Peter - So, if I understand that the access that the Internet gives to getting your hands on something doesn't necessarily provide the access of understanding conceptually, what you have in your hands. Phil Abrami – Absolutely not.
Peter – Ok.
Phil Abrami – It's information. Peter – So how do you teach or how do you allow people to learn that part? It's not just getting your hands on it, but what you do with it. And I think there's this enormous gap that I think that CCL's in part and others are trying to bridge of between – “here's something that we have, we know what it is, there's data and information but what do we do with it?” Phil Abrami – Right. Peter – I think is the big gap. So that in some ways they say knowledge-to-practice gap, evidence-to-practice gap – the know-to-do gap. How do you do that? How do you change the…how do we support both forms of access?
Phil Abrami – That's okay… Peter – That's improving… Phil Abrami – Let me tell you .. Peter – Sure… Phil Abrami -… if you as I do, had an opportunity to work with an expert in information retrieval…we don't have very good access to…just because you know a little bit about Googling, any information retrieval expert will tell you that “ya, Google's okay, but here's all the gaps in what Google is able to do”. No, we're not doing a good job even at retrieving information Peter – Ok. Phil Abrami – Definitely not doing a good job at that. About learning how to learn? Well you're asking actually, a very sophisticated question about the psychology of learning and motivation. Currently, we're focusing on a lot of student-centered approaches to learning where we give learners a lot more responsibility in autonomy for the process of learning and we're developing more and more strategies for helping to scaffold that learning. So I really can't, in just a moment or two of this interview, go into all of the processes of the student-centered learning. The set of principles that I like best, because they're evidence based, which are student-centered, are actually on the subsection on the American Psychological Association's website. There's a set of 14 learner-centered principles and I think those provide a good glimpse into how information should be structured so we create good, life-long learners. But I don't think life-long learning, like any other form of learning, happens by accident; it's why we have schools and why we have pedagogues to help scaffold learners along. Curiosity alone is not sufficient.
Peter –What's the long-term effects of not doing this very well? Phil Abrami – Well how about we look at the state of the learning in Canada right now.
Peter – Good, I was hoping you would go there.
Phil Abrami – the…CCL's latest report, OECD's and Stats Canada's latest analysis, all point to the same thing; that we're doing okay. The Conference Board of Canada reports point to the same thing; we're doing okay. But okay is far from good - far from ideal. We have a dramatically high percentage of high school graduates, graduating without functional levels of numeracy, literacy, and scientific reasoning. In some urban areas, in some rural settings those rates are 30, 40 to 50 percent of the graduates - totally unacceptable. And what's the consequence on things like the economy? I think that Stats Canada, last year, issued one of the most important reports about the link between education and the GDP – the Gross Domestic Product. They said that if we increase the literacy rate in Canada, one percent per year, it's worth something on the order of; I think this number is 18 billion dollars. Peter – A year?
Phil Abrami – A year.
Peter – And what are we investing in improving literacy now?
Phil Abrami –The Government of Canada decided to discontinue some of its adult literacy programs. I mean, we invest in literacy in the form of our…the amount that we invest in schooling - are we being successful in terms of that triumvirate of skills, literacy skills, numeracy skills, scientific reasoning skills, and let's add to that, life-long learning skills? Not as much as we should be. So we need to invest more to put ourselves in a better position. And we need to develop much more effective strategies for taking what we learn, and creating tools and supports and networks so that there's good dialogue and exchange. Peter - Now I'm going to ask a naive question and let's assume that… Phil Abrami – haha no you're not. Peter – Well, let's assume that the cutbacks on the literacy programs and literacy infrastructure in Canada was based on evidence. Why…what is the alternate evidence that would support cutting it back if you're saying that an increase in literacy leads to greater production as measured by GDP? Phil Abrami – Right.
Peter – I mean what happened to…what was the evidence that went into the making of that decision?
Phil Abrami – I can't answer that Peter. Peter – Right.
Phil Abrami – I cannot answer why. I will only tell you that one jurisdiction that is using evidence as the basis of policy is the United Kingdom, where virtually all offices of the Government, when new policy statements or new policy initiatives are untaken, that they must include in that policy statement, the evidence in support of the change.
Peter – And we don't do that in Canada? Phil Abrami – I don't believe we do that. I mean I don't want to call myself a policy expert, because I am not. Peter – Right.
Phil Abrami – But I don't believe that happens or it doesn't happen to the extent that it happens in other jurisdictions. Peter - Right, so let's use the example of policy making in the UK. Where the evidence actually is transparently put forward as part of the decision-making process. What do you see the benefits of that - of including evidence in the decision-making and policy-making process?
Phil Abrami – Well, it was very interesting, I went to a talk last year by Ian Chalmers. Ian Chalmers had very much to do with the formation of the Cochrane Collaboration named after Archie Cochrane. And Ian was talking about the moral and ethical responsibility that scientists, policy makers, and politicians had, to use evidence. So, I thought that was quite an inspirational, radical, but very true message.
Peter – Evidence as a moral obligation?
Phil Abrami – Yes.
Peter – But that makes sense in healthcare. I mean people die in healthcare. I mean, can you say that the same kind of dramatic consequences would happen if we don't use it in education, or in women's studies, or in politics or in economics? I mean people aren't dying because of economics. Phil Abrami – But they're being…they're being imprisoned by their failure to develop a set of essential skills. So let's look at what the data has to say about lack of literacy skills, lack of educational skills and job attainment, marital difficulties, criminal difficulties. I mean you name it, you go across the spectrum of indicators of problematic or successful life and there's a length between literacy – narrowly - and education success - generally…and wellbeing. Wellbeing; the link between education and wellbeing and health is very, very strong. I think areas of education, of course now I'm speaking more about in defense of my own field of inquiry, but I think the value of education to society is as a preventative as life-long thing, is a lot more important than we seem to provide support to it. Peter – So in many ways, the argument has been made for the one that is most obvious but that the link to education and the quality of life and the ability to lead successful productive lives, hasn't been brought forward… Phil Abrami – Hasn't been acted upon… Peter – …Hasn't been acted on? Phil Abrami – Well, not enough as we could have. I mean, we have a public education system in Canada – it's huge, it generates, it consumes billions of dollars a year, it's required for every Canadian and child or some kind of home schooling is required. So it's not to say we don't do it, it's just we could do better – we could do more. And I think the importance of education and the importance of, not just knowing, but knowing how – learning how to learn - is becoming increasingly evident. We are in the knowledge age. So what you know is less important then you know how to know.
Peter – Okay.
Phil Abrami – So those life-long learning skills.
Peter – I think that leads into my next question about leadership. Earlier in this interview you talked about Canada being a world leader in E-learning, and in distance learning and that we may not be that leader anymore. I'd like to talk to you a little bit about your opinions about leadership and what kind of leadership is required in order to facilitate the growth of life-long learning but also, the use of evidence and the processes and the supports around knowledge mobilization? Phil Abrami – Well you know, rather than leadership, I'd rather use the term partnership. Because I think it takes the collective will of groups of individuals from different factions to make innovation take hold. I think we've tried to realize that we only bring a certain type of expertise to the mix, and I've talked before about the distinction between scholarly wisdom and practical expertise. But you know, there are, in any innovation, you need more than what the Academy can offer alone. You need the ability, you need the mechanism to transmit that expertise to willing participants…right? So it's not a matter of …I think the word leadership implies too much of a solitary act. I want to emphasize collaborative actions – co-actions.
Peter – Do we have the system or do we have the environment that supports that collective action? And if we do, can you describe it? And if we don't, how do we build it? Phil Abrami – Ya, really…well, you know, I really only can talk with the…about what's happening in education. Peter – Ok Phil Abrami – And I think that for too long, the separation between the University, as the place where professionals were educated, as a place where research on education was conducted, and then the Ministry and school board and school communities – there has been too big a gap between those two communities. We need to find ways to build bridges across those communities…we just need to build those bridges.
There's a lot of resistance to change. Change is hard, change is difficult, and change may not lead to success. The evidence that we generate from the Academy also is not the type of evidence that may be most useful to educators because we have these gaps about scalability, sustainability, and usability that are pretty important gaps. So the evidence is not of the form, of the scope, of the quality, of the comprehensiveness that we should have. On the other hand we don't have people who understand it well – who know how to translate it well – who can make adaptations on the fly to using it? We don't have a cultural of evidence-based practice. There's many, many, many, many things lacking. So rather than a collaboration at times, we have a confrontation.
What we're learning about; the process of change or the process of innovation is that it's not a one-shot - that you can go in and provide access to readily usable tools that do important things because the evidence says “these are the important things” but then you gotta keep at it. Peter – So it's a relationship? Phil Abrami – Absolutely and it's a long-term relationship, it's a long-term commitment. And so you've got to build awareness, you have to build trust, you have to build confidence and you've got to be there. Peter – So how do you build that trust? How do you build those long-term relationships? You know, I've heard this from other people in the Academy, that imperative to publish in peer review journals, takes up so much of their time that they can't afford to get involved for 5 years, 10 years, 20 years; however long it takes to maintain that relationship. Phil Abrami – It's a cost, there's no question about it and not everybody is prepared or in a position where they can fully give…. Peter – Can you think of some incentives that could be implemented by, say by a knowledge centre or by a university department that would allow people to develop those longer term relationships?
Phil Abrami – I mean first of all I think what we're seeing is that the granting agencies themselves, federally and provincially, are beginning to recognize and financially support attempts at knowledge transfer and mobilization. So, there are efforts being made and funds being made available to do that. I'm not quite sure to what extent that those attempts at knowledge mobilizations are truly valued yet, by the Academy. Peter – Ok.
Phil Abrami - And if you look at things like collective agreements; its still fairly traditional definitions of scholarship that hold strongest sway. I think we also have an attitude issue, and I'll come back to what I said a while ago, about the scholarship of knowledge generalization or knowledge mobilization. Until we value, as an Academy, knowledge mobilization, as scholarship, we're going to continue to have a problem. Peter – Ok.
Phil Abrami – That it's not…we can't just narrowly define scholarship, in terms of the generation of new ideas but it's the translation of those ideas - and the tremendous intellectual challenge that's involved in the generation - in the translation of those ideas into practice. And what we can't do is dummying down; taking complex phenomenon and trying to make them overly simplified - dummying them down – I think that's disrespectful to the knowledge and it's disrespectful to the …and unrealistic of the end user. So it's taking complex phenomenon and all of their richness and conveying that powerfully, clearly, and succinctly, but not in an overly simplified way. That's a very difficult thing to do. And I think the knocks against academics who write in technical jargon, they often do that because they have to write quickly – they don't fully understand the phenomenon. That really good academic writing is very powerful and clear. And that's the kind of writing that we have to use when we write for policy-making and practitioner…and we have to understand the audience, how to communicate well to them. But that doesn't mean over simplify or treat them as dummies. Peter - And it seems to be that the practical applications that you were talking about in terms of your tools, are almost…there's the analogy that Mark Renaud, the former President of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council used to talk at Industry that he would meet the heads of the research councils and from CIHR and shake a bottle of pills and go “here's the result of our research” and from NSERC they would pull out a cell phone and go “ you know, here's the results of our research” and so the social sciences don't have those kind of easily identifiable icons of the product that they produce. But, I mean in some ways, what you're talking about is the product is the people, and the tools and the environments that they work in? Phil Abrami - Well and I think that when you look at the analysis that Stats Canada has done about the link between education or literacy, and… Peter – Right Phil Abrami - …GDP Phil Abrami – You know what? So, we could put a stack of dollar bills up on the table. We've been hidden in the ivory tower too long. Pure research in the natural sciences, the health sciences, or the social sciences, there's a tremendous value in research for research sake, without application and I wouldn't want to risk that form of inquiry. But to have other types of research, which address areas of need, of course I focus on the area of education and the areas we have in there but there are other, many other areas of social import that we could target and that we could make our goal - not just understanding but application and improvement.
So we can say, “Yeah, you know, you gave us ten million dollars, and we did X – we had so many people who were homeless and now we have less because of these programs that we've designed”. Peter – We've been talking, you and I, about knowledge mobilization for about five years now, from my previous life…there has been movement – there has been progress, and you know, we've both seen it, both in terms of changes of attitude - there's still a long way to go. You have a crystal ball like all good academics…in ten years, where do you see the field of knowledge exchange in the process of supporting life-long learning? Where do you see that going?
Phil Abrami – Very hard to answer. I think I've spent the last hour telling you where I want it to go… Peter – Right Phil Abrami – But where it will go? I'm very sad to say that I don't have a clue. And I think that is a profoundly disturbing answer.
Peter – I think that we've covered, pretty much the range of all of the questions that I wanted to ask you. Phil Abrami – Is it coffee time yet?
Peter – Yeah, I think it's pretty much coffee time. I'm just wondering if there is anything else that you wanted to add. Phil Abrami – ah…hi Mom…hahahaa…hi Dad…..ha-ha Peter – ahhaahaha I think that's great. Thanks Phil, it's a pleasure as always. Phil Abrami – yeah, yeah
