Exploring the concepts of knowledge adoption and conceptual impact: implications for educational research submissions to the Research Excellence Framework (2014)

Abstract

This article examines how research(ers) can impact upon policy, a pertinent issue in light of England’s 2014 Research Excellence Framework. It presents the findings of a literature review and interviews with educational researchers and policymakers in England and Wales. The projects’ aims were (i) to understand the actions researchers should undertake in order to successfully influence policy and (ii) to augment existing work by developing a suite of empirically inspired knowledge adoption strategies specifically for researchers. This article concludes by presenting four strategy types that will aid researchers to influence policy debates: (i) research outputs which meet policymakers’ specific requirements from research (‘policy-ready’ strategies); (ii) the effective communication of research (‘promotional’ strategies); (iii) ‘traditional’ aca- demic behaviour (‘traditional’ strategies); (iv) academics shifting their relative position with regard to how ‘privileged’ they are by policymakers or how policymakers perceive the policy context to which their research pertains (‘contextual’ strategies).