Collaborative Knowledge Production Research Articles

Qualitative research during the COVID19 pandemic: the impact of remote research on the collaborative production of methodological knowledge

ABSTRACT During the COVID19 crisis, school closure was a frequent feature of Government responses. The Children’s School Lives (CSL) national cohort study of primary schooling in Ireland had to be adapted and transferred online as an interim response to the unprecedented impact that the pandemic had on the research environment. Adapting longitudinal qualitative research in response to a global pandemic brought specific challenges. In addition to moving data collection to remote methods, longitudinal studies also needed to maintain a focus on retention of research participants and sustain an analysis that informs the longitudinal design of the study. Based on reflective research practice during the COVID19 pandemic and through the collaborative production of methodological knowledge, this paper contributes to the literature on remote research during times of crisis. However, it also extends this literature as the methodological learning can be applied beyond the very particular circumstances of a pandemic.

The Role of Wild Plants in Cultural Restoration: Community Collaboration and Engaged Ethnobotany in the Nineveh Plains, Northern Iraq

The Nineveh Plain region of Northern Iraq is a site of ecological and cultural diversity. Between 2014 and 2017, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), also known as Daesh, severely disrupted the region, resulting in community displacement, particularly for members of ethnic minority groups. This article highlights an ongoing multinational, multidisciplinary collaboration between botanists, ecologists, mental and public health specialists, sociologists, and anthropologists to foster cultural and ecological restoration among the Christian, Yezidi, Shabak, Turkman, and Kaka’i minority groups of the Plains. Members of these groups identified wild plant collection as an important cultural and economic practice and expressed a shared concern over the decreased access to wild plant resources. Researchers are partnering with local communities using engaged, decolonial methodologies to bring communities together around this shared interest in wild plants. Project activities include producing videos highlighting local plant knowledge, hosting workshops on using wild plants for art and textile design, offering trainings on herbal medicine, collecting recipes for a wild plant cookbook, and increasing awareness of the sustainable use of wild plants. Through collaborative knowledge production, this partnership aims to bring diverse stakeholders together around an interest in wild plants to promote cultural understanding and exchange.

Challenging Silencing in Stigmatized Neighborhoods Through Collaborative Knowledge Production

Researchers are always potential traitors when they represent what they see or hear. This is of particular concern in the case of people in subaltern positions, who lack the power to challenge possible misrepresentations. This article deals with an old dilemma in critical social science: How to use language when research objects are silenced through dynamics of domination? Is it possible for research to create space for marginalized people to speak for themselves? This was one of the questions of the Université Populaire, a group initiative by actors in a marginalized social housing neighborhood in Grenoble. The community‐based people’s education initiative was created in a double context of violence and silence. As a result of incidents of violence, media coverage participates in depicting the neighborhood as a place of danger and otherness, which impedes voices from the neighborhood from being heard. The initiative of the Université Populaire made space for speech in this marginalized and racialized area of Grenoble dealing with the consequences of terrorist violence in France. It is an initiative the author has been involved in since its inception in 2015. This article explains how the author sought ways to reduce power asymmetry in research relationships, why she steered away from using interviews for data collection and organized public debates instead, and how this made space for speech.

Clustering policy for urban competitiveness: One‐size‐fits‐all? Evidence from Tehran

Urban competitiveness is commonly attributed to necessitating particular types of socio‐spatial frameworks such as clustering on the basis of models of Marshall–Arrow–Romer (MAR), Porter, or Jacobs, since proximity is known as a key perquisite for knowledge spillover, innovation, and hence urban competitiveness. Nevertheless, it is unjustifiable to unconditionally endorse the ‘clustering’ policy. Consequently, this research aims to examine the spatiality and geography of competition and innovation contingent upon varying spatial prerequisites and contextual circumstances. In this regard, two questions have been raised: under what circumstances urban competitiveness depends on spatial agglomeration, and whether this agglomeration follows a clustering development pattern. Through the implementation of a causal research design utilizing both in‐depth interviews and social survey methodology, this study has determined the innovative characteristics and techniques for knowledge acquisition, as well as spatial behaviors and preferences of competitive industries located within Tehran. The spatially constrained multivariate clustering method was employed to group competitive industries according to their distinct substantive dissimilarities, socio‐spatial behaviors, and characteristics. Then, on the basis of the structural equation modeling, the most appropriate spatial development frameworks of competitiveness were extracted with regard to the specific conditions of Tehran. Findings show that innovation, and hence competitiveness, are not always the result of clustering; clusters, as a spatial policy‐making tool, have been found to be highly conducive to collaborative and intensive knowledge production, as they provide access to spillover knowledge, thereby increasing competitiveness. Despite complex economic dependencies and collaborations, some competitive industries have greater mobility and are footloose due to their Schumpeterian linear knowledge source and virtual nature. What matters for this elusive, light, fluid category free from the shackles of place is institutional and organizational proximity, which proves its conditions are up to the government. As the main finding of the research, the geography and spatiality of innovation, and therefore the competitiveness, depend on two factors, including: (a) the relationships and interactions, that is, types of activity units and (b) the source and method of acquiring knowledge required for innovation and competitive advantage. In some activities, on the basis of their knowledge intensity, interaction type, and knowledge source, competitiveness is not related to clusters; in others, it depends on a specific location; and some are independent of location.

Self-regulated Learning Skills in Instrument Education: A Qualitative Study

The purpose of this study is to uncover and comprehend the current state of pre-service music teachers’ use of self-regulated learning skills in instrument education, as well as the obstacles they face and the techniques they use to develop these skills throughout their instrument education. The data were obtained from participants’ experiences and opinions and may be used to develop a conceptual framework concerning self-regulated learning skills and how these skills can be applied in teaching. This study reveals the importance of autonomy and co-regulation in the learning process, with a focus on teachers’ roles in fostering student autonomy and giving support. Previous research has shown that self-regulation tactics can be incorporated in education to improve learners’ self-regulation capacities. This study suggests that the “Individualized and Co-regulated Teaching Model in Instrument Education,” a student-centered method that stresses dialogue-oriented learning, teacher-student interaction, and tailored learning needs may be appropriate for many learners. Teachers are encouraged to adopt individualized teaching orientations, allowing students to set their own learning goals and monitor their progress, as guided by this model. Furthermore, efficient communication and co-regulation between teachers and students promote self-regulation and musical development. Given the growing importance of self-regulated learning skills in the distance learning era, educational programs should focus their development and empower learners to become independent, and lifelong learners through collaborative knowledge production. The findings of this study imply that more research on the application of self-regulation skills in instrument acquisition among lower-achieving or less-experienced students is needed. Overall, this study highlights the importance of self-regulated learning skills in instrument teaching and advocates its incorporation into instructional procedures.

Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development

Today’s exponential advancement of information and communication technologies is reconfiguring participatory urban development practices. The use of digital technology implies new forms of decentralised governance, collaborative knowledge production, and social activism. The digital transformation has the potential to overcome shortcomings in citizen participation, make participatory processes more deliberative, and enable collaborative approaches for making cities. While digital tools such as digital mapping, e-participation platforms, location-based games, and social media offer new opportunities for the various actors and may act as a catalyst for renegotiating urban space and collective goods, digitalisation can also perpetuate or even attenuate existing inequalities and exclusion. This editorial introduces the thematic issue “Citizen Participation, Digital Agency, and Urban Development” which focuses on the trajectories and (dis)continuities of citizen participation through digitalisation and elaborates this with examples from Europe and Asia on how the digital transformation impacts, challenges, or reproduces hegemonic power relations in urban development.

Framing participatory methods in provenance research: From the restitution of objects to a collaborative production of knowledge

Provenance research on European museum collections of colonial origin is a process of knowledge production from the reconstruction of collection items’ trajectories and the memories and meanings attached to them, often envisioning an eventual restitution to their supposed communities of origin. This paper examines how this process of examining and possibly returning physical relics of colonial extraction risks reproducing colonial knowledge and its accessibility. In order to counter this risk, it proposes a conceptual shift towards participatory approaches of engaging the scholarly as well as local communities on both sides in sharing and developing knowledge about and from the collections and creating equitable mutual access to the different layers of the produced knowledge. The thoughts presented here are supported with examples and experiences from collaborative field research on selected object collections from German museums in possible communities of origin in Tanzania.

Transdisciplinary Philosophy of Science: Meeting the Challenge of Indigenous Expertise

Abstract Transdisciplinary research knits together knowledge from diverse epistemic communities in addressing social-environmental challenges, such as biodiversity loss, climate crises, food insecurity, and public health. This article reflects on the roles of philosophy of science in transdisciplinary research while focusing on Indigenous and other subjugated forms of knowledge. We offer a critical assessment of demarcationist approaches in philosophy of science and outline a constructive alternative of transdisciplinary philosophy of science. While a focus on demarcation obscures the complex relations between epistemic communities, transdisciplinary philosophy of science provides resources for meeting epistemic and political challenges of collaborative knowledge production.

Taboo and Collaborative Knowledge Production: Evidence from Wikipedia

By definition, people are reticent or even unwilling to talk about taboo subjects. Because subjects like sexuality, health, and violence are taboo in most cultures, important information on each of these subjects can be difficult to obtain. Are peer produced knowledge bases like Wikipedia a promising approach for providing people with information on taboo subjects? With its reliance on volunteers who might also be averse to taboo, can the peer production model produce high-quality information on taboo subjects? In this paper, we seek to understand the role of taboo in knowledge bases produced by volunteers. We do so by developing a novel computational approach to identify taboo subjects and by using this method to identify a set of articles on taboo subjects in English Wikipedia. We find that articles on taboo subjects are more popular than non-taboo articles and that they are frequently vandalized. Despite frequent vandalism attacks, we also find that taboo articles are higher quality than non-taboo articles. We hypothesize that stigmatizing societal attitudes will lead contributors to taboo subjects to seek to be less identifiable. Although our results are consistent with this proposal in several ways, we surprisingly find that contributors make themselves more identifiable in others.

Lessons learned from the 2022 CONVERSE Monogenetic Volcanism Response Scenario Exercise

When volcanic unrest occurs, the scientific community can advance fundamental understanding of volcanic systems, but only with coordination before, during, and after the event across academic and governmental agencies. To develop a coordinated response plan, the Community Network for Volcanic Eruption Response (CONVERSE) orchestrated a scenario exercise centered around a hypothetical volcanic crisis in Arizona’s San Francisco Volcanic Field (SFVF). The exercise ran virtually from February 4 to March 4, 2022. Over 60 scientists from both academic and governmental spheres participated. The scenario exercise was assessed for its effectiveness in supporting collaborative production of knowledge, catalyzing transdisciplinary collaboration, supporting researcher confidence, and fostering a culture of inclusion within the volcanology community. This identified a need to support early career researchers through community and allyship. Overall, the 2022 CONVERSE exercise demonstrated how a fully remote, extended scenario can be authentically implemented and help broaden participation within the volcano science community.

Transboundary Collaborative Modeling: Consensual Identification and Ranking of Flood Adaptation Measures—A Case Study in the Mono River Basin, Benin, and Togo

The field of environmental management, specifically flood risk management (FRM), emphasizes participatory decision-making to address diverse issues and conflicting interests among stakeholders. This approach recognizes the complexity of decisions and their long-term impact on sustainability. Collaborative knowledge production is crucial for understanding the system, generating scenarios, and establishing consensus on mitigation and adaptation measures. Transboundary FRM requires an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approach, employing suitable tools and methods for assessment and decision-making. In the context of the CLIMAFRI project, funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF), we evaluated the practicality of a participatory Collaborative Modeling framework in the transboundary Lower Mono River (LMR) basin, shared by Togo and Benin. This framework enables holistic understanding, stakeholder engagement, and the identification of appropriate adaptation-mitigation measures based on predefined evaluation criteria and a Multi-Criteria Decision Method. Our study customized and evaluated the framework considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, which restricted face-to-face interactions. The study’s results indicate that in both countries, FRM is characterized as being more proactive rather than preventive, meaning the actions taken mainly address a broader range of potential issues and opportunities rather than targeting specific risks to minimize their impact. Moreover, it is crucial to enhance preventive measures and further improve the flood assessment capacity. The information obtained from scenarios involving the Adjarala Dam, land-use, and climate change under RCP 4.5 and 8.5 scenarios for the years 2030, 2050, and 2100 is valuable for decision-making regarding the development and prioritization of adaptation measures. The ranking of the seven measures shows that capacity building is the most preferred, followed by dykes, early warning systems, regulation of land use, insurance, and retention zones. The group ranking of Togo and Benin highlights differences in their perceptions and interests, where Togo leans towards soft measures, while Benin prefers hard (physical) measures.

Translating for Language Justice, across the Disciplines

AbstractThis piece acknowledges the MLA's many initiatives in support of translation while also advocating for even greater visibility for translation as a mode of combatting language injustice in disciplines across the university. Translation offers opportunities for inclusiveness, information sharing, and collaborative knowledge production across linguistic, social, economic, and geographic divides. It also offers a form of hands-on apprenticeship in intellectual and scholarly rigor for undergraduate and graduate students alike. And by translating the texts of colleagues writing in other languages, scholars working in languages of the Global North can help further goals of language justice and access by facilitating exposure to and for other traditions of knowledge production. This piece proposes that, instead of treating translation as a threat to an individual's academic viability, we embrace translation as a means of increasing the vitality and equity of our intellectual communities.

More Is Required of Us: Complicating an Ontology of Experience at the Heart of Community-Based Research

More Is Required of Us: Complicating an Ontology of Experience at the Heart of Community-Based Research

Collaborative practice research in social work: piloting a model for research and professional learning during COVID-19

Given the quintessentially collaborative nature of social work practice research, many researchers have explored the utility of participatory action research for promoting collaborative learning and knowledge production in social work. As a response to this call for participatory practice research methodology, we developed and piloted ‘collaborative practice research in social work’ in the project, ‘Empowering Social Workers in Challenging Times: Learning from Best Practice during COVID-19’. ‘Collaborative practice research in social work’ is a networked approach to social work participatory practice research, designed to integrate practice wisdom and research evidence to produce useful knowledge for social workers to practise ethically and effectively during COVID-19. This article will present some findings from the evaluation of ‘collaborative practice research in social work’, showing how the reversed sequence of involvement (practitioner researchers first and then academics) in research can enable practitioner-led learning, democratise knowledge production and help validate different types of knowledge in social work practice research. ‘Collaborative practice research in social work’ has demonstrated the need to address alienating academic practices that are not sensitive to the needs of practice or see practice as an afterthought. Findings further suggest the need to better prepare academic researchers to engage with participatory practice research, which can be an emotionally unsettling and unfamiliar research environment.

Citizen Science - a new field for the arts?

Pamela Bartar’s (Center for Didactics of Art and Interdisciplinary Education) contribution "Citizen Science – a new field for the arts?" links Citizen Science with art-based research. Providing an overview of current approaches, Bartar illustrates how contemporary art can significantly contribute to the democratisation of science and the societal proximity of research, particularly focusing on socially engaged practices and collaborative knowledge production.

Beginning the Quilt: A Polyvocal and Diverse Collective Seeking New Forms of Knowledge Production

This article contributes to scholarship on collaborative knowledge-making by documenting our methodological experiences of conducting multiple ethnographies and the emergence of what we describe as a methodology of quilting and vulnerability. We borrowed from critical and decolonial frameworks for knowledge production and knowledge dissemination to reflect on the organic processes that we implemented to document our polyphonic conversations about the challenges, passions and perspectives of being educational researchers and language teachers. We argue for the use of dialogical interactions, using “quilting” as an aesthetic representation of lived experiences and as a medium through which knowledge creation becomes democratized and supported by interdisciplinary scholarship. In this article, we demonstrate the utility of a methodology of vulnerability in learning about the complexities involved with negotiating identities in collective work in the field of language education. We use the metaphor of the quilting bee to theorize vulnerability in collaborative knowledge production. The ultimate goal of this paper is to inspire educators and researchers to explore other forms of studying themselves and their relationships with their identities, cultures, and languages, especially from international contexts. In the end, as an emerging research collective, we advocate questioning and challenging whose voices are being heard and the power relations involved in collaborative and interdisciplinary research processes.

Novel approaches to communication skills development: The untapped potential of qualitative research immersion

Participation in qualitative research, particularly analysis of recorded medical dialogue, offers real-time, longitudinal immersion that can strengthen clinical trainee communication skills. The study objective was to explore how qualitative research participation impacts clinical trainees’ self-perceived communication skills development and practice. In this study, a 17-member multidisciplinary working group of child life specialists, advanced practice providers, undergraduate/medical students, residents, fellows, attending physicians, social scientists, and career researchers with recent qualitative and communication research experience assembled to discuss this topic using a structured discussion guide. Content analysis was used to identify concepts and themes. Three key themes characterizing the impact of qualitative research participation on aspiring clinicians’ communication skills development and practice arose – the 3Cs: (1) C onnection, therapeutic alliance, and accompaniment; (2) C larity and prognostic communication; (3) C ompassion, empathy, and understanding. Participants emphasized that qualitative research learning improved their understanding of patient/family lived experiences, preparing them for future clinical encounters, strengthening their emotional intelligence, and promoting self-care, resilience, and professional affirmation. Immersion in clinical communication through participation in qualitative research is an under-utilized resource for supporting clinical trainees in communication skills development. The process of collaborative knowledge production through the collective exploration of an a priori question related to group members’ collective experiences is methodologically innovative. Further, re-thinking qualitative research participation as an underutilized educational opportunity is pedagogically novel, and leaders in medical education and qualitative research should collaborate to realize the potential of this teaching tool. • Qualitative research participation offers immersion in clinical communication. • Participation impact characterized by the 3 C’s: 1) Connection, 2) Clarity, 3) Compassion. • This is an under-utilized medical education resource for communication skills development. • Medical education and qualitative research leaders should collaborate.

Can collaborative knowledge production decolonize epistemology?

A critical engagement with representation, positionality, and power inequalities has become increasingly common in research and publication projects in the field of forced migration studies. Indeed, the field has drawn on decolonial frameworks to move towards more inclusive perspectives. Nevertheless, the challenge in decolonizing knowledge production is to consider the rich spectrum of knowledges and knowledge production, while remaining aware of complexities and tensions, to avoid further marginalizing already-marginalized actors. This article stimulates a discussion that critically reflects on the structures and power relations in which collaboration processes form. I draw on forms of collaboration applied in my research, primarily co-authorships with refugee research partners, to reflect on methodological challenges and questions of legitimacy, from positions of hegemonic academic knowledge production. An epistemic decolonization through collaborative knowledge production can only occur if researchers practise emancipatory and ethical scholarship that revalues marginalized actors’ perspectives and agendas, while also actively decentring the western hegemonic academy.

Tackling the tensions in the collaborative production of knowledge about workforce capacity and capability across institutional contexts

The International Journal of Integrated Care (IJIC) is an online, open-access, peer-reviewed scientific journal that publishes original articles in the field of integrated care on a continuous basis.IJIC has an Impact Factor of 2.913 (2021 JCR, received in June 2022)The IJIC 20th Anniversary Issue was published in 2021.

Practices to support co-design processes: A case-study of co-designing a program for children with parents with a mental health problem in the Austrian region of Tyrol.

Forms of collaborative knowledge production, such as community-academic partnerships (CAP), have been increasingly used in health care. However, instructions on how to deliver such processes are lacking. We aim to identify practice ingredients for one element within a CAP, a 6-month co-design process, during which 26 community- and 13 research-partners collaboratively designed an intervention programme for children whose parent have a mental illness. Using 22 published facilitating and hindering factors for CAP as the analytical framework, eight community-partners reflected on the activities which took place during the co-design process. From a qualitative content analysis of the data, we distilled essential practices for each CAP factor. Ten community- and eight research-partners revised the results and co-authored this article. We identified 36 practices across the 22 CAP facilitating or hindering factors. Most practices address more than one factor. Many practices relate to workshop design, facilitation methods, and relationship building. Most practices were identified for facilitating 'trust among partners', 'shared visions, goals and/or missions', 'effective/frequent communication', and 'well-structured meetings'. Fewer practices were observed for 'effective conflict resolution', 'positive community impact' and for avoiding 'excessive funding pressure/control struggles' and 'high burden of activities'. Co-designing a programme for mental healthcare is a challenging process that requires skills in process management and communication. We provide practice steps for delivering co-design activities. However, practitioners may have to adapt them to different cultural contexts. Further research is needed to analyse whether co-writing with community-partners results in a better research output and benefits for participants.