Hello, this is Peter Levesque. Welcome to episode four of the Knowledge Exchange Podcast. This podcast series is a product supported by the Canadian Council on Learning – Canada's leading organization committed to improving learning across Canada and in all walks of life. I want to thank the great staff at CCL for their efforts with this project to advance our understanding of effective knowledge exchange to improve the learning of Canadians. You can download this episode, as well as one of the sixteen future episodes in the series from my website at www.knowledgemobilization.net, from iTunes directly, just search for KM podcast. Alternatively go to knowledgeexchange.podomatic.com. The conversation that you're about to hear took place in Toronto on Monday, April 23rd, 2007 at OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education). Dr. Levin has spent his career at the intersection of evidence and decision making. He is exceptionally well placed to comment on knowledge exchange and mobilization. His comments on the differences between the political and policy aspects of government are very helpful for those trying to influence the decisions made by our governments. He identifies some leading policy entrepreneurs but calls for more infrastructures to support knowledge exchange and mobilization. Dr. Levin suggests that there are many good initiatives happening however we need more evidence on what works well and when.
I always learn so much from my conversations with Ben, it is my hope that you do too.
Ben: My name is Ben Levin and I've spent my career about half in academia and half in government and have a particular interest in the role of research and evidence in shaping policy and practice. Peter: Okay, well why don't we start right from there – when you talk about evidence, what do you mean? Ben: Well…could mean a lot of things but I certainly mean the body of research that's produced in a formal research sense through universities and other research institutions. And then I think the second thing is data from administrative and other sources that is available, not necessarily through a research mechanism, but is available and ought to get more use then it does. Then there's all kinds other evidence that people draw on. Peter: That's actually part of a conversation that's come out with a whole number of sources of what is included in evidence…and you've recently finished a term - how long was the term? Ben: Two and half years.
Peter: Two and a half years as Deputy Minister of Education in the Province of Ontario. When you were at the interface of terms of making decisions, what went into the decision making process in terms of evidence?
Ben: Well there are always a variety of things and so it's always a struggle to get the organization to pay more attention to research – to look at the knowledge that's actually available; in formal ways. People…what people rely on primarily is their experience and input that comes to them through their interpersonal relationships and networks. Those are…always have been and continue to be, the dominant sources of evidence. So then the struggle is, can you get people to make more attention to better grounded, more empirical sorts of evidence?
Peter: Knowledge exchange has been described as bringing people and evidence together to influence behavior - does that make sense to you? Is that an adequate description?
Ben: Yep, that's fine. Peter: So what are the ways, perhaps in your recent experience at the Ministry of Education – what were the mechanisms that brought people and evidence together? What were the most effective mechanisms?
Ben: Most effective is a harder question to answer. There are many things that all need to be done at the same time and in government you have two sides; the political and the bureaucratic. You have to deal with both sides. They have different rationalities, different ways of operating - quite different worlds. So you actually need two different kinds of strategies. You need one set of things you do with political folks and you need…another thing you need with bureaucratic folks.
Peter: Right, and how do you make sure that they work together?
Ben: I don't know if I can answer that question. I think you're trying to draw on some of the same evidence and …but present it to people in two different ways - in ways that speak to their different interests and experiences. So for example, with the bureaucracy, you can say that it's an expectation that when a policy document is drafted, there's some kind of research literature review attached to it. You can enforce that as an expectation - you can't do that at the political level. Whether the political level will pay any attention to those kinds of reviews when the policy advice arrives is quite another matter. In the political world the conditioning happens through other kinds of vehicles- political ones.
Peter: Right - there's been an awful lot of talk around knowledge exchange, knowledge transfer, knowledge mobilization and knowledge management and the terms differ depending on the area that you're dealing with and I've speaking with some people in health care and saying that given this focus on knowledge transfer, knowledge translation and health that more evidence is being used more regularly within the health care system. At least that's the presupposition that is put forward. Would you say the same exists in terms of education?
Ben: Yes, I would.
Peter: What are the major influencers of that movement?
Ben: Well one thing is that educators themselves are better educated and they have more research grounding. More people have been through graduate programs or other kinds of programs that give them some exposure to research. The whole climate around research has changed, so as a result of a larger tendency towards more use of evidence and research, educators are drawn into that as well. Twenty years ago you could have talked to a group of school principals -you said the words ‘education research', their eyes glazed over. Now, while people may have concerns about particular kinds of research, nobody would argue that research has nothing to say to policy and practice.
Peter: These interviews are being done for the Canadian Council on Learning. And so how do you differentiate education and life long learning?
Ben: I'm not sure I do differentiate them. You could talk about the formal system and the informal system.
Peter: How do you support the informal system; in terms of workplaces and in terms of organizations, in terms of, you're now in a center for the study of education. How would you see the interface between evidence and an informal system that is perhaps unregulated – isn't as systematized as say an education system? Ben: I'm not sure I'm understanding – you mean at the policy level? At the policy level the nature of the formal and informal system is irrelevant. The policy issues are….the policy process is the same process…the politics are different but I don't see there being any difference in how you would work with policy makers. It's harder to get evidence on the informal system because it's less organized and there's less data. Peter: Then perhaps we can talk about a culture then if less a system…. What would you see as a culture that would look at using more evidence in the process of life-long learning? What are the indicators?
Ben: I'm not sure what you mean by life-long learning. Peter: Part of what CCL is essentially pushing on is that learning happens over the entire lifespan.
Ben: Of course.
Peter: Right? That it doesn't - it's just not K to 12 and then post secondary – that it happens throughout, but that the structures that support life long learning. And so how could it be better supported?
Ben: Well the whole informal sector is, as you said, not very well organized so it's less able to do all kinds of things – one of which is to both gather and use evidence. But I don't think there's anything particular to the informal learning sector there. I think that's just a matter of what sort of organizational framework you bring to it. Peter: In the time that I spent at SSHRC, one of the things that came out of looking at the research system was that research, in some ways, can be brought down to three really basis questions; What, So What, and Now What. The “What” being data and information, the “So What” being meaning interpretation and analysis, and the “Now What” leading to actions and decisions and outcomes. Part of what was missing, and this is part of the argument that happened at SSHRC was that you needed both infrastructure to support that movement from What to Now What but you also needed incentives for behavior, is that if the incentives are all at one level then it's rational for people to behave in one way. Where the incentive and the infrastructure exist are often between the various research councils – if it's producing a product, the infrastructure and incentives are there – if it's producing programs, same kind of thing but if it was looking at development and new people skills, at industrial processes, at administrative procedures, at the changing of perspectives, is that is was less clear as to how the research would enter into that process. Do you see that as an accurate portrayal?
Ben: I would say more or less. In the research world there's a lot of infrastructure to support knowledge transfer in the sciences and engineering because… well partly because it's connected to money but not just for that reason it because that's what people do and are used to doing. And in the social sciences and humanities world there just isn't…and not because it couldn't be connected to making money – that's the point, it could. Peter: Right Ben: It's just never been done. Peter: So do you think it's important in that it move towards making money or do we have to look at value determination in other ways? Ben: No I would say it's broader than that. It can't be done on a commercial basis although that could be part of it and is part of it already actually. But it's done privately not publicly. There are lots people in the social sciences and humanities who have commercial enterprises around knowledge creation and knowledge mobilization but it's not supported institutionally in the universities. And it's not very well supported institutionally outside of the universities. Peter: Do you see a time when that would change?
Ben: I think it is changing.
Peter: Okay.
Ben: I think there's lots more interest in those kinds of enterprises and the creation of CCL is an example of that as was say the INE and other things that SSHRC has done. So I think you are seeing all around the world, this something that I've been working on pretty actively – I was just in Europe a few weeks ago at a conference on this. I think you're seeing all around the whole world, people are quite interested in thinking about what are the mechanisms that would be roughly analogous technology transfer on the hard science side. Peter: Can you describe some of those?
Ben: Well I don't think…one of the issues is there isn't currently a good taxonomy of what those might be. That's actually one of the things I'm interested in working on but you could roughly say that there's a set of face-to-face activities that are being done and could be thought about as one category – that is actually how you create personal relationships among people? Then there's a set of knowledge dissemination activities that are…whether they're print or electronic that are impersonal but aimed at giving people information. And I would say those are the two, kind of big categories of things that people are trying to do. But without much thought as to a kind of a strategic frame for it - what we've got is a lot of - let's try this, let's try that - this seems like a good idea, that seems like a good idea. But there isn't a good box to think about all those things and the relative merits; weigh them against each other and to have an overall coherent approach I would say. Peter: Do you think that that is something that will emerge or is it something that has to proceed?
Ben: It is gradually emerging because there are people working on it. So there are people again, in a number of different countries, who are working on that issue.
Peter: Who are some of the leaders?
Ben: Well there are some good people in the UK. I mentioned people like Judy Sebba and Sandra Nutley and Annie Oakley, Phil Davies who just moved from the UK to the US is another person - this is in education now – I'm talking about people in education. There are also lots of people in Health like the folks at CHSRF here who are leaders in that but in education; the whole CCL enterprise, I think has some interesting things to do around that. There are a lot of people who do it as part of their own work as what I call popularizers or policy entrepreneurs. So organizations like the ASCD in the US or Phi Delta Kappa who is another US organization who are big into this - the US government labs like McREL and NCREL and the Southeast Development labs – they do a huge amount of knowledge mobilization work. The Epicenter is another one that been done in the UK…the Campbell Collaboration at an international scale. So quite a bit of stuff now going on.
Peter: There is some leadership in Canada, I mean you mentioned CHSRF as a leader and people have picked them up internationally. The Campbell has done a lot of work. But they're often being seen so far, ahead of the curve and that it's difficult…I mean, some of the criticism that I've heard from the leading organizations is that they spend all their time thinking about this – that they don't understand the prerogatives that we have to deal with at a Ministry level or within an agency or whatnot. How would you respond to somebody that says it's fine for them “we'd like to do that but we just can't - we're too busy delivering the kind of services that we have now” Ben: You mean in government? Peter: In government.
Ben: Well I don't think government is the place where most of that stuff in going to be done. Government is a recipient of it - not so much an in doer of it. It's going to be done mostly outside as it is in the sciences. Governments aren't the main purveyors of knowledge in the sciences…a little bit they are but mostly they are the recipients of knowledge. Peter: So how can they better receive knowledge?
Ben: That requires both things that they would do as the deliverers and things that other people would do as the speakers. So it requires changes on both sides of the discussion. I think there's been more description of what needs to be done on the research creation side than there has been on the take-up side. But on take-up, I can just talk about some of the things we did in the Ontario Ministry – we created the position of a Chief Research Officer, we created a Ministry Research Strategy…we created a Ministry Staff Research network of people who are all working on that. We created professional developments around research. We created certain expectations around research products or work that ought to be associated with policy documents. We created vehicles for sharing research inside the organization. Those are the things you need to do to create an infrastructure and an incentive system inside so that people actually - it gets higher on their list of things.
Peter: And so those are all things that were created recently. What was the up-take like? And what is the timeline you would see for success coming out of those created offices?
Ben: Well the up-take was good in this sense that there were a lot of people inside that at the Ministry who were keen to do this. What there wasn't was leadership and capacity building – there were just a lot of separate efforts that were galvanized so a lot of it was providing some catalytic energy to it all. I would say the take-up was good. But let's remember that in the political process, research will never trump political considerations - it is only one consideration that goes into the mix. So that's why the important part is not just what the bureaucracy does, but how the research community communicates to the broader polity. Because what influences political decisions, is what citizens and voters think way more that what bureaucrats think …most of the time.
Peter: How can the research community be better at making sure that they communicate in a way which is usable to, both the bureaucracy and to the polity?
Ben: That would be on the research side - doing things that are analogist to what's been done on technology transfer. If I'm a scientist and I come up with something that I think has potential for broader application, nobody says to me “okay, go out and investigate the patent laws, figure out if you can get this patented, go and talk to some companies” – No, that's all done for me by people who know what they're doing. So you need something analogous on the social science side that would support people because it is not reasonable to expect most researchers to do the knowledge mobilization work – they can't and they won't. Peter: That was a lesson that we learned at SSHRC after going across the country talking to people about knowledge mobilization.
Ben: Yep.
