis writes, the author of an academic paper is trying to survive its readers, not bring them joy. Surviving the reader means that every matter of misrepresentation, uncharitable reading, or objection, must be anticipated and alleviated.
If the author is trying to survive instead of bringing joy, and the academic reader knows this (they do), then academics can expect their reading experience to be largely joyless. Once you bring in “you're reading for information, rather than for pleasure,” this starts to influence how you approach academic reading.
(I’ll note here that I largely disagree with this mentality, but not completely. I just don’t think all such research is joyless, nor should it be. But wait, there’s more…)
Academic reading is done primarily for citation. Even if it can be a pleasant reading experience, interrupting your reading every five seconds so you can play the citation game is irritating. Some academics, like some lawyers, come to hate reading and it’s not a question of why.
Many of those academics who continue to love to read fall into a different category:
Although I love to read, and read a lot, little of my reading comes from recent philosophy journals. The main occasions on which I read new articles in my areas of specialization are when I am asked to referee or otherwise assess them, when I am helping someone prepare them for publication and when I will need to cite them in my own paper.
Of course, nonacademics quite regularly do the academic read, so it’s not a species of read known only to PhDs. As already suggested, essayists and other writers compile references and citations for their work. Speakers who need to buff up their PowerPoint presentations love to flick in a few MLA-style citations to indicate the same thing academics often signal with their citations: “I’ve read the literature and possess authority on this matter.”
Thus far in my description, it might seem like I'm trying to give the impression that academic reading isn't about understanding. This would be misleading, as there very much is academic reading that’s intended for understanding. It's hard, though not unheard of, to cite a paper you haven't understood. But even the best versions of academic reading intended for understanding seem to eventually point to citation and the production of further papers.
At its core, then, most academic reading is about accumulation of facts and citations so that that knowledge may be built upon or argued against—truth, in the academy, forever a project to be completed in the future.
Reading as a Practitioner
To read as a practitioner is different. Here, you’re interested in putting the information into use, not citation. The read is about things you can use, not things you can cite. (Citation is also a form of use, yes. Thank you, philosophical quibblers. Let’s simply say that citation is the least of concerns for the practitioner read, opposite that of the academic read.)
What this means is that you can pluck stray lines and impressions, but you don’t require their source. Something that is true (or a defeasible truism, one useful in most employment) doesn’t need connection to its original speaker.
When you’re reading as a practitioner, it isn’t intellectually dishonest to read something, realize it works, and put it into practice without recalling the source. (If you claim the idea as your own invention, then that would be intellectually dishonest, but that’s another matter.)
The practitioner reads without caring for citation. The frequent interruptions of the academic read are not typically found in a practitioner read. Now there are occasionally reads that the practitioner will find of such insight that more pauses for reflection and even note-taking naturally happen. Still, most practitioner reads will not involve an assembly of pauses and notes.
Practitioner reads will rather involve much more memory and impression—the reads will be of service, their exact wording and the exact reference of far lesser import.
Some inquisitive readers of this newsletter might wonder whether a person is merely an academic reader or a practitioner reader. That is, is there a harsh dividing line, and you can only be one?
You can be either or both. Most people are both, with varying degrees of emphasis in one direction or the other. And yet, most people are not both simultaneously.
Within their disciplines, most academic readers aren’t reading as practitioners. But they might certainly read for practitioner insights from psychology, if that isn’t their professional domain. Some scholars look for pedagogical methods from K-12 practitioners (and some K-12 teachers look to scholars for academic insights).
Many practitioners can find themselves needing to shift their reading habits to those of the academic, for reasons of presentation or to enter into academic conversations in earnest.
Thus, while there is a distinction between reading as an academic and reading as a practitioner—a distinction born more of empirical nature than theoretical necessity—there isn’t a pure dividing line where one must choose.
There isn’t a hierarchy between the two, either, though my sympathies run nearer to those of the practitioner much of the time. (My sympathies, however, are likely the minority view.)
On most occasions, the hierarchy would simply be established by the purpose of the read. If you’re purely reading as a practitioner but intending to use that read for academic citation, you’re probably doing something wrong! (Okay, extremely unhelpful to yourself.) If you’re inching your way through a read, citing every other sentence, and it’s for practitioner purposes, you’re being rather inefficient. (And likely overreading.)
And yet you can do both types of reading simultaneously, if that’s the purpose of your read. Perhaps you need an academic paper for the citation game and you intend to apply aspects of it. Cool. Now you get to do both types of reads, all in one read. You might even have two sets of notes—a tiny one for application and a large one for citation—but you’ll be able to handle both sets in a single reading experience.
Don’t worry if that sounds complicated. It’s not! It’s just about awareness of what your purpose is when reading. More often than not, the practitioner read will suit your purposes, so don’t fret about the citation game. You’ll know when that’s required…
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh