Recognizing and Transforming Knowledge Mobilization in Colleges of Education

Abstract

This study examines emerging efforts by three colleges of education to contribute to and benefit research use through public systems of knowledge exchange among researchers, practitioners, policymakers, and other education stakeholders. Often labeled knowledge mobilization (KM), such organization- and individual-level agendas seek to enhance, expand, and sustain engagement with educational research. Colleges of education with public KM agendas signal formal, local efforts at a time when KM remains weakly integrated field- and sector-wide in education. The study therefore illuminates the interdependent opportunities and challenges that accompany individual and organizational capacities for such change. Drawing on faculty survey responses (n=66), findings resolve scholarly practices in terms of both knowledge production and mobilization as well as in relation to individual and organizational agendas, which are considered in terms of four general tensions that influence efforts to extend the reach and impact of scholarship in colleges of education.