KNOWLEDGE MOBILIZATION IN FACULTIES OF EDUCATION
 

PROJECT OVERVIEW 

Funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), this study examines knowledge mobilization (KM) efforts in faculties of education in Canada and internationally to identify factors such as: research characteristics, incentives, institutional support, and social norms. We hope to learn more about KM practices within these organizations and why such practices are effective or not. The results of our research will provide a stronger empirical basis for making decisions about how best to support KM in faculties of education and, therefore, will likely be of interest to universities and educational research sponsors.

***JUNE 2011 UPDATE***

Phase II of this study is now complete – a survey of 278 education researchers in Canadian faculties of education addressed the following research question:

What KM strategies are being used by Canadian education researchers to make their findings more accessible and available to the broader education community?

Overall, the survey found that organizational structures to support KM efforts are not widely available in Canadian faculties of education. Furthermore, where they do exist, they are not heavily accessed (our findings suggest they are accessed less than 50% of the time).

Details of the initial descriptive data from this study were recently presented at the Canadian Society for Studies in Education annual conference in Fredericton, NB, on May 31, 2011. [Click here] to view the slides from that presentation. A manuscript detailing the survey and its initial findings is in the process of being finalized and will be posted on this website when complete.
 

BACKGROUND INFORMATION

CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK

METHODOLOGY

PHASE I: FINDINGS

An initial analysis of university websites suggested that most universities are only modestly involved in KM practices at an institutional level. Four main findings have emerged from phase one data analysis:

1. Overall, KM in these faculties of education is under-institutionalized and conducted in an ad-hoc fashion.

a) institutional attitudes toward KM are inconsistent and not all are favourable
b) institutional infrastructure in support of KM is dependent on the institution’s scale of resources
c) Uptake is dependent on jurisdiction, in particular government policy/funding schemes and also funding agencies

2. A variety of strategies are employed at international faculties of education, usually with little attention to whether they are effective means for disseminating research.

a) Each dean reported that they are active in standard KM activities, publishing in academic journals, hosting events, and facilitating networks. From the interview data, we can infer that much of the dissemination work is to raise the profile of the institution rather than to affect what happens in policy and practice.
 

b) fostering relationships between researchers and potential partners (i.e., media, government agencies, school boards and communities) was also occurring, albeit unevenly across institutions

c) utilizing third-party organizations and other intermediaries was not occurring very often

d) Predominantly, faculties of education have no systematic process for evaluating existing strategies

e) Organizational websites are perceived as critical in most institutions’ KM strategy, though many attempts at using these websites for KM have failed, and there is little empirical work available on how to best organize websites to facilitate KM. Organizational websites of faculties of education reviewed in this study tend be product heavy and make limited use of more effective KM approaches, such as those involving events and networks. In addition, many of these websites reviewed in the study found that research content was organized according to institutional structures or people rather than by topics of themes that people in the education system would care about.

3. The exceptions: there were two faculties where more KM was occurring, both of these schools were operating in an environment where there was greater policy support for knowledge mobilization from governments both rhetorically as well as in respect to increased resources and funding allocated to KM.

4. Barriers to KM exist in a number of ways, the most salient barriers being money constraint, unfavourable view of KM among faculty members, and the lack of measurable tools to evaluate the effectiveness of KM efforts. Other barriers related to sustained leadership concerns and the inability of faculty members to communicate their research effectively to the public even if the desire to do so was there. 
 

PHASE II: DESCRIPTION

Surveying Canadian Researchers

In June 2010, 285 Canadian researchers who have recently held major national awards to conduct educational research.  were sent a brief online survey. The purpose of this survey is to learn more about what practices researchers utilize to disseminate their research to wider audiences, especially those outside of academia. Specifically the survey asks about the researchers KM plans, the perceived audience of the research, dissemination strategies and tools, as well as perceived impact of their research. The survey will provide data about:

Institutional Supports Available to Assist Researchers with KM Efforts

• The administrative supports available at the institutional level for researchers to assist their KM efforts (special personal to manage or support KM activities or consulting; funding specifically for KM work; KM work incorporated into tenure/promotion; availability of institutional awards or recognition for KM work; initiatives that exist to coordinate multidisciplinary teams across the institution to address KM issues)
• The research dissemination resources available to researchers (training to deal with media/ reporters; writing support for researchers to increase readability for non-academic audiences or to create executive summaries; training for researchers in using technologies for research dissemination purposes)
• The extent that these supports, where available, are accessed by researchers

Project Information

• types of research being funded and whether researchers feel that KM is applicable to their work
• whether these projects are part of larger research program
• researchers are also asked to send us the section they submitted on KM from their original proposal (where applicable)

Audience Information

• Target audiences (policymakers, practitioners, community)
• Frequency of interaction with target audiences throughout the research project (collaborating on research questions, discussing the results of research, discussing action plans arising from the research, dedicated time to capacity building among these groups)

Academic versus Non-academic outreach

• products, events, networks activities for Academic audiences
• products, events, networks activities for Non-academic audiences
• Proportion of time spent on actually conducting the research versus scholarly activities versus non-scholarly activities

Dissemination Mechanisms

• We ask researchers various questions about three types of dissemination mechanisms: online mechanisms, using the media for dissemination, and using intermediary organizations to facilitate research dissemination.
• We ask researchers to gauge the impact (research-related, policy, service & societal impacts) of their work
• We also ask researchers how prepared they feel to engage in KM work with non-academic audiences along a number of dimensions (creating plain language summaries of their work, collaborating with stakeholders, interacting with media, finding intermediaries to increase the dissemination of their work, and using technology – websites, social media, and so on- to disseminate their work more broadly)