Knowledge Broker Stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb!

My story is not much different from other people working as knowledge brokers.  No one aspires to do this work at an early age.  As a child, my mother said I wanted to clean streetlights.  Well, a healthy respect (OK, fear) of heights has all but squashed that dream, but I do feel in all honesty that I may have the best job at York University, that of knowledge broker.

First, I feel a little background is in order.  My career before beginning at York was in adult education, more specifically, Aboriginal literacy, where for 15 years I worked as a practitioner, project manager, trainer, consultant and as a researcher.  My interests in research and my abilities to respect and liaise between the unique environments of research, program delivery and policy analysis gave me the confidence to walk into a completely new role at York University in February 2006.  With no clear blueprint on how to develop an institutional knowledge mobilization unit, I was led by values of honesty and respect to develop the relationships – both within and outside of the university – necessary to support this work.  These values were reinforced to me early in my career as critical for building credible and trusting relationships with people across sectors.

My brokering responsibilities have me working with enthusiastic graduate students, brilliant academic researchers (across multiple disciplines and departments), innovative community leaders and dedicated policy professionals.  My challenges are in creating a clear and common understanding to the opportunity, the constraints from all parties and the needs for resources and ongoing support.  It has been exciting to see ideas shared over a coffee emerge into a large-scale collaborative project! 

I enjoy the learning opportunities that come with working with an emerging community of knowledge brokers across Canada.  These learning opportunities come through my interactions with colleagues across Canada, here at York, and in all aspects of my life, because my teachers extend beyond 9-5 (or 7-3 in my case)!  I like the fact that the values I bring to my work help make me a better worker. 

I have reflected on my role at York and honestly feel that there is no better place for me within the university.  I no longer aspire to clean streetlights, but I do feel like I am living the dream!

Michael Johnny, MA

Manager, Knowledge Mobilization

York Research Tower, 2nd Floor

4700 Keele Street

Toronto, ON  M3J 1P3

416-736-2100 ext. 88876

mjohnny@yorku.ca

www.researchimpact.ca

To cite:

MLA format

Johnny, Michael, "Knowledge broker stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb!" Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 24, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/8iYgYy

APA format

Johnny, M. Knowledge broker stories: From Cleaning Streetlights to KMb! Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/8iYgYy]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Knowledge Broker Through Partnership Working

In the summer of 2009 I presented my Inaugural lecture to mark being made Professor of Child, Family and Community Health at the University of Brighton. Often an Inaugural traces the intellectual roots of professorial achievement and is aimed at a university audience. But for me it provided a unique opportunity to talk about working with the community on issues that are important to them. The title of my talk? ‘What makes us resilient?’ Determined that this presentation should be fully accessible to the public, I worked hard to make it part of the Brighton Fringe Festival. Astonishingly my talk was so oversubscribed that I’ve now had to deliver it several times in different locations. My kids are getting very bored of turning up for it, and soon I’ll have to bribe them to come. My inaugural tells the story of how, from a background of poverty and disadvantage, I ended up doing a doctorate at the University of Oxford, adopting three children with special needs from the care system, training to be a practitioner working directly with disadvantaged children and families myself, and researching practical approaches to resilience.


I’ve always tried to live by the now famous slogan ‘the personal is political’, and intellectually understand my career narrative to be embedded in this term. Throughout my life I’ve worked closely with those whose lives are barely – or perhaps invisibly – touched by the concerns of the university. Moving on from a research investigation into what was wanted by parents and carers in the way of fostering and adoption support services, I began working as a psychotherapist in the child and adolescent mental health services, becoming increasingly interested in practical ways to work with children with complex needs. And, with the emphasis on practice, my research work relates the findings of hard research to practical interventions, feeding back into the research process knowledge of the needs, the practicalities, and the effectiveness of resilience work. I am working through several ‘Resilient Therapy Communities of Practice’ (RT CoPs) set up on the south coast of England. Communities of practices are groups of people who join together with a passion for a shared interest. Ours is helping children with complex needs to bounce back through applying the resilience evidence base to practice and to family life. The term RT CoPs is a bit of a mouthful, but what we do is very practical. These RT CoPs are composed of parents, carers, students, health and social care practitioners and researchers. We meet together once a month in a facilitated space to apply RT to our different settings and co-create books, training materials, etc. to support the development of RT. CoPs are a template for other social concern groups, not just to be a sounding board, but to be active investigators in their own right.


Luckily, the University of Brighton has always been supportive of a ‘partnership’ approach to my research, and over the last few years the University’s Community-University Partnership Programme (Cupp) has been able to expand its own work substantially, along with an overall shift in emphasis at the Corporate level towards partnership and collaborative working http://www.brighton.ac.uk/cupp/. In an ambitious collaboration, 40 community members and academics produced a ‘warts-and-all’ book on our collective experiences in community-university partnership development.


As Academic Director of the Community University Partnership Programme, I have learnt a great deal about developing mutually beneficial partnerships with communities and their organisations, and about incentivising other academics to become involved in this type of scholarship. Over the past year, I have been invited to Canada, Sweden, Germany and Australia to talk about, and to talk to, those involved in the practice of exchanging ideas. I never lose an opportunity to stress how important it is to draw strength and knowledge from the local community, and how community partners need to lead developments too, otherwise we academics are in danger of finding ourselves talking only to each other. I stress that partnership working is a two-way process that can, and should, transform not just what work is selected for investigation, but the manner in which it is undertaken, and the processes by which it is made available more widely.

All of this quite a lot to juggle, but at the same time, is immensely rewarding. If there is one sticking point to pick out, it is not the common narrative about recognition of my work in tenure and promotion etc. Rather, it is a disappointment that I do not always succeed in persuading academics and university establishments to put the kind of hard work necessary into including community members and their organisations in ‘meta-level’ conversations and decisions about community-university partnerships (for example at conferences, seminars and working groups). Time and time again community university partnership conferences take place with but a smattering of community participants present. I know from my own experience, that capacity building in this area is very complicated and time-consuming. Simply inviting people to attend events isn’t enough. It involves meticulous, long-term relational work, the imagination to recognise the barriers to community participation (funds, time, inaccessibility of academic discourse, perceived strategic relevance etc.), and the determination to overcome them. Hard work and a tall order on top of everything else I know. Yet, if those of us with leadership roles in universities don’t put the work in here, we risk community members and their organisations forever being peripheral players, rather than co-producers of knowledge. All this strongly reminds me of the mental health service user slogan ‘Nothing about us without us.’ Would that this were true in the world of community-university partnerships.


As my colleagues and collaborators would be the first to point out, these kinds of partnerships are not easy – power dynamics are rife as the literature in this area discusses at length. Also, I have enough self-knowledge from years of lying on a couch whilst training to be a psychotherapist to realise that I can be a right pain to work with at times. But at least life is never dull in our world of community university partnerships, and there are always spaces to be found in which we genuinely deliver on mutually beneficial work. I firmly believe that when we get it right, working together produces better practice and better scholarship. Putting people in touch with one another for mutual benefit is a privilege, as is listening to the stories people tell us about their concerns. Making my own, albeit it sometimes bungled attempts to develop a career within this paradigm, is a clear priority for me. Equally valuable is the opportunity this kind of knowledge brokering presents to evidence that universities can and do offer their services to others, for the greater benefit of all, not just for those lucky enough to be ‘ivory tower’ educated.


Resources referred to:

Aumann, K., and Hart, A. 2009 Helping children with complex needs bounce back: Resilient Therapy for parents and professionals. Jessica Kingsley: London ISBN 978-1-84310-948-8


Hart, A., Maddison, E., and Wolff, D.(eds) 2007 Community-university partnerships in practice. Niace:Leicester ISBN 978-1-86201-317-9


Hart, A. and Blincow, D. with Thomas, H. 2007 Resilient Therapy with children and families. Brunner Routledge: London ISBN 978-0-415-40384-9


Personal profile: http://www.brighton.ac.uk/snm/contact/details.php?uid=ah111

Angie Hart

To cite:


MLA format

Hart, Angie, "Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Broker through partnership working." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 10, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/33ZW1t

APA format

Hart, A. Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Broker through partnership working. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/33ZW1t]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Knowledge Broker Stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core

Knowledge Mobilization is a big part of my work.  I don’t think of it however, as a separate piece.  Since 2001, I have served as the Executive Director of an applied research centre – the Centre for Families, Work & Well-being at the University of Guelph (www.worklifecanada.ca).  We do most of our work in collaboration with organizations with identified research needs.  Knowledge brokering, exchange and translation are simply essential to my job.

Our focus has a deep resonance with people’s lived experience.  We have the opportunity to talk about practical problems that occur in all of our lives but that show up in a myriad of ways for each of us.  The popular press uses “work-family balance” as a handle for some of this, but I would ask that we shift to thinking about caring and working in webs and networks.  This often leads to contradictions in relationships  - as they occur in different contexts rather than as a simple set of scales to be tipped.

My starting point in working with community organizations or individuals is not to produce documents that follow social marketing guidelines.  We don’t start from the concept of getting messages across in the right way to the right audience and developing that sort of logical framework to rationalize all the work –although, there are lots of good folks doing that kind of work, many resources available and it is great to have people doing those things as part of our broader team.  My work is to bring together “those audiences” as players in the research process at the beginning rather than only as end users.  This is a deliberate attempt to confuse the distinction between evidence based practice and practice based evidence. We just don’t deliver but also respond when some of those “audiences” approach the university.

For me, the “broker” role is both being an architect and a facilitator.  Following a route of devising and supporting large complex research partnerships like the Father Involvement Research Alliance or the Rural Women Making Change Alliance  I tend to think of the structure of the problem and then weave in the content.  I try to support careful thinking about who from the academy or community should be invited and what role we will all play at a table responding to community research needs. 

These considerations change not only the research questions, the way those questions will be “operationalised”, and the “sensibility” or ideological foundation demonstrated through the assumptions of the research (no objectivity claims from me), but also the way that new knowledge will be generated and will flow across systems.

Having policy makers, community people and university researchers eat at the same table means that whether you like it or not, word will get out.  Part of the discovery process is how to harness the flow that is already there.  This is a thinking process that is much different than deciding which evidence based practice will be delivered to those waiting for it.  We focus instead on sharing ideas, coming to agreements and principles of working together, and have excellent conversations to both support the work as well as produce good outcomes.

Facilitation is critical – at the beginning, the middle and the end – managing the tensions that arise and structuring or restructuring so that people can do the good work they want to do.  Conceptualizing, carrying out and moving research results to practice is an art when done in collaboration.  The closer you are to how the research itself is (or was) conceptualized (the more you expand your brain to understand the research or practice area if not your own) the better the mobilization efforts will be.  From this you will be able to recognize that those unexpected challenging moments are really opportunities to push the work forward.  To summarize, my best work includes constant learning, good conversations, and occasionally failing but always with really good food.

Linda Hawkins

To cite:

MLA format
Hawkins, Linda, "Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 9, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/3ZxixJ

APA format
Hawkins, L. Knowledge broker stories: Knowledge Mobilization is at the core. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/3ZxixJ]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Broker Series, please contact Peter Levesque

Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate

Editor’s Note: Today, I posted a link to the National Post article by MP Steven Fletcher's thoughtful piece on Bill C-384 on legalized euthanasia and assisted suicide in Canada http://bit.ly/3fu6th This is Knowledge Mobilization Works Senior Fellow, Daryl Rock’s response.

I do have my own thoughts on euthanasia…based on my education, understanding of human nature and my own personal experience. Like Steven, before my injury I was young, athletic, had the world by the tail. And then I broke my neck! And like Steven, had 2 collapsed lungs, a broken neck, and could not move a muscle for a long time after my injury… and that is where our similarity of experience and also thoughts on this issue diverge (although interestingly, not completely) and so I want to be very clear that I value Steven’s points and more important, commend him for expressing them in such a public forum.

For me, the problem with the current debate on euthanasia, in the USA and Canada is it is always framed in dealing with a very small portion of the population: terminal illness, ongoing pain or severe disability... and it paints people in these circumstances as having such poor quality of life that the "were I in their shoes" mentality that exists in these situations would lead many folk to say, “I'd want to kill myself, so surely these folk want to as well”. In short their perceptions of the quality of life of someone in these circumstances leads them an those around them, to think, and act, in a manner they consider “humane” when in fact it is more likely their fear or lack of understanding of the unknown that motivates them.

But what happens when we change the focus of debate? Let’s move away from “euthanasia for a select portion of our society…the poor hopeless ones” and frame the debate more broadly and in so doing, more objectively – about the merit and value of euthanasia, as an option for anyone! Many people who attempt to commit suicide do it poorly because of fear, nervousness, lack of skill, whatever, shouldn’t these people be allowed access to professional quality life ending techniques? In short, don't make it about disability or illness, that just paints disabled and ill people in the traditional "poor them" light. Rather, if you are going to have a debate about euthanasia - have a real one...like abortion why not open euthanasia clinics around the country so that anyone, disabled, ill, bored, angry, unemployed, broke, etc...has the choice of whether or not to kill themselves with help. Keep the same criteria as is in the current proposed legislation: sound mind, 2 interviews, whatever, (but exclude the requirement to be terminally ill or severely disabled) … then, if “joe blow” wants to pop off, let him! I think we all know how short this debate would be!

Focusing the debate of euthanasia only on the terminally ill, severely disabled and those with chronic pain passes a quality of life judgement and in fact cheapens the life of a person living with these conditions. More important, it skews the debate into a more “politically correct” area…after all we are talking about those who can’t help themselves. As I said above, I suspect that if the debate was simply about the general idea of euthanasia for anyone, there would be a huge backlash and the debate would be quickly snuffed out because as a society of evolved human beings, we value life, or at least the life of healthy, well adjusted individuals…

Even worse, by focusing it on the ill, disabled or those in chronic pain, we are simply reinforcing the negative stereotypes of people living with these conditions and continues to create a dual class society where disabled and ill are seen as at best pity objects and at worst, burdens to be done away with...

In my view Steven missed an opportunity to put the issue in its proper light. From what I read the current debate really isn’t about right to live or die with dignity, it is about peoples perceptions of the value of those living with conditions they cannot imagine how to cope with... as I will explain below (and where I do agree with Steven), if a person, any person be they physically disabled or emotionally disabled, is given hope and a reason to live, only those with fundamental mental health conditions will chose the death option…

I do not believe the current debate is doing justice to either the issue of euthanasia or to the value of dignity for all…specifically the value we place on human contribution to society or, and here I again agree with Steven, the debate about effective supports to ensure hope and something to live for options are available to everyone...

So, if we have to focus on discussing euthanasia for only this small segment of society (which I find distasteful and therefore hesitate to do), what are my thoughts? Not surprisingly I believe the debate has to fully include the second element of Steven’s article, that is to say the provision of hope and more important – a reason for living. I believe that, when a person has no hope they will often consider death (as he might have when he first injured himself). But when a person, no matter how ill, or in pain, or disabled has hope (and respect, and the ability to live in some sort of dignified way, and a purpose) then the issue of choosing to die becomes less of a one sided option. Further, research shows that if you constantly bombard someone with an image of themselves, either positive or negative, it only takes a very short while (a couple hours in the case of the research on young students – the blue eye vs. brown eye “smart kids” experiment of the 1950s) before they begin to take that opinion as fact… thus the doom and gloom of those around a person will often and quickly lead to their feeling doom and gloom.

We also know that life experiences, culture and background will play a significant role in how each of us reacts to this type of situation. In many cases not only will someone severely disabled, or terminally ill, or in chronic pain want to kill themselves, but there are likely many "professionals" and "loved ones" around them who would support this decision because if they were in the similar situation, they’d want to too! Although I do not know for sure, I believe it highly likely that, had there been supported suicide when Steven was immediately injured and when he had no hope, then we'd have one less MP. And yet today, with hope, and the proper supports, Steven is a hugely contributing member of our society.

I have many friends without disabilities who do not or can not or will not see the distinction between euthanasia for all and euthanasia for the disabled and dying as an artificial one. This inability to see the difference reflects to me, an inability to fully appreciate the potential quality of life someone living with one of these conditions can have, and as important, their potential contribution to their family and to society…

At the end of the day, where do I stand (metaphorically)? I believe people should fundamentally have the right to choose, thus I fully support euthanasia, provided people are given valid choices and only IF we decide through public discourse, that euthanasia is an acceptable service that should be available to all of society. In that way people living with these conditions are not marginalized and can access the service just as readily and as anyone else…that, to me, is treating all people fairly, providing full access and equal opportunity to all citizens.

In closing I have to say this is not an easy issue to deal with and there are probably many more opinions than there are options. And to be clear I am glad I do not have to make the very tough decision now in front of the House… whatever the outcome, continued, thoughtful, honest debate, eschewed of the cloak of political correctness, is a healthy way to continue this dialogue.

Daryl Rock

To cite:

MLA format
Rock, Daryl, "Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate." Weblog Entry. Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog. Posted November 2, 2009. Accessed (enter date). http://bit.ly/4GceHA

APA format
Rock, D. Op-Ed: Include all the options in the euthanasia debate. Retrieved (enter date) from http://www.knowledgemobilization.net [http://bit.ly/4GceHA]

If you would like to contribute a story to the Knowledge Mobilization Works Blog, please contact Peter Levesque