Knowledge mobilization and action research in global contexts: towards a comparative orientation

Presented in this issue are action research reports from Australia, Egypt, Iraq, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, and Taiwan. This array of geographical representation is evidence of the varied footholds maintained by action researchers working within diverse sociocultural settings and professional practice contexts. In some cases, footholds have taken shape in culture-specific forms tied to well-established infrastructures for knowledge production and dissemination (e.g. articles in this issue by Crimmins; Harlow, Cowie, McKie, and Peter; Henderson; Jonsmoen and Greek; Lu). In other cases, the footholds are taking shape within educational research infrastructures in which action research is just beginning to carve out a place for itself (e.g. articles by Abdallah; Burner, Madsen, Zako, and Ismail; Tana and Atencio). Taken together, all of the articles in this issue highlight the importance of local context in action research as well as the varied ways in which context defines what is addressed in a particular action research project. That is, the formation of the question and how the question is addressed, were related to the specific method the authors chose to apply.

The articles also provide a vantage point for viewing action research from a cross-cultural comparative perspective (McTaggart 1993; Dale 2005; McNae and Strahan 2010). One direction to look from this vantage point is toward the tensions between action research in the Global North and the Global South. Action research scholars and practitioners have wrestled for many years with questions regarding the responsiveness of action research to the concerns of people in non-Western cultures (McTaggart 1993; Chambers and Balanoff 2009; Ravitch et al. 2017) and the positioning of action research in relation to a neo-liberal agenda for knowledge production and commodification (e.g. Kincheloe 2009). In his pioneering work in participatory action research (PAR), Fals Borda (1991) made explicit that PAR’s role was to break the monopoly of the dominant ‘establishment’ of knowledge production represented by Western expertise and its vast infrastructure of universities, think tanks, and government-funded research. As Fals Borda (1995) viewed it, the challenges of breaking the monopoly called for certain orientations to be adopted, including to ‘not monopolize your knowledge nor impose arrogantly your techniques, but respect and combine your skills with the knowledge of the researched or grassroots communities, taking them as full partners and co-researchers … [and to] not impose your own ponderous scientific style for communicating results, but diffuse and share what you have learned together with the people, in a manner that is wholly understandable and even literary and pleasant, for science should not be necessarily a mystery nor a monopoly of experts and intellectuals’ (1).

Of the two articles in the present issue of EARJ (Abdallah; Burner, Madsen, Zako, and Ismail) that are most reflective of the broad scope of tensions between the Global North and the Global South neither incorporates the vantage point I discuss above. Although clearly not the focus of either article, the lack of even a glance at the dimension of conflicts in knowledge ecologies (de Sousa Santos 2014) can leave a reader with a kind of one-dimensional perspective on introducing action research into new sociocultural spaces, in particular those undergoing severe social, political, and economic disruptions, even when the introduction is enthusiastically supported by government ministries and the education sector. Yet, readers will get a sense in the Abdallah article of how someone working in a cultural context where limited awareness of action research is found can skillfully use the global knowledge base of action research to make the case for the need for such a project and can be guided by the knowledge base in working with the on-the-ground data from a local context. Here, we see the great potential of action research to contribute to a comparative perspective. Similarly, the Burner, Madsen, Zako, and Ismail article points to the potentials of cross-cultural collaborations in action research. In this case, the collaboration takes place between institutions in Iraq and Norway. Readers may consider how challenging such collaborations can be when taking place in severely troubled parts of the world, the depth of commitment needed to keep a project moving forward, and the overarching hopefulness found in taking the time to develop the cross-cultural shared understandings so necessary in such projects. Perhaps in the future more EARJ articles will look more critically at the intersections of ‘the monoculture of scientific knowledge and rigor’ (de Sousa Santos 2014, 188) and broader contexts of dialog with other knowledges, such as popular knowledge and indigenous knowledge. Readers will see such considerations in the article by Crimmins; however, here the larger context is action research in a sociocultural space with a very well-established tradition of action research.

Another vantage point brought into focus by the geographical and sociocultural diversity found in this issue is a comparison of orientations toward knowledge mobilization (KMb) and action research. This highlights a significant contemporary issue as knowledge mobilization is being promoted as a crucial viewpoint for addressing the intention of researchers to engage in research that has an impact and adds value (Thomson 2015). The KMb orientation is said to have relevance for all forms of research. For action researchers, the intention associated with impact and value has long been recognized as risky, with the stakes often very high in relation to the ‘action’ because the focus of change efforts is deeply entwined with difficult issues of social justice, oppression, and empowerment. According to Canada’s researchimpact (http://researchimpact.ca/so-what-the-heck-is-knowledge-mobilization-and-why-should-i-care/), knowledge mobilization (KMb) can be defined simply as ‘all the activities and products created that help your research be useful and used.’ In the KMb perspective, this dimension of research requires that researchers think about ‘impact’ and ‘results’ often in the context of applications for research funding. Having a knowledge mobilization strategy articulates the linkage between research results and how a project intends to address real world issues in relation to the results. In a larger sense, the KMb perspective intends to better connect scientific research within the academy and beyond, including in particular the role of research in policy-making in domains such as education, social welfare, and health care. A forthcoming EARJ special issue will address the subject of impact in health care research.

KMb advocates assert that ‘knowledge mobilization and participatory action research share a space’ (Researchimpact 2014). If this is the case, then a worthwhile question is how do action researchers view the space in which knowledge mobilization efforts are found? From a PAR perspective, a further question could be what, if anything, takes place in this space that supports social justice and empowers grassroots participants to become knowledge producers and to push back against a dominant and monolithic knowledge validation system? Furthermore, in a cross-cultural context, we might ask what takes place that has an impact and adds value to efforts to counter the tendencies of traditional research, including action research, towards epistemicide? A few articles in the present issue of EARJ hover somewhere near one or more of these questions. For example, Crimmins describes a project in Australia which chose ‘arts-informed narrative inquiry’ (this issue) in part as a way to counter the pull toward producing ‘a linear, teleological, (mono)logic research account which leaves little room for differing interpretations or perspectives’ (this issue). Given that the project also had an explicit focus on stimulating debate and effecting change in relation to the unjust practices associated with the ‘casualization of faculty in higher education institutions’ (this issue), a strong case can be made for the relevance of mobilizing the knowledge produced by this project in the service of advocacy for more just treatment of casual faculty in Australian universities.

In another example, the article by Jonsmoen and Greek addresses in a more direct way the use of action research in relation to knowledge mobilization and policy-making. Their article presents two studies conducted in Norway to examine writing and academic literacy among students in higher education and to investigate the preparedness of those employed in higher education ‘to build on the students’ competencies and guide them through their writing process in an academic context’ (this issue). Here, the potential links with knowledge mobilization were strong. The authors place the concern with writing and academic literacy in Norway in broad contexts of national educational reforms and make the case for their two studies in relation to a lack of knowledge regarding the impact of reform legislation on actual practices in education. The article demonstrates how a mix of action research in a higher education setting and qualitative research in K-12 settings can be used to generate important input on the areas in which change is needed to bring current education practices in line with broad goals for education reform.

However, the action research conducted by Jonsmoen and Greek also points to the potential of change efforts to become stranded and helps to put in perspective the challenges of mobilizing research results in the service of change. In their case, although the higher education lecturers they worked with participated actively and seemed to enjoy the project, the changes in practice addressed in their project did not take place. The authors found that ‘Research-based knowledge can lead to understanding and reflection, but change only comes about once that understanding is linked to one’s own personal experiences’ (this issue). For many action researchers, the authors’ conclusion that the project be considered a first cycle of a much larger change process comes as no surprise. Yet, in the hallways of knowledge mobilization tied to funded research, one wonders if project results that call for more time will be well received.

In summary, the articles in this issue point in various ways to a need to give added thought to another dimension of the reports and accounts of action research disseminated through our journals and other means of sharing. Greater attention to knowledge mobilization may be a timely way for action researchers to consider in a more strategic manner the potentials and limitations of ‘democratic disruption’ (Anderson, 2017, 1) as well as the prospects for drawing on the growing body of action research knowledge to impact policy formulation in national and global contexts.

We should harbor no illusions regarding how challenging this work will be. In communicative and research dissemination spaces in which KMb has been expropriated by evidence-based ideologues swirling around in the grasp of a narrow orientation toward knowledge, action research faces a determined opposition. Here, perhaps our strategic focus can turn more intentionally to the development of an alternative knowledge mobilization aligned with knowledge democracy (Hall and Tandon 2017). Toward this end, an upcoming special issue of EARJ will address knowledge democracy and the overall challenge of engaging in action research and participatory action research that stays rooted in the larger emancipatory and egalitarian project of decolonizing research in general and making sure that our efforts serve the interests of the marginalized and disempowered (Kapoor and Jordan 2009; Rowell and Hong 2017). For now, addressing more directly a comparative and cross-cultural perspective on knowledge mobilization may help us to sharpen our critique of the current dominant system of knowledge production, to raise our own consciousness regarding how we engage in research that has an impact and adds value, and to strengthen our capacity to practice forms of action research that can be brought in a clear and forthright manner into the public discourse of policy-making and social justice.

Lonnie Rowell
On behalf of the Editors