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This elevation profile of my ride from home to my UBC office (I have two offices now because I am very fancy) is a nice visual explanation of why I bought an e-bike. SeaBus crossing not shown – I turned the tracker off for that part of the trip.<\/p><\/div>\n
Speaking of which\u2026 since all my KT experience is self-taught, one of the first things I did after accepting the job was to order as many books about the subject as I could find on Amazon. Hopefully these brief reviews will be helpful to others who are entering the field!<\/p>\n
The first three books form a natural set \u2013 theory, practice, and case studies \u2013 that I quite by chance happened to read in what I now think of as the \u201cright\u201d order.\u00a0 This worked out so well for me that I would definitely recommend reading these three books in the order listed below \u2013 at the very least, read the more theoretical text first. (If you only want to read one book about knowledge translation, I would recommend The Knowledge Translation Toolkit<\/em>).<\/p>\n Knowledge translation seems to have a distinct colour palette. Is this the case for other fields, too?<\/p><\/div>\n (Theory): \u201cKnowledge Translation in Health Care: Moving from Evidence to Practice\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Sharon E. Straus (Editor), Ian D. Graham (Editor), Jacqueline Tetroe (Editor)<\/strong><\/p>\n This book comprises a series of short chapters on a wide range of topics, including adjacent disciplines such as research ethics and health economics alongside the core KT themes. It\u2019s a good literature review-style introduction to the field, covering diverse angles and sub-disciplines. It\u2019s comprehensively referenced; I\u2019ve yet to find a better list of primary literature, websites, and other resources. There\u2019s a particularly helpful chapter on how to find relevant literature, featuring a humongous table listing all the different terms used in this field (e.g. knowledge translation versus knowledge mobilisation, transfer, exchange, or dissemination) as well as links to PubMed filters you can use to find papers specific to your own work.<\/p>\n This list goes on for two whole pages! (Photo taken on bus)<\/p><\/div>\n I also enjoyed the handful of case studies, especially the ethics example and the chapter that walked the reader through the entire KT cycle for a single project. It\u2019s so useful to see how these concepts can be applied in practice, and I wish the editors had included more examples.<\/p>\n I do think the book\u2019s attempt to cover so much ground was ultimately a mistake, though, compounded by the fact that each chapter tries to cover the whole spectrum from complete beginner to advanced expert on any given topic. This left me confused about who the primary audience is supposed to be; people who need definitions of basic concepts and terms won\u2019t be able to contribute to advancing the field\u2019s methodology, whereas people who are<\/em>well placed to contribute to those efforts don\u2019t need such basic introductions. The end result of trying to cover so much ground is that there isn\u2019t enough depth on any given subject.<\/p>\n I also had some editing and formatting quibbles: there are a lot of distracting typos, subject-verb disagreements, punctuation errors, and other sloppy mistakes in the edition I read. Some of the tables also include whole paragraphs of text per cell, which makes them hard to read.<\/p>\n (Practice): \u201cThe Knowledge Translation Toolkit: Bridging the Know-Do Gap: A Resource for Researchers\u201d<\/a>\u00a0<\/em>by Gavin Bennett (Editor), Nasreen Jessani (Editor)<\/strong><\/p>\n There\u2019s much less detail on knowledge translation history and theories in this volume, and much more advice on how to make it all actually happen. The book contains very practical suggestions, a handful of document templates (with links to more), and lots of case studies (mostly from international development projects), although these could have been more detailed. There\u2019s some clunky phrasing in the introduction, but the rest of the book is well written and copy-edited. I also found some great quotes:<\/p>\n \u201cA completed research project is like a seed. Getting the findings published in a scientific journal is like putting that seed in a packet, with a label on it. Well done! But is it \u201cjob done\u201d?\u00a0KT suggests it is only job begun, because while it remains a seed, it is only data; when it is packaged and labeled it is only information. To become knowledge, it must be taken out of the packet and planted in a place where it can grow (the right soil, the right climate, the right care) and become something useful. Even the most brilliant scientific paper becomes something useful only when it is planted in the mind of someone with the power to do something about it. The message of research findings must not only be written. It must be read, understood, and acted on\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cKnowledge is like fine wine. The researcher brews it, the scientific paper bottles it, the peer review tastes it, the journal sticks a label on it, and archive systems store it carefully. Splendid! Just one small problem: wine is only useful when somebody drinks it. Wine in a bottle does not quench thirst. Knowledge Translation (KT) opens the bottle, pours the wine into a glass, and serves it\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cMonitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is integral to any operation. It is usually conducted at the end of a project or term. It assesses performance in order to reward, correct, or improve. It is as useful to the concluded project itself as a post-mortem is to a corpse. [\u2026] Evaluative Thinking (ET) is an equivalent of questioning, reflecting, learning, and modifying but it is conducted all the time. It is a constant state-of-mind within an organization\u2019s culture and all its systems. So it is not a forensic mortician; it is a doctor \u2013 checking the pulse, diagnosing condition, prescribing for prevention, remedy, and enhanced performance\u201d.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n There are some sections that seem rather generic, such as advice on best practices for emailing people and formatting documents \u2013 not horrible, but basic, and I\u2019m not really sure why they were included here. Overall, though, this book is a very useful resource. If you\u2019re only going to read one book on knowledge translation, I would recommend reading this one.<\/p>\n (Case studies): \u201cKnowledge Translation in Context: Indigenous, Policy, and Community Settings\u201d <\/em><\/a>by Elizabeth M. Banister (Editor), Bonnie J. Ross Leadbeater (Editor), E. Anne Marshall (Editor), Deborah L. Begoray (Contributor), Cecilia Benoit (Contributor), David Burns (Contributor)<\/strong><\/p>\n This is a collection of detailed case studies, written by researchers who\u2019ve worked in each of the three areas listed in the title. The authors have done a great job of synthesizing general recommendations from their specific stories, making this a fantastic resource for people working in any of these three areas. For example, there\u2019s advice on mitigating power imbalances and avoiding tokenism, involving non-profit sector partners in designing studies, communicating results to stakeholders, incorporating reciprocity and two-way knowledge exchange, bridging the divides between researchers from different disciplines, mentorship, and much more.<\/p>\n I found the policy section particularly insightful, and am trying to incorporate the authors\u2019 advice on long-term thinking and relationship building into my own project planning. There\u2019s also a lot of information on how to reach \u201chidden\u201d participants in policy making (political staffers and advisers and such), the importance of timing, and other factors that aren\u2019t immediately obvious from outside the policy world. This is definitely a book I\u2019ll come back to over and over again as my specific KT projects continue to take shape.<\/p>\n The fourth book is a little different, and distinct from the set listed above \u2013 it\u2019s not really about KT per se, but more about science communication in general.<\/p>\n \u201cTell It Like It Is?: Science, Society and the Ivory Tower\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/strong><\/a>by Michele Cooke (Editor)<\/strong><\/p>\n I loved these three essays from University of Vienna professors on different aspects of science communication beyond the deficit model, in which it\u2019s assumed that lack of information is the only barrier to reaching non-academic audiences.<\/p>\n Benjamin Schmid\u2019s contribution is about finding the relevance of the research to the target audiences, and includes various strategies for breaking down and selecting the most relevant pieces of the story for each audience without dumbing the message down.<\/p>\n Michaela Chiaki Ripplinger writes about biases and power structures in science communication. The core message is that it\u2019s essential to consider and respect the diverse expertise of the audience, and to be aware of the different and sometimes competing intentions behind the production of science communication pieces. For example, there\u2019s a potential conflict of interest in getting people excited about research for which you\u2019re seeking funding.<\/p>\n The final chapter, by Mich\u00e8le Cooke, covers what science communicators can learn from poetry, which is something I\u2019d never even thought about before. For example, confident communication involves trusting people enough to give them the space to form their own interpretations of your words. I really didn\u2019t think I\u2019d like this section \u2013 it started off pretty \u201cartsy\u201d and abstract \u2013 but it was actually very helpful and thought-provoking.<\/p>\n Overall, this collection provides a good mix of practical and actionable advice alongside more abstract musings. It\u2019s very well written, and a pleasure to read. However, it\u2019s a very slim volume, with a lot of white space, including in the numbered footnotes and alphabetical bibliography that follow each chapter (annoyingly, many of the footnotes just refer to an item in the bibliography). This feels like wasted space, and I ended up wishing I\u2019d bought the e-book instead of the hardback version.<\/p>\n ~~~~~~~<\/p>\n If you\u2019re interested in this topic, I also highly recommend Eva<\/a>\u2019s new workbook, “From Science to SciComm”<\/em><\/a>, for people looking to break into SciComm careers, and for scientists who want to get better at communicating their work to non-specialists. It\u2019s a much more practically focused guide than \u201cTell It Like It Is?\u201d<\/em>, full of templates and worksheets, and I wish I\u2019d had something like it to hand when I was first moving out of research at the end of my postdoc!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I realised recently that the \u201ceverything I used to blog about is now on Twitter or Goodreads instead\u201d trend of recent years means that I never got around to mentioning my new job! After ten years of grant writing and … Continue reading ![](\"https:\/\/pbs.twimg.com\/media\/DQdXmelUQAA2YIL.jpg\")
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