Pedagogies of knowledge exchange. What happens when university researchers engage with individuals working in educational contexts in order to learn from each other with the aim of creating new knowledge? Karen Laing and Liz Todd, Newcastle University

1. Learning for Change: researching pedagogies
.
Pedagogies of knowledge exchange.
.
What happens when university researchers engage with
individuals working in educational contexts in order to learn
from each other with the aim of creating new knowledge?
Karen Laing
Liz Todd
Centre for Research in Learning and Teaching
Newcastle Institute of Social Renewal
Newcastle University

2. • Overview: why have a knowledge exchange (KE) role in a group of
schools; children’s communities and the Wallesend partnership of
schools
• Karen’s KE role: what she has been doing in the Wallsend partnership
of schools
• Methods we have been using to research Karen’s KE role
• Early findings and analysis

3. Researcher
conducts
research
Researcher
disseminates
research
Researcher
translates and
may help
implement
findings of
research
Research
findings are
taken up and
acted on
Impact is
generated

4. More is happening for young people,
for example football and homework
clubs…We’ve broken down barriers
and our doors have opened…There
are more adults walking the
corridors…It feels less like a young
person’s ghetto and more of a
community.
(extended schools co-ordinator)
I don’t eat breakfast at
home and so coming
here means I get
breakfast
(student)
twelve parents attended
the smoking cessation
course and one parent
stopped smoking (school
nurse)
Full service extended schools &
extended services, England
2000-2017
• After school clubs
• Breakfast clubs
• Access in schools to support
services for families and pupils
• School for adults
• Multi-agency working

5. What does a Children’s Community
look like?
Each community will be different based on the context of
the area in which it operates but will embody several key
principles:
 A doubly holistic approach: support from birth to adulthood
and across all contexts of their lives
 Focus on a coherent place that makes sense locally
 Involve a wide range of partners to work jointly under a
common strategy
 Aim for generational change
 A strategy for local, integrated support and opportunities
based on a deep local analysis, theory of change and robust
continuous evaluation

6. ENGLAND
Wallsend Children’s Community: led by a federation of schools, developed
from Full Service Extended Schools work
Pembury Children’s Community, Hackney: led by Peabody Housing.
N.IRELAND
Shankhill Children and Young People’s Zone: led by a Community
Convention, made the decision not to seek funding (it should be part of
everybody’s job already!) and to have conversations with every single child
and young person (6000) to form action plan
SCOTLAND
Stronger Communities: facilitated by local government, planned and
executed by local people, assets based approaches
WALES
Government currently commissioning, but unsure what will happen
Different models

7. Newcastle West End Children’s
community:
bringing organisations together with
the community in a co-ordinated way

9. From “what do you think about …..”
To… “What questions would you like me to ask?”
What do girls want?
• Strong relationships with adults, based on mutual respect
• Someone to talk to about the normal stuff, near to their own age
• Opportunities to be themselves, without being judged, or feeling as if they
were being judged
• Spaces to use that are unstructured, flexible and informal
• Opportunities to form and maintain friendships with their peers, including
strong transition support for years 6 and 7
• Practical knowledge and skills for the future
• Work experience and knowledge of different career routes
• Work to be done with boys around sexism

11. Being a girl in Wallsend
The girls expressed high aspirations for the future. Some
girls had already given a lot of thought to occupations
they would like in the future, including, for example,
architect, vet, pilot, police, and nursing. Some girls were
doing well at school and could be expected to go on to
such a career. However, girls did not feel that it was likely
that they would reach their aspirations. They felt that
they were not in control of what happened to them.
They did not know about life past their GCSE’s and felt
that anything could happen in the future. They felt that
they did not have enough practical knowledge about how
to go about achieving their aspirations, and that the
focus for them, from every direction, was on achieving
good grades in their GCSE’s. They were not able to see
the relevance of their GCSE’s to their future lives and felt
that the curriculum did not offer them the life skills and
knowledge they needed to make a success of their lives
in future.

13. Transformational, questioning how to interact
with young people
Hi Karen,
Sorry I missed you before you left. My sixth formers kept me talking on
Tuesday and then when I got to the room I realised I had missed you.
Thanks so much for Tuesday- All of the girls were very well behaved the
following day which was a tad spooky. I hope they were OK for you? It
got me thinking that maybe just being involved in something was a
benefit for them. They may be the forgotten few who rarely get
opportunity.

14. Our methods have included and been
informed by
• Emergent: no methods possible at beginning; diary 1st method; MyImpact
university database; then reflective log; Liz’s interest and critical questions;
research tea
• Collected artifacts: photos, video, briefings, notes, reports, diamond ranking data,
interview notes
• Ideas from ethnography, auto-ethnography; cultural historical approaches to
learning and change
• Our values of equality of respect for different knowledges
• Seeking theoretical perspectives for understanding and sense making: CfLaT
research tea, consultation with Anne Edwards etc
• Discussion with Wayne Daley and Alan Strachan
• Continuing development of methods: further conversations ie with Alan, Wayne
and Liz

15. A dialogic conversation that is also:
• Relational
• Critical
• Analytic
• Engaged
• Exploring
Vulnerability and risk
Emersion

16. Researcher
conducts
research
Researcher
disseminates
research
Researcher
translates and
may help
implement
findings of
research
Research
findings are
taken up and
acted on
Impact is
generated

17. • to communicate effectively
• to create relationships
• to see opportunities
• to add value
• to make a difference
• to ask critical questions
• to challenge thinking and
practices
• to frame research evidence
to partner needs
• to make links
• to translate
• to raise awareness
• to implement
• to embed
• to inform decision making
and practice
• to build capacity
• to bring new ideas
Wider
knowledge
of evidence
base
Researcher's
own
research
findings
Values and
attitudes
Skills and
experiences

18. Attunement
from video
interaction
guidance
Positioning: We position ourselves alongside, in
respect, recognising assets and strengths, looking
for ways to support someone’s initiatives, their
knowledges as important as ours.
Democratic community: Ongoing and
transformative discussion between diverse voices
Dialogic space: Different perspectives are held
together – but without the need for resolution.
There is mutuality.
Relational resilience: we grow through and
toward connection
Mutuality: a means of engagement in the
participation process related to listening and
meaningful dialogue

19. Anne Edwards
• Relational expertise - a capacity to interpret problems
with others, work relationally with others expanding the
object to reveal complexity, what you know with the
knowledge of others.
• Common knowledge - knowing what matters to others, a
respectful understanding of different motives. This
provides the possibilities for action.
• Relational agency – using common knowledge to take
action with others, calibrating our different responses.
Work on something together for change. the ability of
people to work on a problem (agency) is enhanced by
their working together.

21. Karen’s pedagogical role (tentative analysis)
• Working alongside on a common problem, asking critical friend questions –
reciprocal - negotiated
• Expanding people’s understanding of the object, the motive, of what we
are each working on, aiming for – reciprocal – Karen with girl’s reaction to
‘body image’ quote
• Helping to build common knowledge, using common knowledge, and
enabling agentic work
• Leaving the field of practitioners with resources people can use and with
resources Karen can use
• University no front door: a long way to go in terms of relational agency and
common knowledge
• What tools does Karen use to build common knowledge?
• ‘being there’, ‘hanging around’, ‘meeting people’, ‘visiting places’, and such
like become important activities in their own right

22. So where does this get us?
• Karen’s role continues, develops
• Our research methods evolve
• A realisation that Karen’s KE role is very different from linear model of
impact
• What are the implications for how we try to have an impact outside the
university through our research?
• Is a change needed in how impact pathways are understood and carried
out?
• Do universities need to be more accessible to external organisations and if
so how?
• How can we record this experience and analysis in writing?!