Challenges of knowledge production and knowledge use among researchers and policy-makers
OUTPUT TYPE: Journal Article
PUBLICATION YEAR: 2018
TITLE AUTHOR(S): T.Twalo
KEYWORDS: KNOWLEDGE LEVEL, KNOWLEDGE PRODUCTION, POLICY FORMULATION, RESEARCH DESIGN
DEPARTMENT: Impact Centre (IC), Impact Centre (PRESS), Impact Centre (CC)
Print: HSRC Library: shelf number 10377
HANDLE: 20.500.11910/12228
URI: http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11910/12228
If you would like to obtain a copy of this Research Output, please contact Hanlie Baudin at researchoutputs@hsrc.ac.za.
Abstract
The knowledge value chain has multiple stakeholders such as researchers and policy-makers. These are conventionally knowledge producers and knowledge users, respectively. Knowledge producers and knowledge users sometimes have conflicting interests, expectations, concerns, and priorities. To mitigate these differences, one of the strategies used is knowledge co-production. However, at times the knowledge co-production process demonstrates the implications of the adage that ???knowledge is power???. The manifestations of power or powerlessness are demonstrated in knowledge production and knowledge use/consumption. This paper discusses the metamorphosis of research approaches during a project and the concomitant adjustment of power relations and stakeholder expectations regarding knowledge production and consumption in the VakaYiko Project. It employs theoretical approaches from conventional research, applied research and participatory action research to analyse the concomitant negotiations for power. Power was demonstrated in decision-making with regard to how to undertake the study, composition of the research team, sampling of participants, and what to include/exclude in the research report. The data for this study were gathered through interviews with representatives of organisations that participated in the project and from the project research reports. The four key findings are that (1) the interface of knowledge producers and knowledge users is a site for the contestation of power because of competing priorities and lack of mutual understanding, (2) unresolved knowledge cocreation concerns inhibit the knowledge production process, (3) research uptake is not automatic; it is determined by several factors, and (4) project conceptualisation oversights translate to glitches at subsequent stages of the project.-
Related Research Outputs:
- Changing modes: a brief overview of the mode 2 knowledge debate and its impact on South African policy formulation
- Getting a GRIPP on policies: turning research into policy and practice
- Book review: Goetz, A.M., Hassim, S. (eds.) (2003). No shortcuts to power: African women in politics and policy making. Cape Town: Zed Books. 246 p. ISBN 1842771477
- Understanding the structure of data when planning for analysis: application of hierarchical linear model
- The centre-periphery in knowledge production in the twenty-first century
- Skills analysis in the mining and minerals sector
- Assessment of and instruction for higher order thinking skills
- The elusiveness of integration: policy discources on open and distance learning in the 1990s
- Investigating new knowledge production: a South African higher education survey
- Research methodology (approaches) and the implementation of research findings
- Changing modes: new knowledge production and its implications for higher education in South Africa
- Interest group participation in the National Economic Development and Labour Council (NEDLAC)
- Equity, development, and new knowledge production: an overview of the new higher education policy environment in post-apartheid South Africa
- Globalization and emerging trends in African states' foreign policy-making process
- Evidence, policies and practices: continuities and discontinuities in mental health promotion in a developing country
- Imbalances in the knowledge about infancy: the divide between rich and poor countries
- The Takalani Sesame AIDS baseline study: knowledge and attitudes of three to five year-old children regarding HIV and AIDS
- Newspaper coverage of South African tobacco issues, 1997-2001
- The interface between research and policy dialogue: symbolic or substantive
- The interface between research and policy dialogue: substantive or symbolic?