Research, policy and knowledge flows in education: What counts in knowledge mobilisation?

This Special Issue places discussion of Knowledge Mobilisation in the context of diminishing government funding for research, and the difficulties the research community has experienced in reaching out to those who might make best use of its knowledge base and research findings. The emphasis policymakers and funders give to demonstrating research impact turns these pressures into a potentially toxic brew with the capacity to distort how the academic community interacts with other interested parties. To re-direct attention to some of the more difficult issues in knowledge mobilisation, this paper presents three empirical case studies from education, exploring what happens as knowledge travels from one context of use to another. The cases highlight some substantial inequalities in the rights to define what counts as relevant knowledge that trouble easy acceptance of the concepts of impact or influence as key drivers in knowledge exchange.