Unless you spent this spring sequestered in your office fervidly
transforming your research results into acceptable scholarly languages on the off chance they
will be published in some High Impact Factor journal, you are probably quite familiar
with the academic debate following Nicholas Kristof’s lamentation over the state of the (university)
professoriate. According to Kristof, and unfortunately many people both inside
and outside academe’s Ivory Tower, academics have been accused of disconnecting
themselves from public life and everyday reality, opting to while away their days
in monastic solitude. Their marginalization and irrelevance has somehow both been
done to them and is also their fault; academia’s very own Stockholm syndrome driven
by the “publish or perish” tenure system and the overspecialization of academic
disciplines (or so it goes).
Many scholars, in particular, have taken Kristof to task for
his simplistic portrayal of academia as “a kingdom of isolation,” to quote the
lyrics of Disney’s latest musical earworm. Commentaries in Inside Higher Ed by Allison Kimmich, Gwendolyn Beetham, and Lee Skallerup Bessette have highlighted the resource
challenges institutions face in promoting engagement, the particular challenges
that women and other marginalized groups confront in having their voices taken
seriously, and the often discounted contribution
of adjunct faculty and faculty at less-selective two- and four-year
institutions. Likewise, another piece by Laura S. Logan and Stephanie Furrer highlighted
the important, overlooked work that faculty do in classrooms with their students,
often connecting research and reality in very real and impactful ways –
sentiments shared by Carol Emberton in The
Chronicle of Higher Education. These articles, along with further rebuttals by
professor/blogger Corey Robin, professor/Washington Post commentator Erik Voeten, and
Gustavo
Fischman and Adai Tefera’s Teachers
College Record commentary, among others, speak to a tension over the role
of faculty and universities in society that can be traced back to Aristotle,
Plato, and Immanuel Kant.
Along similar lines, Adrianna Kezar’s recent blog post asks us in the higher education
research community to consider our relationship to the academic community, and
the ways in which we – as researchers, as scholars – serve and support our
colleagues and students. We would like to add to her thoughts on this topic the
importance of finding new ways to collaborate and communicate with both
academics (at all levels and in all disciplines) and non-academics (in all
positions of society) alike, which is particularly appropriate as we embark on
a new academic year.
Namely, we are suggesting to move this debate about the role
of the academic as a public intellectual one step forward, from whether or not institutionally
based researchers are engaging in the dissemination and wider discussion of
their research to how we can recognize and assess the diverse ways in which
research, and other types of knowledge, are being produced and used. As the commentators
mentioned above passionately (and persuasively) argue, the approximately 1.5
million tenure and non-tenure track faculty members teaching and researching
at the nation’s 4,726 public and private colleges and
universities contribute to public life in multiple and varied ways that often
go unsung – or, at least, unmeasured by metrics of research quality that are limited to article “importance”
(i.e., Journal Impact Factor [JIF]). While we are writing from the perspective
of faculty, researchers, and students of education and education policy at the largest public research
university in the country, what we propose here is relevant across
disciplines and institutional contexts. Namely, we argue that it is not just a
question of whether our research is intelligible (although that is extremely
important), it is also a question of how research can be better accessed, whom it
matters to and why, and how it is being discussed, used, and eventually applied.
Knowledge
mobilization (KM) is a term used to describe strategies that seek to
connect research, policy, and practice by bringing formal (e.g., empirical research)
and informal (e.g., personal experience) knowledge to a broader audience. The
irony of tackling our culture of “arcane
unintelligibility” with such an academic term is not lost
on us. We grant you an eye roll, or two, and invite you to keep reading. For
more than 50 years this concept (as it goes by other names in other fields)
aims to increase access, impact, and usability of research through
multi-dimensional, networked, and interactive approaches that engage a wide
range of stakeholders in a open, on-going dialogue (not just an article in leading
inter/national newspaper or a TV guest
spot). While this description in itself might warrant an exasperated sigh, here
are two specific examples of what KM strategies look like in practice:
Accessibility
of content. One of the largest barriers to the sharing of research
knowledge are the exorbitant article fees required by many scholarly journals.
Open access policies, the use of Open Access Repositories, and Open Access journals,
such as the journals we work on – Current Issues in Education, Education Review,
and Education Policy Analysis
Archives – provide free, public access to
articles, book reviews, commentaries, and video commentaries. Such approaches
offer university-sponsored journals a way to make research more accessible and
impactful to the wider public, especially when they have a strong social media
presence.
Better
assessment of “impact.” Access to content needs to be
complemented with more comprehensive ways of determining how research knowledge
is used and, optimistically, to what extent it makes a difference in how people
understand and navigate the world. In the humanities and social sciences, scholarly
“impact” has traditionally been narrowly interpreted through bibliometrics –
e.g., citation counts and (now) article downloads. While the limitations of using number
of cites as an exclusive measure of impact are
well known, researchers often seen social media outlets (e.g., Facebook,
Twitter, YouTube) as a virtual popularity contest instead of alternative and valid ways to understand the who and
how of research impact. Nevertheless, more and more scholars are using these outlets to reach a wider
audience beyond the regular “customers” of research journals in education (for
Kristof, these would be the very same professors who only see the light of day
while in transport to their next obscure academic conference). Altmetrics are one strategy for
obtaining a firmer, and (we argue) fairer, understanding of the impact of
educational research, as explained by Juan Pablo Alperin: “Altmetrics are captured from the Web
(i.e., social media, blogs, Wikipedia), and thus are (somewhat) more democratic
– one reader, one vote. More precisely: one reader, several potential votes.
Unlike citations, which can only be counted if the citing document is in a
select group of journals, altmetrics are counted regardless of where in the
world they are originated, with one important consequence: they open the
possibility of tracking impact in new segments, both within and beyond the
academy.”
We believe that KM strategies, such as the ones that we
mention in this article, as well as others, are a viable, substantial
improvement and complement to the hierarchical, unimodal model traditionally used
to communicate research findings. Researchers at Arizona State University’s new
edXchange
initiative, for which we also contribute to, are trying to flatten the world of
educational research dissemination and use by exploring different ways to embrace
KM strategies. edXchange’s goal of mobilizing research knowledge for the common
good requires making educational research more accessible by fostering
exchanges (e.g., dialogues, visits, consultations, and interactions) between
scholars, educators, policymakers, journalists, social entrepreneurs, civic
organizations, and concerned individuals to develop solutions that answer
today's most pressing educational challenges.
Although the initiative is only a year old, it has already
begun the work of engaging in interdisciplinary research-based collaborations
to mobilize research relevant knowledge through: a) its Saturday Scholars
series, which features TED Talk-style presentations aimed at fostering dialogue
with non-specialized audiences around the results of research projects
conducted by middle school students, teachers, superintendents and foundation
leaders, and scholars during the academic year; b) the creation of the Scholarly
Communications Group, to support the journals sponsored by
ASU’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College and complementing the publication of
research articles with video-commentaries, translations, and altmetrics for
assessing impact; and, c) with support from the Spencer Foundation, over the
next year edXchange will be studying how and when tenure and non-tenure track
faculty members at three research universities engage in knowledge mobilization
strategies.
As those of use who work in higher education know, faculty
members at all types of institutions have been contributing to the intellectual
life of the country for more than 400 years through their engagement with
students, collaborations and partnerships with their local communities, and the
sharing of their research in both academic and nonacademic settings and venues.
KM strategies and initiatives, like the ones explored in this commentary, can
help us capture and better share with the public the many ways college and
university faculty members connect and collaborate with their local, regional,
and national communities.
Amelia Marcetti Topper is a doctoral candidate in Arizona
State University’s Education Policy and Evaluation program, specializing in
higher education. Adai Tefera
is a Fulton Research Specialist for Arizona State University’s
edXchange initiative, specializing in knowledge mobilization and equity in
educational policy. Gustavo E. Fischman
is a professor in Arizona State University’s Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College
and director of the edXchange initiative. edXchange welcomes the opportunity to
collaborate with students, teachers, schools, foundations, and communities on
educational research. Share your ideas with us at edxchange@asu.edu, @edxchange.
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