Transforming Knowledge: Blurring the Boundaries Between Research, Policy, and Practice

Abstract

This paper explores ways in which the boundaries between educational research, policy, and practice are being—and can further be—blurred in the postmodern age. First, it describes two paradigms of knowledge and how knowledge is used or generated by practitioners: knowledge utilization and teachers’ self-generated knowledge. The distinctions between these two positions, it is argued, are much less clear cut than is commonly claimed. Indeed, I suggest, in a complex, diverse, and rapidly changing postmodern world, the boundaries between university discourse and school-level discourse about education should become more open still. The remainder of the paper exemplifies and analyzes how these different forms of knowledge and discourse in education can be transformed in productive ways. Four practical examples of such transformation drawn from my own research and development work are described. Finally, 10 principles for reinventing the nature of and relationships between knowledge creation and knowledge utilization in education are outlined.