Knowledge Production Process Research Articles

The education reform claimocracy and the academisation and MATification of schools in England

An education reform claimocracy is rule by assertion, and in this article we examine the claims made for the academisation and MATification of the provision of and access to school places in England. We examine the claimocracy at work in regard to the Conservative government white paper, Opportunity for all. Strong schools with great teachers for your child. We explain the knowledge production processes involved through deploying Arendtian scholarship regarding her work on Lying in politics, with specific attention to how concealment operates in the public realm.

Knowledge Production Practices and Attributes at University of Zambia School of Medicine

Knowledge production practices and attributes of faculty are important in academia. The aim of the paper was to investigate the production, diffusion and use of knowledge products at University of Zambia School of Medicine. A survey methodology was adopted for the study; with data collected through semi-structured questionnaires. Using SPSS, data was analysed by simple descriptive statistics and Ms Excel for presentation into figures and tables. The results indicate the knowledge that is produced fits into the framework of knowledge produced by academia; the knowledge is produced, diffused and used frequently. The sources of information used in the knowledge production process are mostly from the internet and the university library. The knowledge is ethically and peer reviewed; frequently produced, utilised and diffused mostly through journals and books. The study concludes that the three processes of knowledge production, diffusion and use are frequently carried out at the University of Zambia School of Medicine.

Open Science Policies seen from the perspective of researchers' communities

During the last ten years, many institutions have begun to design, adopt, and implement open science policies (Schmidt et al., 2018; Kretser et al., 2019). Nevertheless, there is a research gap in tackling how these policies impact researchers' knowledge production. Therefore, this research investigates the researcher's opinions, perceptions, and experiences with open science policies concerning knowledge production processes from researchers from Brazil, France and Peru. It aims to highlight differences and similarities in the science disciplines across these countries. Furthermore, it aims to provide an overview of how communities of researchers from the sciences – physics, chemistry, and biology – visualize open science policies, meaning their opinion and discourse on this subject and whether their knowledge production processes have changed and to what extent they had an impact on their research products.

A South African Perspective on Learning in Social Movement Activism

There is a body of education scholarship in South Africa that captures the role played by social movements in democratising education in post-apartheid South Africa. However, this scholarship says little about how power dynamics affect learning and intellectual labour in social movements or social movement organisations. In addition, the issue of learning in social movements or social movement organisations is hardly explored in the South African social movement literature. This lack of focus on how activists, especially grassroots activists in working-class communities, learn and produce knowledge in social movements and organisations obscures the complexity of learning and knowledge production in activist settings. This article explores how activists, especially grassroots activists, learn in social movements. Based on secondary literature and interviews, the article advances two main arguments: First, learning in social movements and organisations takes place in non-formal and informal ways. Both these forms of learning take place inside and outside formal educational settings. And they both contribute to the empowerment and critical consciousness of activists in social movements and organisations. In addition, informal learning takes place inside and outside popular educational spaces. However, it is not inevitable that non-formal and informal forms of learning in activist settings will generate critical knowledge and activist practices that disrupt the status quo. Second, power relations based on “race”, social class, gender, and sexuality, among other axes of social division, impact on how learning takes place in non-formal or popular contexts of education. This article seeks to understand how power relations shape the learning and knowledge production process in social movements and organisations.

Just Research: Advancing Antiracist and Antioppressive Social Work Research.

The Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) created its Research Capacity and Development Committee in 2017 to build research capacity across the careers of social work scholars. The committee has initiated multiple conferences and webinar sessions that have increasingly focused on antiracist and antioppressive (ARAO) research, including "Mentorship for Antiracist and Inclusive Research" and "Strategies for Supporting Antiracist Pedagogy & Scholarship: Reimagining Institutional Systems & Structures." This commentary integrates themes from these sessions and other discussions among committee members about strategies to advance ARAO research. Although SSWR board members reviewed and approved this submission, it is not an official statement of SSWR or its board of directors.

Addressing the Methodological Challenges that Cloaked Profiles Pose to Digital Observations

Although digital ethnographic studies concerned with online misinformation have focused on analyzing the contents shared by “cloaked” profiles (concealed or fake identities), less attention has been given to the epistemological and ontological dilemmas that cloaked profiles pose to digital ethnography. This article deals with these issues by asking: how can digital ethnographers determine who and what we are observing? And how can we conduct online observations when confronted with cloaked profiles? Drawing on field research, this article argues that researchers would benefit from including more critical reflections on the presence of cloaked profiles and learning how to apply digital skills for how to unveil cloaked profiles. Such practices will challenge a commonly accepted ontology that online profiles represent human behavior and enhance researchers’ digital literacy and ability to recognize cloaked profiles. Finally, applying techniques to unveil cloaked profiles will arguably strengthen the hermeneutic process of knowledge production in digital observations.

“And Breathes a Spirit Through the Finish’d Whole”: Empiricism, Poetry and Devotion in Anna Letitia Barbauld’s Poetic Epistemology

ABSTRACT Anna Barbauld creates a poetic epistemology, a particular way of knowing, that she uses to shape her readers’ encounters with her poems. She demonstrates that poetry can transform empirical observation into a devotional experience that the reader can take forward beyond their immediate encounter with the poem. She combines observations with poetic techniques—and notably with epistolary characteristics—to produce an epistemology that draws on, questions, and reconfigures an empirical model, paying particular attention to the gendering of different modes and methods of knowledge production and their potential for religious devotional experience. Barbauld’s poetic epistemology also, significantly, positions the reader as a participant, accomplice or critic in the act of creating knowledge at the moment of reading. She aims to instill in the reader a new, transformational, responsive mode of observation and interpretation that will imbue their future experiences of poetry, of God’s creation, and the process of knowledge production itself with poetic and devotional ways of knowing.

Práticas educativas de nutricionistas: perspectivas educativas manifestadas no PSE

ABSTRACT Health education is a knowledge production process that expands people’s critical and reflective awareness. The objective of the study was to analyze the educational practices of nutritionists in the School Health Program related to educational perspectives. This was a qualitative, explanatory study, carried out through semi-structured interviews with 22 nutritionists in 10 host cities of health regions in the state of Piauí, in the Northeast region of Brazil. The interviews were transcribed and analyzed according to content analysis by Bardin. After such analysis, they were submitted to the IRaMuTeQ software and presented in word clouds and similarity analysis. The educational practice was related to guidance, transfer, and intervention. Action planning, situational diagnosis, time, and resources were considered in the reports for carrying out the practices. As for health conditions, schools do not always inform professionals about the demands for actions. For the participants, health is the protagonist in facing these actions and there is a lack of intersectoriality between education and health. The educational practices, in general, are guided by the transmission of knowledge, changes in behavior, and an authoritarian nature. The study suggests another perspective of health education with the participation of society focused on the autonomy of the subject.

Jesus Was an Epidemiologist (and Black), PT.I.

The path to health equity is lined with our samples and specimens-Black, Brown, Indigenous, queer, poor, immigrant, and so on. Bodies broken open in the name of science. And we . . . are being regressed. Using religious symbolism, this piece draws from critical and Black feminist theory to interrogate the ceremonial breaking of the Black body via the epidemiologic imaginary. It renders an interpretation of public health script/scripture premised upon White scholars seeking salvation/to save-borderline cultish forays of "health equity tourism" (Lett et al., 2022) into communities of color to break our bodies into pieces, to pass our specimens/samples around as if portioned into statistical chalices. In doing so, this piece draws out considerations not only of racial bias within research itself, but also racial exclusion and underrepresentation as a broader concern within epidemiology knowledge production processes-wherein credentialed researchers, grant review panels, editors, editorial boards, and "peer" reviewers remain overwhelmingly and disproportionately White. This piece accordingly questions the notion of "peer" review, calling out the manner in which colorblind structural racism invisibilizes the White scientific gaze-that is, the undeniable whiteness of who is "peering" into whose bodies/communities. As the public health field continues to deepen engagements with principles/practices of antiracism and decolonization, this poem draws attention to how current dynamics not only re-inscribe social hierarchy, but reify epidemiologic research as racial-capitalist (re)colonization and mode of epistemic and public health violence vis-à-vis practices of silencing, erasure, fragmentation, expropriation, monetization, and consumption of the racialized body.To view the original version of this poem, see the supplemental material section of this article online.

Re-imagining Mobility: From (In)visibility to Multiple Processes of Making Present

(In)visibility is a central concept in debates on mobility and migration. It has been perceived as both resource and obstacle to transformative political practices. The aim of this article is to unpack how events tied to migration have been labelled simultaneously visible and invisible. This is not merely a contradiction but a sign of how knowledge about migration is produced in complex, multiple and contrasting ways. To assess these processes, however, scholars cannot rely on the language of (in)visibility as it comes short in articulating both the situatedness of processes of knowledge production and their multiplicity. This article proposes the language of ‘making present’ as an alternative, which enables us to track how different (in)visibilities have diverse political consequences. The conceptual contribution of the article is fleshed out by analysing two empirical cases: the construction of the Gateway to Europe and instances of migrant self-narration on the same site.

Mapping Manuel Sandoval Vallarta (1899-1977) Scientific Contribution.

This paper employs network theory, mining data and bibliometric analysis when mapping the scientific contribution of Nobel Prize candidate; Manuel Sandoval Vallarta, the first and most renowned Mexican physicist and important figure in Latin American science. Vallarta died in 1977, and the existing literature is about his life and contributions to science but not about how those are still valuable today. This paper is the first to highlight, with mapping tools, that his contributions are relevant to the international community of cosmic rays (as he was pioneer and leader), quantum mechanics and relativity. These tools delivered three findings: Identify how he built his own field of study, same as universal knowledge. Unveil that the backward and forward Vallarta citations follow a scale-free network distribution. Determine social factors that benefited or affected his scientific activities—such as World War II interrupting Vallarta’s successful productivity at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Furthermore, this study confirmed the interdisciplinary nature of the mapping studies of the scientist's contributions using scientometric tools. As a result, several interesting questions arose throughout our research, some of which were answered from the history and philosophy of science. However, others need to be analyzed by experts in the fields of Vallarta. Mapping research sends an invitation to interdisciplinary dialogue/research between experts in different areas of study to better understand the process of knowledge production both, individual and collective.

Trans Expertise and the Revision and Translation of ICD-11: An Analysis of Available French Data from a Trans Perspective.

Transgender and gender diverse (TGD) individuals’ depsychopathologization in the eleventh revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11) faces systemic discriminations built-in epistemic pipelines. Based on an analysis of unexploited data from ICD-11 and the French translation process, this article addresses power issues in participatory research and systemic discrimination within a socio-cultural context. We used a peer-driven participatory approach to conduct qualitative analyses of the French version of the ICD based on contributions from 72 TGD participants in the French study for ICD-11. The results highlight a major incongruence between participants’ propositions and the final official translation. Alternative terms were proposed and discussed by participants in regard to usage and concepts, but also encompassed participation and perceived futility of maintaining pathologization. We found discrepancies in the French publication and translation processes, respectively on gender categorization and back translation. These results question the relevance and implementation of ICD-11 for TGD communities and highlight failures at all three stages of the official French translation. Power issues have an impact on knowledge production and, while mechanisms vary, all relate to epistemic injustice. Involving TGD communities in all stages of medical knowledge production processes would reduce transphobic biases. Individuals with personal stakes involved in politicized research areas appear all the more necessary today.

A grounded theory on collaborative interactions in a community-university partnership: the case of youth in the public space

Background:Research impact is at least partly generated through collaborative interactions, yet the associations between knowledge production and impact are far more complex than relatively simple linear models generally describe. Aims and objectives:In this case study, we focus on a community-university partnership and try to answer the question, ‘What are the conditions that facilitate or hinder successful collaborative interactions aimed towards solving a shared challenge between partners from different organisations?’ Methods:A set of four co-creation sessions with diverse stakeholders was organised with the aim of tackling the nuisance caused by youth in a specific deprived neighbourhood in Belgium. The sessions were video-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and analysed following a Grounded Theory (GT) approach to develop theoretical understandings of the process of knowledge production and research impact. Findings:Roles and mandates of individual stakeholder representatives determine (and hinder) their access to (confidential) information, but also their visibility and accessibility towards youth as end users. Achieving positive outcomes through collaboration was perceived by stakeholders as slowly evolving towards small successes, and was facilitated by being able to accept failure, working in a climate of trust, developing a shared identity, managing expectations, informally sharing information, and being able to connect with youth. Discussion and conclusions:We reflect on the importance of overcoming organisational asymmetries in collaborative interactions through installing feedback loops, and through the particular roles of boundary organisations, boundary objects, and practical tools that can help steer iterative collaborative interactions towards positive impact.

Paternalistic state: Academic science and scientific journals

The paper is prefaced by the statement that a paternalistic state was not invented by anyone and is a result of an endogenous process of society development, at different phases of which the state can generate both positive and negative consequences. In this context, the paper justifies the fallacy of the state’s decision to reorganize the Russian Academy of Sciences by escalating bureaucratic interference in scientific life — using scientometric management methods and introducing an “effective contract” that brought forth a “waterfall” of worthless articles and predatory journals. In order to eliminate “scientometric failure” the paper proposes recommendations on science reforming based on principally new view on the processes of knowledge production as a public good and its transformation into market products with an emphasis on one of the branches of this transformation — scientific articles publication. The theoretical result has served as a platform for the development of institutional modernization of the knowledge distribution system, according to which the authors for an appropriate fee may grant the right to use their scientific texts for publication in journals. The revenues of journals should come from two sources: the sale of journals at market prices consistent with the individual utility of publishing products, and a budget subsidy consistent with the social utility of journals’ knowledge dissemination services. The implementation of this reform implies state funding of scientific journals and targeted subsidies to scientific libraries of universities and academic institutions to pay for subscriptions to major scientific journals.

Negotiating space for knowledge co-production

AbstractDespite increased popularity of knowledge co-production as a research approach to address contemporary environmental issues, its implementation in science–policy contexts is not self-evident. In this paper, we illustrate how researchers at the PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency (in Dutch: Planbureau voor de Leefomgeving (PBL)) ensured a fit between key features of knowledge co-production and conventional norms and customs for knowledge production processes at the science–policy interface while simultaneously challenging those norms to create space for knowledge co-production. Drawing on implementation science, we analyzed two types of alignment activities: negotiation of normative and relational norms and modification of co-production features. Based on three policy evaluation cases, we show that PBL researchers developed co-production capacity over time. They became more skilled at recognizing (un)conducive structures to knowledge co-production, negotiating such structures, and modifying co-production features without compromising co-production integrity. We argue that investment in these skills is required to negotiate space for knowledge co-production in science–policy settings.

Key Types of Crowdsourcing in Science: Systematic Literature Review

Recent changes in information systems technology, combined with the postulates of open access to information, are causing the processes of knowledge production and dissemination to change. The necessity of the democratization of science, scientific openness, social orientation of science and the involvement of stakeholders from outside the scientific community in conducting research becomes a necessity for researchers. This is also in line with the guidelines of the European Commission's Community Research and Development Information Service, according to which academics are expected to change the ways of creating knowledge, be oriented towards solving social problems or transgress traditional disciplinary boundaries. Crowdsourcing in science is a collaborative online process through which scientists involve a group of self-selected individuals of varying, diverse knowledge and skills, via an open call to the Internet and/or online platforms, to undertake a specified research task or set of tasks. While research efforts to date have focused on the benefits of crowdsourcing in science, its typology has yet to mature. Typologies are important in describing complex, multidisciplinary organizational forms such as crowdsourcing in science. The main purpose of this article is to identify and provide a typology of crowdsourcing in science. Based on the thematic analysis of publications collected in a systematic manner and focused group interviews, 12 types of crowdsourcing in science are identified. The proposed crowdsourcing in science typology matrix may be a starting point for future research and decision-making by practitioners regarding the choice of a specific type of crowdsourcing in science.

Does a Mamluk Sultan Hold Religious Authority? Quranic Exegesis and ḥadīṯ Scholarship in Late Mamluk Courtly maǧālis

Abstract The article critically reexamines the notion of Mamluk rulers being uninterested in religious affairs and the authority a supreme religious status could bestow. It shows that, with the late Mamluk ruler Qāniṣawh al-Ġawrī (r. 906/1501–922/1516), at least one Mamluk sultan laid claim to religious authority through his participation in courtly processes of knowledge production and transmission in his learned maǧālis. These efforts culminated in the attempt to portray al-Ġawrī as “the sultan of scholars and verifiers (sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ wa-l-muḥaqqiqīn)” and “the sultan of the truly insightful (sulṭān al-ʿārifīn).” Al-Ġawrī used the scholarly status conveyed through these titles to re-affirm a decidedly Sunni interpretation of prophetic traditions and the Quran, thus setting himself apart from many of the so-called “millennial sovereigns” of his time whose claims for spiritual leadership often marked a break with traditional Sunni concepts of political rule and religious authority.

SİVİL TOPLUM ÇALIŞMALARINDA YARI YAPILANDIRILMIŞ MÜLAKATLAR: SAHADAN ÖRNEKLER

This article examines the details and limitations of the semi-structured interviews as one of the important methodological tools in civil society and qualitative studies. Through the semi-structured interview method, researchers have access to data that provides in-depth explanations about various aspects of the experiences, opinions, emotions, and motivations of the individuals who are the research subjects, which may be challenging to obtain with other methods. The study details different types of semi-structured interviews and presents examples from civil society studies in Turkey. Based on the analysis of the existing literature and the author's field study experiences, the article discusses fundamental issues such as positionality and reflexivity, establishing rapport and access to participants, ethical issues and interaction, and the difficulties in each stage of the knowledge production process. The study emphasizes that semi-structured interviews are an important methodology, and presents theoretical and practical recommendations for researchers.

Exhibition curation as practice-as-research performance historiography: an incomplete story of audience experience

ABSTRACT Taking an interdisciplinary approach to information-led exhibitions focused on performance can be considered practice-as-research historiography if curation is engaged with as praxis. Approaching exhibition curation as research praxis is a knowledge-making process, reconfiguring exhibitions as far more than a ‘pathway to impact’ designed at securing a grant. In the curation of two linked exhibitions on nineteenth-century popular entertainments at the Bill Douglas Cinema Museum and University of Bristol Theatre Collection, which were stunted due to COVID-19, I developed an argument for the shared ground of exhibitions and performance. If archival objects can perform, the exhibition space itself is a stage through which they communicate embodied meanings to audiences. I explore how exhibition curation generates different epistemologies to written research by putting museum studies, performance history, audience studies and performance practice-as-research in conversation. I demonstrate how museum studies could benefit from performance in developing epistemological arguments, and how performance studies can more significantly privilege the audience in the knowledge production process. I conclude my findings by discussing how planned activities and lessons learnt from these exhibitions could provide a blueprint for practitioners interested in using the exhibition form and format to conduct historically relational practice-research inquiries in conversation with audiences.

Maps and cartography: Progress in international critical cartography/GIS research

Map is the basic language of geography and an indispensable tool for spatial analysis. But for a long time, maps have been regarded as an objective and neutral scientific achievement. Inspired by critical geography, critical cartography/GIS came into being with the goal of clarifying the discourse embedded in cartographic practice. Power relationship challenges the untested assumption in map representation that is taken for granted. After more than 40 years of debate and running in, this research field has initially shown an outline, and critical cartography/GIS has roughly formed two research directions: the deconstruction path mainly starts from the identity of cartography subject and the process of map knowledge production, and analyzes the inseparable relationship between cartography and national governance and its internal power mechanism respectively; the construction path mainly relies on cooperative mapping and anti-mapping to realize the reproduction of map data. Domestic critical cartography/GIS research has just started, and it is necessary to continue to absorb the achievements of critical geography and carry out research in different historical periods. The deconstruction research of different types of maps also needs to strengthen the in-depth bridging between the construction path and the deconstruction path, and to be more open to the public. Impartial map application research, and actively apply the research results to social practice.