Hello, this is Peter Levesque. Welcome to episode twelve 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 eight 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.
My conversation with Billie Allan revealed some very important ideas about knowledge exchange that had not emerged in previous interviews. Her thoughts about bringing various forms of knowledge together and the challenges this entails, the results that can be derived by mandating the inclusion of alternative perspectives, the limits of what one individual can bring to and represent in a complex learning environment, and how the way we are with people in using evidence has as much impact if not more than the methods we use to create evidence, were all very important and powerful comments. However, I was most struck by the wonderful example of life-long learning she gives near the end of our conversation. I hope it touches you as much as it touched me.
Peter: I'm here in the offices of the social work department of the University of Toronto on Bloor Street and I'm here with Billie Allan. Billie, why don't you introduce yourself, say a little bit about what you do and what you're working on? Billie: I'm a first year PhD student in the Faculty of Social Work and I've come to this program after doing my Masters here and having some experience in the field. I identify as a mixed-race Sahnish-Anishinaabe Quaa, an Anishinaabe woman and that really centres my interest in being here, being in this program and it centres my orientation and knowledge and the things that I think about when I think about knowledge and how it's created and how we use it. My big area of interest in looking at and in trying…the program that I'm in now is looking at the education of marginalized students in social work education, their experiences in the social work educating process, how we make them practitioners and how that reflects what we do as social workers in the field. So social work as a discipline is very oriented to social justice and anti oppression, so it's my sort of working idea that if we can't deal with social justice and practices of anti-oppression – if we can't implement those in a classroom with each other, how are students taking that out into the field and making that happen with clients? Peter: That's very much a fundamental knowledge exchange process right. How do you engage in this and the reason I had asked to do the interview with you is that we've had these conversations about what type of leadership is needed? How do you engage in moving from what you know into what you do? How do you continue the learning process?
This is a series for the Canadian Council on Learning which is trying to develop a context in Canada and a culture in Canada for life-long learning. So let me ask you about knowledge exchange. One of the ways that knowledge exchange is described is bringing people and evidence together to influence behavior so what does this mean to you? What does it mean to you as a woman, as Anishinaabe and as someone who practices social work?
Billie: I guess its a few things. For me I'm really uncomfortable with the word evidence because it just feels really value-laden to me in terms of what gets constituted as evidence and how this sort of language right now – this very popular language of evidence-based practice is getting sort of appropriated in different ways. So I have a hard time with it.
But when I think about knowledge exchange in relation to what I'm doing in the social work practice and to the aboriginal community, I think about it in terms of sharing – coming together, sharing what we know so that we can do something different. To me then knowledge is then about co-constructed. It should represent your experience and my experience and we should be developing it together, not exercising it on you or you dictating it to me. I think particularly in social work that addresses this issue of...you know when we talk about anti-oppressive practice, a lot of the time we're talking about cross cultural practice or how we engage with people who are marked as different from us and where …when you're taking a structural lens to things – a critical lens to things where differences actually marked in a very value based way in terms of difference from the dominant one. For social work there's this really high responsibility to make sure that people are entering with good intent into the work, that they're doing their best to make sure that they're…..I struggle with how we need…what social workers need in terms of knowledge because I think a lot has to do with actually how you are with people and less about having 20 articles on cognitive behavioral therapy for depression. Being able to read a article…a series of articles and sort of summarizing what they're saying is a skill but I think a lot of what we're doing in terms of how we're interacting with people in social work, whether that's in practice or research, has to be more about those relationships and how we establish them. And then that determines what you can produce and it determines how it can get used. So… Peter: So how do you support those relationships? I mean one of the challenges, and I agree with you that knowledge exchange is fundamentally about the relationships and I've had these conversations with people, you actually have to trust the sources and the people that you're interacting with so…except our institutions and the various infrastructure and the incentive systems don't necessarily always support the types of relationships that would allow you to deal, as a social worker, within the communities that you want to work in - so how do you support that? If you have a support that you needed, what would that look like?
Billie: I guess in some ways there's a practical and very real example…one is for example around doing research and social work around aboriginal communities a real struggle around protocol in terms of offering tobacco versus offering an honorarium and how I think this can be used to deal with that. The sort of real, tangible issues about the coming together between different ideas of how you engage and I think there's increasing acceptance of an aboriginal world view and an aboriginal approach to research and that's opening up. So there's ways that I see it becoming practical in that way. I think in social work practice, the idea of supporting those relationships is often undermined by the agency and the mandate of the agency. So working in a hospital structure where you're really trying to get services for your client or help them just to navigate what they need to get through because whether it's themselves or their family that has this health issue that's created an imbalance or crisis in their life, how do you navigate? And often that's complicated by the fact the hospital wants the bed emptied, the hospital wants them gone in 30 days, the hospital wants them to sign X, Y, Z form – agree to this, agree to that – pay this, pay that. So I think the support around those relationships is shifting in the practice how social work is situated in agencies and obviously a hospital is a huge system – a huge institution in that social work on the ladder of that hierarchy in disciplines falls pretty low so there's not a lot of speaking up that happens. I see those…that overlay of institutional values and agendas that effects it so I think that…to how that support means you would have that time, that your profession would be valued – that the idea that we could use our specific skills and social workers looking at a person in a context and in an environment that those have value and that we can take our time with it because it's really become a sped up process and I see social work becoming progressively more of an agent of social control versus social change - so how you resist that? And I think it's about having time, it's about those relationships being valued by the institutions or agencies that you're in and then really at the end of the day, social workers individually have to value it because you can try and, in your own individual practice, change it by making that space for your client. Peter: Given your experience and given this path that you're on and we've talked a little bit that there are some barriers and challenges that you're encountering and are they particular to the discipline or are they particular to you as a woman, are they particular to you as how you identify? In the process of life-long learning, how supportive is an institution like the one that you're at for someone that identifies that way that you do? Billie: I think that there's certainly a real push in academia to sort of bring in people that weren't traditionally admitted in large numbers and to try and offer support for what would be politely called divers categories of people. I think that….I can address…I'll address the aboriginal piece first. Peter: Sure Billie: I think that there is certainly this wanting to bring aboriginal people into the academy and to have this presence but I think the reality in how it's really taken up and whether or not an alternative world view - alternative epistemologies, research methods are the extent to which they're accepted and supported is still not clear and easy and I think that's a hard thing to navigate because its…there's so much – it's such a complex environment – academia in terms of trying to position yourself in whatever you need to get through because the reality to is, as PhD students, most often we're financially vulnerable, so we have to find work to get through the program and in finding work, you're trying to establish and maintain relationships with people so it's hard to navigate it. So I think in some ways it's supported but I feel there's a real challenge for me in terms of trying to put forward aboriginal ideas and knowledge and have them accepted – seen as legitimate - equal to more traditional social theories and research methodologies. I see that as a big challenge that I can't turn away from but that is challenging - it's difficult…really difficult. I think as a woman and particularly as a woman with children, it's a very hard thing. I mean I feel like we're trying to attain an image of an ideal doctoral student who doesn't…you ideally most people wouldn't be doing this with children because its insanity the amount of work. I've actually had pretty good accommodation here for that, I just think the challenges, and the socio-economic challenges, the challenge of the how you manage your time is real. I think there's at least an opening and awareness that these issues go on in students lives and there's some attempt there to be supportive. I guess overall for the biggest challenge for me is just this idea of knowledge - what is knowledge and being confronted by, which I didn't completely expect I guess, that knowledge is being defined in certain ways and how do you share knowledge, how you develop it and disseminate it, is better if you do it in these given ways and that's the hard thing. Peter: Right. So if you could imagine an environment that was more supportive for including aboriginal knowledge and how people learn, I mean this whole process around life-long learning is that the people will learn over the entire course of their life. What's the best way to support the inclusion of aboriginal knowledge in this process where people are learning how to engineer, how to design, how to plan cities, how to govern? What needs to be done alternatively or how would you include this other way of knowing or this particular world view?
Billie: I think there's different ways of…it's get taken up by…Ryerson a while back, it's been several years now, hired an aboriginal faculty member who is part of her tremendous work and contribution there, designed and aboriginal world views course – aboriginal perspectives on social work, which has now become a mandatory course for all social work student. So you're mandating this idea and you're really implanting this idea of a specific knowledge in a context that people are existing in this country where everyone is in and I think that sends a message about the value and people will argue about the extent to which side is real and not real – how much a university is actually valuing by putting that course there. I, as an aboriginal student, would have been immensely pleased to have that course and to see it as mandatory because it gives some recognition, some credence and respect to what's there and what can be offered. I think in this context, I feel like…I feel like if I'm going to say here is an aboriginal way of looking at things and this is what shapes how I approach things, am I helping my community? Am I honoring that tradition and family? Am I considering balance? Am I looking at things in a….then I'm on the hook to account for it and to back it up and to fill it in when really I'm learning that too – that's part of my learning too. I'm not a cultural expert – I don't carry every teaching from every nation that makes up the entire aboriginal community. Peter: Right Billie: And I think that's a hard thing – you know in my second week, I say here's an aboriginal perspective on things and I'm having a hard time making sense of it in relation to these articles. I was sort of pushed to explain that further and justify and that's a hard position to be in because I'm not…I think it's a hard thing for aboriginal students and I'm sure you could generalize it to other students, in terms of feeling like you're the expert in a knowledge that you're still learning – or that you're the cultural expert for your entire community regardless of however diverse that community is. Here recently they hired a cross- appointed faculty from social work and aboriginal studies so at least you feel like you have someone that represents that you can see that reflection that you can approach who, presumably has faced similar issues in going through their education…so that's helpful. I think you know, it…I think it would be about – there's this idea, if you come to me and you say I want to do this, I want to try this and I don't know and instead of saying, “well this is how we do things here”, it might be about “here are the people that we have available in our faculty in our university that are working on this and I think could really help you – lets see if we can find a program of study that's going to work for you”. I guess the reality with PhD programs, is they're really student driven – it's your own individual education – you're accountable for it. To think about how you can support students…
