Hi Jeffrey,
I’ll preface this by saying I wasn’t at the preconference. I’ve been turning the idea over in my mind since the S-P meeting. It seems to me that chunking us into Scholars, Practitioners, and S-P folks may be counter productive. Originally, I thought that it’s more of a continuum from a complete scholar who never has and never will practice, to a pure practitioner who bases every decision on experience and is not at all informed by research. I’d like to think that the extremes are a dying breed if not extinct, and that most of us fall in the middle somewhere.

It could also be a sort of 2×2 matrix. Are you high or low on S? on P? Then I thought about the differences in a scholar whose research focuses on practice, verses one who researches from practice, verses one whose research is not from or about practice but is intentionally linked to practice (perhaps by clearly stating the implications in useful ways). It seems that what it needed is some common understanding that provides a better point to launch discussion. Perhaps this is an MBTI of S-P types (SPTI?).

My point - the water’s murky. Placing folks in boxes may not help to do anything other then highlight differences, but knowing the ways we differ in the type of S-P that each of us feels we are, may bring us closer together by revealing our similarities. At least it may insure a common understanding in our dialogue.

Shane DeMars