A model for knowledge mobilisation and implications for the education of social researchers

Abstract

The growing imperative for social sciences to apply more directly to the communities they study raises issues about how researchers develop their capabilities to interact with people in such communities throughout their career. A traditional model sees researcher education focus on challenges that matter primarily within their university: the mastery of methods and production of research papers. If social research is to be more relevant outside the academy, then how are social researchers to be prepared for this challenge? The underlying proposition of this paper is that publishing academic research is merely work in progress towards the realisation of some challenge held to be of wider interest within society. However, pursuing such an outcome will require a reorientation of programmes of researcher education to consider the practices of user engagement. In this paper, we reflect upon the development of our own practice of user engagement within the context of management studies. We develop our argument by conceptualising the process of knowledge mobilisation as a series of stages in which knowledge translates into practice. We suggest that academic researchers contribute only one of the inputs to this translation process, with other inputs being provided by users who are in some manner involved in the research. We discuss the implications of this model for researcher education throughout academic careers as well as for explaining the research to users who are part of the process of translating knowledge into practice. We illustrate our arguments by drawing on data generated whilst undertaking a review of the UK's Economic and Social Research Council research training recognition; our experience of designing and delivering university researcher workshops in user engagement; and the reflections of one PhD researcher conducted at various stages in her research project, including interaction with various stakeholders with whom she had to engage.

Keywords:

• researcher education
• user engagement
• knowledge translation

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Irene Hardill and Jon Bannister for their support during the whole course of our contribution to this Special Edition. We are especially grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and encouragement. We also acknowledge the participants in our workshops on “engaged research” who have enriched our understanding of the researchers' craft by sharing their experiences of working with research users. The usual disclaimer applies.

Notes on contributors

Paul Ellwood is a researcher at Leeds University Business School. He is currently Innovation Impact Evaluation Manager for the EPSRC/BBSRC/TSB Innovation and Knowledge Centre in Medical Technologies; an interdisciplinary centre whose aim is to commercialise university research in the medical sciences. His research interests are broadly in the area of science-led innovation and are born of an early education in the natural sciences (with a PhD in chemistry), and a professional life spent largely within the chemical manufacturing sector. Since moving from private industry to a university business school he has become increasingly interested in issues relating to the engagement between academic management research and management practice.

Richard Thorpe is Professor of management Development and Pro-Dean of Research and Innovation at Leeds University Business School. His interests include performance, entrepreneurship, management learning and leadership, and research methods. His early industrial experiences have informed the way his ethos has developed. The common themes have been: a commitment to process methodologies and interests in methods of action and change, collaboration and capacity building within the management and business research field. In 2007 he was President of the British Academy of Management and he is a past member of the ESRC Training and Development Board. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences.

Charlotte Coleman is a Doctoral Candidate at Leeds University Business School. Her doctoral research examines corporate responses to legitimacy challenges and negative perceptions of their environmental and social impacts. Her wider research interests corporate-community relations and environmental activism.

Notes

1. This review led to the formation of Doctoral Training Centres in the social sciences.

2. Workshop on Researcher Education for User Engagement as part of the NCRM series ‘Dancing with new partners: developing novel research methods to establish and monitor impacts of user engagement in times of austerity’.