There and Back Again… a Broker’s Journey to England / Un aller-retour… le voyage d’un courtier en angleterre

David Phipps, RIR-York

I’m not a Hobbit going to the Lonely Mountain to reclaim a hoard of gold from a grumpy dragon for a bunch of dwarves (I loved Tolkein as a kid and still do)… but I did go to England recently to speak about institutional knowledge mobilization.

Je ne suis pas un hobbit allant à la Montagne solitaire afin de réclamer un amas d’or à un dragon grincheux au nom d’une bande de nains (enfant, j’ai adoré Tolkein et je l’aime encore aujourd’hui)… mais je suis bien allé en Angleterre récemment afin de parler de la mobilisation des connaissances au niveau institutionnel.

There is a growing interest in institutional knowledge mobilization – not just researchers doing it as part of their scholarship but how institutions make it a priority and support it. The University of Sheffield Research Exchange for Social Sciences (RESS) calls it Co-Production. The National Coordinating Centre for Public Engagement (NCCPE) calls it…not surprisingly… public engagement. I had the pleasure of speaking with both organizations during my visit July 8-14. While we implement differently because of the very different higher education funding mechanisms and the social services and community sectors are organized differently (there is no equivalent to our United Way) we share similar goals and drivers for our work: to maximize the impact of academic research on society. I also had the pleasure of meeting with Welcome Trust Engagement Fellow (now that’s a cool fellowship to have!) Erinma Ochu who tweets as Manchester Beacon (@mcrbeacon).

My slides as presented to Sheffield and NCCPE (mostly but not 100% the same) are posted on Slide Share, but more interesting than what I presented is what I learned:

The University of Manchester has an Associate Dean of Engagement in each Faculty. This represents a significant investment in academic leadership for engagement by the university. I don’t know of any university in Canada with this model but if it exists please comment below.

The Research Excellence Framework 2014 is driving a lot of public engagement activity in the UK. The Higher Education Funding Council for England will be basing part of their institutional funding on the extra-academic impacts of research. Universities have created units of research impact to create the REF case studies. Institutions are required to write a one REF case study for every 10 faculty members from all disciplines. In addition to driving block grants this process is forcing institutions to think about the impacts of research beyond academic quality. This will also create a rich resource of 6000 or so REF case studies which are raw material for scholars of the impact of research such as Claire Donovan (@ClaireDonovan).  We don’t have a REF exercise in Canada – but don’t hold your breath…some form of assessment is sure to come our way on day.

Paul Manners, Director NCCPE, said of the visit, “What a treat it was to host the visit by David and Gary: at the NCCPE, we are always looking for new ideas and examples of practice to  stimulate innovation and fresh thinking. The Canadian experience of Knowledge Mobilization provides a fascinating context in which to think about creative ways in which universities can both respond to and help to build capacity and innovation in wider society. There are some similarities with what’s going on in the UK – but fascinating differences too, for instance in the ways that graduates and interns are involved in Canada. Delegates at the workshop were really inspired by what they heard, and the session generated a lot of lively discussion and debate. The only down-side was that it was over so quickly – we are very keen to find ways to continue the conversation and to build more structured ways to share experience and expertise across national boundaries.”

It was also great catching up with @CuppBrighton colleague @Dave Wolff again. He and his community partner, Paul Bramwell, were also presenting at the Sheffield Co-Production seminar. And I traveled with Gary Myers (@KMbeing) who presented on social media as a tool for knowledge mobilization. He presented 92 slides in 14 minutes. Yes 92 slides in 14 minutes. My slide decks had 12-16 slides and I had 30-40 minutes. The contrast was wonderful for us as presenters and for the audience.

We went there and came back again, and like Bilbo in The Hobbit, we came back with more than we left with. Thanks to @KatePahl and Anne Pittard of RESS for all their efforts funding and organizing the visit.

Knowledge Mobilization Simulation / Une simulation de mobilisation des connaissances

David Phipps, RIR-York

Simulation can help understand the barriers and enablers for implementing research evidence into policy and practice. A knowledge mobilization simulation sponsored by Children & Youth in Challenging Contexts illustrates that context is important when simulating knowledge mobilization. And it draws into question the role of knowledge mobilization tools.

La simulation peut permettre de comprendre les contraintes et les facilitants relatifs à l’emploi de données de recherche dans la pratique et la politique. Une simulation de mobilisation des connaissances commanditée par Children & Youth in Challenging Contexts illustre l’importance du contexte dans la mobilisation des connaissances. Elle mène également à s’interroger sur le rôle des outils de la mobilisation des connaissances.

sim·u·la·tion

[sim-yuh-ley-shuhn] noun

1. Imitation or enactment, as of something anticipated or in testing.

What is a knowledge mobilization simulation?

• Participants in the knowledge mobilization simulation will work through different knowledge mobilization scenarios and see how knowledge moves across different sectors.

Why hold a knowledge mobilization simulation?

• A knowledge mobilization simulation will help identify the barriers to disseminating evidence and as a group, participants will problem solve and come up with innovative strategies

That was the goal of Children and Youth in Challenging Contexts (CYCC), a Network of Centres of Excellence Knowledge Mobilization initiative focused on child and youth mental health. As an NCE-KM they “feature collaborations between academia, industry, government and not-for-profit organizations across many sectors, with a specialized focus on the transfer and application of new knowledge that brings social, health and/or economic benefits to Canadians”. After completing three co-created knowledge syntheses on: 1) youth exposed to violence; 2) technology; and, 3) youth engagement, CYCC wanted to understand how best to get the evidence from the knowledge syntheses into policy, practice and programs of agencies working in child and youth mental health.

Angie Hart

By planning simulations over two days on March 11-12, 2013 at the Atlantica Hotel & Marina Oak Island, Nova Scotia, 60 of us equally split among researchers, service providers, policy makers and youth sought to maximize the dissemination.  My wonderful knowledge mobilization friend and colleague Angie Hart (Community University Partnership Program at the University of Brighton) and I were asked to wrap up after the two days. My wrap up went something like this:

What is the problem to which simulation is the solution?

I asked this question after seeing a common thread linking some seemingly unconnected content.

Promoting Action on Research Implementation in Health Services: the PARIHS framework. This framework outlines that getting evidence implemented into practice is dependent on three elements: 1) the evidence; 2) the context; and 3) facilitation. The evidence for the knowledge mobilization simulation was the three knowledge syntheses. The evidence didn’t change in the different simulations; therefore, evidence was not the problem to which simulation was the solution.

Both context and facilitation could be modeled through simulation. But which one is (better) addressed by simulation?

Then I reflected on a recent knowledge mobilization journal club on complexity science. Complexity science looks at the whole system of research use. It does not take a reductionist approach and examine only one component. Because two complex systems are never the same the context is always different. The same tactics (ie facilitation) to enhance knowledge mobilization and implementation of evidence won’t work in different contexts. We can agree on principles but not necessarily on the same tools and facilitation.

So if it isn’t evidence and it isn’t facilitation then perhaps context is the problem to which simulation is the solution.

The final piece I wove into this thinking was my experience at the K* (Kstar) conference where I joined colleagues from Vanuatu, Ghana and Argentina to present on the building blocks of knowledge mobilization with civil society. See my blog from our presentation.  Our conclusion was that despite vastly different contexts we were able to identify building blocks of knowledge mobilization. While we implement (i.e. facilitate and use tools) differently, we share six basic principles.

Context is the problem to which simulation is the solution.

This is similar thinking to design labs and design thinking. Knowledge mobilization simulation can help CYCC and other knowledge mobilizers understand local contexts to inform their plans for formatting and disseminating their evidence derived from their co-produced simulations.

What did I learn from this knowledge mobilization experiment?

1. Don’t hold a meeting at a family friendly resort with lots of children’s programming on March break. Little feet make a lot of noise running up and down hallways at 1030 pm.
2. Context matters. Simulation is likely to be more effective in local settings with smaller groups. Large, heterogenous groups will be able to agree on basic principles of knowledge mobilization but implementing those principles will vary depending on local opportunities and constraints.
3. Relationships and credibility are key to local context. This was a common thread that connected many of the conversations on March 11-12. Whether on line or in person, stakeholders (researchers, practitioners, policy makers and youth) want trusted connections through which they will obtain their evidence. When considering context consider the role of the trusted leader as enabler of effective knowledge mobilization (yet wise readers will note that trusted leadership is a determinant of evidence uptake and trust is a determinant of facilitation so these three are not so easily disentangled!).
4. Experiment with knowledge mobilization. The simulation was an important experiment, new to my experience. It created a space where we learned by doing.

And one closing thought that will come back in a future post….Context is important because it enables agreement on principles but precludes implementation of those principles across disparate contexts. Why then do we spend so much time developing and disseminating “tools”? So many of us, including York’s Knowledge Mobilization Unit, produce, format and disseminate our knowledge mobilization tools. But if context is important then my tools that work in my context are not necessarily going to work in yours.

What role then for knowledge mobilization tools?