Podcasts as Levers to Democratize Knowledge Dissemination

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:20 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: From Hierarchies to Hubs: Creating and Sustaining Educational Transformation Through Podcasts (Table 3)

Abstract

Scholarly podcasts provide one route to making research more accessible to a public audience. This work supports calls to democratize knowledge production and dissemination, as one way to remedy and repair the often fraught and historically hierarchical relationship between the academy and K-12 schools. The literary-focused podcast featured in this session has the explicit aim to bridge the gap between research and its application. Our podcast project has revealed a bidirectional challenge in the hierarchy, as the academy continues to face questions about the value and utility of podcasts and other digital texts.

In one study we have conducted of our work, we employ a case study approach (Merriam, 1988), focusing on our educational podcast series as the bounded case. We examined data including quantitative measures such as podcast downloads and social media analytics, as well as qualitative feedback from listener surveys and focus groups. Findings indicate a growing global audience for our podcast. While standardized measures of podcast success are available (i.e., Podcast Success Index, ListenScore), our institutional leaders have been most interested in metrics like downloads and geographic reach. Though attention metrics reflect potentially superficial engagement with the show, impact data reveals deeper audience interaction and application of research insights gained from the show. Listener survey data indicates our podcast program provides a storied, humanizing interview format, featuring diverse ideas of scholars and experts. Listeners decidedly consider the podcast program a part of their professional learning. Further, in our pilot study of Pod Clubs (like book clubs but with podcasts as shared texts), we found teacher participants adopted the asset-based language of podcast guests, considered how the ideas from the podcast could be applied to their specific teaching setting, and rehearsed advocacy stances for themselves and their students, often quoting language they heard from podcast guests.

With global reach and arguably positive impacts of podcast listening for educators, we wonder how podcasting and other digital compositions, as levers for democratizing knowledge production and dissemination, could be more universally accepted as scholarly work for researchers. Rogers’ (2003) Theory of Diffusion of Innovation underscores how new ideas, technologies, and practices spread and are adopted within a society or social system. By leveraging Rogers’ model, we seek to promote podcasting within the academy as a medium for public scholarship and innovation dissemination. Additionally, by examining the impact of our scholarly podcast, we aim to engage in more authentic and inclusive forms of scholarship, as a compliment and alternative to traditional publication outlets. Ian Cook (2023) emphasizes that scholars can leverage podcasting to make their work more "creative, transformative, and generous" (p. 13). Podcast affordances include increased accessibility, global reach, and comprehensible narrative structures. While scholars have an opportunity to use podcasts to move towards public-facing scholarship, the value of these deliverables must also be recognized in the academy for the innovation to be widely adopted. Digital texts like podcasts offer supports and remedies necessary to renew and repair connections between education research and education practice.

Author

• Lindsay E. Persohn, University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee