From Knowledge-Mediation to Negotiation: A Researcher-Practitioner Encounter

• In Event: Fairmont Roundtable Session Fourteen
  In Roundtable Session: Negotiating Research and Practice (Table 6)

Abstract

Mutual connection between practitioners and researchers has been framed as fruitful for the development and dissemination of a professional knowledge base in education. However, such encounters – be in through research-practice partnerships, direct consumption by teachers of research articles, or other knowledge-mobilization efforts – are characterized by multiple challenges. Researchers and practitioners have differing and often divergent languages, expectations, interests and goals; practitioners perceive researchers as distanced, irrelevant, or judgmental; and researchers tend to prioritize theoretical over practical knowledge. This study, analyzing a single researcher-practitioner knowledge mediation event, traces the epistemic repositioning of participants throughout the encounter, and suggests that principles of mutualism and productive tension, as found in the literature on RPPs, be brought to bear on other researcher-teacher learning settings.

Author

• Aliza Segal, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev
  Presenting Author