Whew! I'm glad a few others have chipped in. I was beginning to think I was the only one bold enough to type. :)

Richard wrote something that made me think:
"... to generalize massively, SLA researchers, in particular (and my impression is not alleviated by Ellis's article, though he's always been an exception), have always tended to separate themselves from the `messiness' of practice, while developing their own discipline."
I see your mail address is out of the UK. I wonder if you are basing your statement above on situations only there. The reason I ask is that here in Japan there are quite a few researchers in university who are in the teacher category, too. They teach and most of them try to find ways to improve their teaching (or if looked at from a student's standpoint, improve the end result: more fluent students).

It is not necessarily a conscious separation from associating with teachers in secondary education (if that was another meaning you had intended) because there is a real separation here between secondary and tertiary educators. I have been both. Pretty much none of my high school associates had never heard of the Japan Association of Language Teaching (JALT), and I can guarantee you none of them read any papers (except me, who has an insatiable craving to learn, learn, learn). JALT itself has only a small following (SIG) with secondary education teachers in it, probably because of that time element again (you wouldn't believe how much I used to work in HS!) and because most secondary education teachers don't have any research budget, whereas uni teachers do.

Even so, some people here complain that anyone working in universities is a lofty, snobbish theory-minded type who looks down on teachers in secondary or elementary ed. Untrue for the most part, of course, but the image is there, and I wonder how much of that contributes even more to any barrier or distance between the 2 groups. ALTs in my own geographical area definitely seem to feel this way, and what's more, they don't seem willing to share much about pedagogy. It's a pity, too, because it's the kids they train that become the kids that I (and other uni teachers) get and have to deal with. To be fair, though, we must keep in mind that ALTs here in Japan do not have much authority in a classroom, even when they are direct hires, and there are darned few full-time solo (non-ALT) foreign teachers here in secondary ed! (Again, I used to be one.)

So, after all this rambling, I wonder what it's like across the pond?
Glen