Research SnapShots published through Research Impact
Beyond Dissemination
KMb and Anti-oppression
Introduction
Knowledge mobilisation (KMb) is a field that wants to understand how we share knowledge, information, and wisdom. People who work in the KMb field believe that by understanding how knowledge, information, and wisdom is shared we can make it easier to move. While the KMb field is fairly new, formally beginning in 2006, there have been people trying to understand how knowledge, information, and wisdom is shared for decades. Some of these people have worked within academia and some work within community spaces. As a result, what is now called knowledge mobilisation is a term that holds space for many different ways of sharing knowledge, information, and wisdom.
While knowledge sharing can happen in a variety of ways, the field of KMb has been centred on research knowledge. As a result of this focus, community-created knowledge and means of knowledge sharing have limited consideration within the field of KMb. The main way that communities are understood to engage with KMb is as collaborative partners in research projects. I aim to expand the understanding of how different communities create and share their knowledge, and thus engage with KMb. To explore this topic, I investigated how knowledge brokers and consultants support the use of knowledge mobilisation in community organisations. This was quite a large question, which I considered it in three ways:
- How can knowledge mobilisers, knowledge brokers, and knowledge consultants bring anti-oppression into their work,
- How do community organisation and grassroots movements currently engage with knowledge mobilisation, and
- How can knowledge brokers and knowledge consultants support the use of knowledge mobilisation within community organisations and grassroots movements?
Knowledge Mobilisation
Knowledge Mobilisation is a broad term that talks about the process of moving knowledge, information, and wisdom from one person to another. Sharing knowledge, information, and wisdom is an aspect of everyone’s life. For example, we might help someone with directions or tell people how we are feeling. Taking what we know and giving it to other people is not easy. The difficulties in sharing knowledge, information, and wisdom created the foundation of knowledge mobilisation.
For this research project, I defined knowledge mobilisation for a process whose aim is to move information or knowledge from one group to another. Core components to the process of KMb are political objectives, knowledge, dissemination, knowledge user(s), uptake and adaption, implementation, beneficial impact, and harmful impact.[1] Some parts that might be involved in the KMb process are knowledge holder(s), knowledge mobiliser, and the creation of knowledge or information.
Figure 1: Diagram of the definition of knowledge mobilisation
Figure 1 is a diagram of the process of my definition of knowledge mobilisation with all the core components. Note that as KMb is a process that can change from project to project, how the components engage with each other will change, meaning the diagram is an example of one possible KMb process.
Methodology
To answer the research questions, I engaged in two collaborative projects with community-based organisations who had knowledge mobilisation projects. I worked with community partners in the role of a knowledge consultant. As a knowledge consultant, I supported community partners to learn about KMb frameworks, skills, and tools. I also helped to create KMb plans. Below is a brief summary of the methodologies that I used when working with community partners to attempt to build strong partnerships that lead community partners to gain the knowledge and skills needed to reach their KMb goals.
The research methodologies that I used during this research project were reflective research, ethnographic journaling, ethnographic refusal, content analysis, and participatory action research (PAR). These methodologies were used in three different ways. The first way was to ensure that I was acknowledging changes in how I understood KMb while working on projects. For this, I used reflective research, which encourages researchers to acknowledge that their understanding of a research topic changes over time, particularly as they are doing research. The second way the methodologies were used was as a part of the collaborative partnerships. Here I used PAR, ethnographic journals, and ethnographic refusal. PAR was a core methodology that guided my engagement with community partners. Ethnographic journals were used to make notes about what happened during meetings, presentations, or other in-person events. Ethnographic refusal was a tool that assisted me in ensuring that the community partners had the final say in what details from the collaborative partnership could be included in my PhD work. Finally, content analysis was needed to understand the frameworks, models, theories, and services that KMb offers. This was important as it ensured I offered similar details in the collaborative partnerships. As well, the content analysis of KMb would provide details needed to assess if the needs of communities were being addressed by people who offer KMb services.
Results
There were two collaborative partnerships. One happening in 2017, over four months. The other in 2018, happening over eight months. The 2017 partnership was a paid internship. The focus of this partnership was in the creation of knowledge mobilisation plans and building knowledge and skills with knowledge mobilisation within the organisation membership. The partner organisation of the 2017 partnership continued after I left as it was part of a four-year funded project. The work on the project experienced delays due release of funds but continued up to and past when I began writing my PhD in late 2018. The 2018 partnership aimed to create a KMb plan for the creation of a zine (a self-published magazine). The original timeline had a release date for June 2018. Various delays stemming from a strike at York, episodic disabilities, and organisational development meant that the release date was not met. The zine project was put on hold in October 2018. As of the completion of my dissertation, March 2020, the 2018 partner has not returned to the zine project.
A KMb tool called the Knowledge Translation Planning Template, which was designed by Melanie Barwich (2008) and is published and taught by SickKids, was used in both these collaborations. There were issues with using this template in both collaborations. The 2018 partner found the template repetitive for work they had already done while providing minimal to the KMb planning process. When using the tool to help creative a KMb plan for the 2017 partner it became a burden. Eventually, I moved away from the template and focused on the 2017 partners’ past experience to build their KMb plan.
Discussion
In my PhD I explored the ability of people offering KMb services to support community organisation in their KMb projects. This exploration considered three areas of support. The first area focused on what knowledge and skills people offering KMb services use to support communities during certain KMb phases. I explored these phases of KMB; dissemination, uptake, and implementation. Dissemination is the process of moving knowledge from one group of people to another, uptake is when people learn and adapt new knowledge, and implementation is when people put new know into action. I found dissemination phase has been researched a great deal. This has led to a great many tools and frameworks that can help the movement of knowledge. There is less support for uptake, and minimal support for implementation.
A focus on dissemination supports certain forms of KMb projects, particularly those happening at the end of a research project. However, there are KMb projects that focus more on sharing and use of knowledge over the creation of new knowledge. In both the community partnerships there was a need for support past the dissemination phase. The skills and knowledge for KMb projects focused on sharing and use of knowledge were found to be inadequate, though there was hope in research that is exploring factors and barriers to research uptake and implementation. Thus, people offering KMb services need a strong background in all the phases of KMb, but also needs to meet who they are working with at the phase of KMb they are at. People offering KMb services might do this by moving out of the role of KMb expert role to learn more about the KMb work collaborators have previously done. With this understanding, knowledge brokers and consultants can identify not only what collaborators might or might not know, but also how a KMb framework can strengthen the work collaborators do.
Finally, each partnership experienced stoppages and slowing of KMb projects. As such I explored crip times possible impacts for KMb. Crip time has a long history in disabled communities and has been used to talk about the need for flexibility in work. This flexibility is seen in building compassionate spaces where people are comfortable talking to others about what they can and cannot accomplish, even if these abilities drastically change over time. It also includes building understanding that projects will not always flow smoothly, letting people move to other projects or self-care when needed and making space for people as they move forward. We considered how the recognition of crip time could create energised people, volunteers, and paid staff who could sustain their enthusiasm over a more extended period. In addition, energised and enthusiastic people increase the likelihood of uptake, adaption, and implementation of knowledge or information.
While exploring crip time I also talked about disabled futurities, which considers the connections between disability, time, and the future. Disability futurities suggest that without a future where disabled people exist, these people are excluded from our current social spaces. Exploration of this form of crip time highlighted the need for KMb to rethink some of its core ideas. For example, Brown (2000) presented a bell curve to show how a group of people engage with new knowledge, information, or technology. On the right side of the bell curve are two groups called the late majority and laggards. These groups are expected to be people who take up new knowledge, information, or technology later. Within the literature these groups were often framed as being resistant to change, placing the blame on the amount of time it takes to adapt something on these people.
Crip time forces us to question why the late majority or laggards might fall within this range of the bell curve. Are there characteristics of people from this group that might focus them on these parts of the bell curve? These questions make use to ask if KMb has an ‘ideal’ knowledge user? If so, what intersecting identities make up this ‘ideal’ knowledge user. Can people working within KMb change their expectations of knowledge users to shift who falls within certain areas of the bell curve. The exploration of crip time, as a form of anti-oppression, encourages critical engagement with KMb in order to strengthen the field and create space where we address barriers experienced by marginalised communities.
Citation
Smith, H. (2020). Understanding the community’s role in knowledge mobilisation. [Doctoral dissertation, York University]. York Space Institutional Repository. https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/37738
References in Executive Summary
Barwick, M. (2008). Knowledge translation planning template. The Hospital for Sick Children.
Brown, J. S., & Duguid, P. (2000). The Social life of information. Harvard Business School Press.
[1] Definitions for the core parts of KMb can be found in my dissertation, but brief summaries are found here.
- The political objective is the goals of a KMb project that reach outside of the creation or sharing of knowledge.
- The creation of knowledge is when a research or community process makes new knowledge.
- Knowledge is what a KMb project aims to share.
- A knowledge holder is a person who has the knowledge to share.
- Knowledge mobiliser is a person with knowledge and skills to help others share knowledge.
- Knowledge user is the people knowledge is being shared with.
- Dissemination is the process where knowledge moved from one group to another.
- Uptake and adaption is the process where knowledge user learns and figure out knowledge.
- Implementation happens when knowledge users put knowledge into use.
- The beneficial impact is good outcomes from the use of knowledge.
- Harmful impacts are not so good outcomes from the use of knowledge.
About
Hilda Smith is a consultant located in Downtown Guelph.
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Hilda Smith, PhD 