This paper has presented several international policy and practice examples to strengthen the role of research institutions (RIs) and initial teacher education institutions (ITEs) in knowledge mobilisation. However, more action is needed to turn RIs and ITEs into knowledge mobilisation champions. These are depicted in Figure 4 and described in the following sections.
How can research and initial teacher education institutions support research use?
Research and ITE institutions are often located within the same institution – most often a higher education institution (HEI). In the intermediaries’ survey, 40 out of 48 ITEs located inside a HEI also identified as a research institution. HEIs as “dual role” institutions emerged as a result of countries gradually transferring the responsibility for ITE from specialist teacher education colleges to HEIs since the 1980s, thereby creating opportunities for better research-practice links in education (Musset, 2010[39]; OECD, 2023[8]). In the intermediaries’ survey, 80% of RIs located inside a HEI reported that they often or regularly collaborated with teacher educators, teachers and school leaders. By contrast, far fewer RIs located outside a HEI collaborate with teachers and school leaders (63%) or teacher educators (39%).
However, even within HEIs that conduct both educational research and offer initial teacher education, some important barriers to collaboration remain.
How can HEIs improve the flow between education research and teacher education?
In some HEIs there can be a strict separation between the staff engaged in research and those responsible for teacher education. This may be because they operate in separate units within the same institution, or due to separate teaching and research pathways embedded in the institution’s academic career structure (OECD, 2024[13]). In such HEIs, researchers engage very little or are not required at all to engage in teacher training. Vice-versa, teacher educators engage very little or are not required at all to conduct research.
To help address this challenge, HEIs may wish to reflect on the following questions:
How are the responsibilities of teacher educators and staff engaged in educational research in your institution divided? Is there scope to strengthen the involvement of educational researchers in the design and delivery of ITE?
How can the career and/or professional development structures that govern research and teacher education staff in your institution be revised to foster collaboration between both types of staff?
What other mechanisms can be developed or strengthened in your institution to incentivise and recognise the efforts of teacher educators engaging in practice-oriented research and, vice-versa, engage education researchers in the design and delivery of ITE?
How can interdisciplinary collaboration be increased to improve teacher education?
In many HEIs, there also is a weak link between teacher education and subject-specific research. Even in institutions where teacher educators do engage in educational research and embed this in their teaching practice, institutions can face challenges to connect the ITE curriculum with the latest developments in subject-specific and pedagogical research.
To help address this challenge, HEIs may wish to reflect on the following questions:
To what extent are subject-specific and pedagogical research included in the design and delivery of your institution’s ITE curricula?
What incentives or supports can be created to better connect or embed subject-specific research with ITE curricula in your institution?
Governments, research and ITE institutions should also reflect on a number of organisational and system‑level enablers to foster the development of teacher educators and candidates’ research engagement skills, and researchers’ knowledge mobilisation skills. Reflection questions for each of these three stakeholders are presented in the following sections.
Reflection questions for initial teacher education institutions
As noted in this paper, ITE institutions have a duty to support the development of student teachers’ research engagement skills. However, in many OECD jurisdictions this is not included as an explicit focus in ITE curricula. Teacher educators are often also not required to hold a teaching qualification or engage in scientific research. As a result, ITE programmes may not be aligned with the latest evidence-based practices in effective teaching in higher education.
To help address this challenge, ITEs may wish to reflect on the following questions:
How can your ITE programme strengthen teacher candidates’ research engagement skills? How can it foster a research mindset among teacher candidates?
What can you do to ensure that your ITE programme is regularly updated with scientific research on teaching and learning as well as subject-specific research?
What additional support and incentives can your organisation offer to build the capacity of teacher educators to engage in educational research?
Reflection questions for research institutions
For research institutions, it is crucial to ensure that scientific research responds to the needs of education policymakers and practitioners, and that the findings from such research are disseminated to both actors in a targeted and efficient way. However, in many research institutions staff engaged in education research have limited incentives, training or support to engage in impactful knowledge mobilisation.
To help address this challenge, RIs may wish to reflect on the following questions:
How is knowledge mobilisation integrated into the daily work of researchers in your institution? What are the incentives for such activities (e.g. research dissemination and collaborative research) and what hinders engagement in these?
How do researchers collaborate with practitioners, policymakers and knowledge intermediaries to support the generation of policy- and practice-relevant research and its use?
How can you build researchers’ capacity and support them to engage in impactful knowledge mobilisation?
How can you support the rigorous evaluation of knowledge mobilisation activities?
Reflection questions for governments
Finally, governments play a major role in steering the behaviour of RIs and ITEs through the regulatory, funding and quality assurance frameworks they set. These should be designed in such a way that they encourage and support RIs to focus on knowledge mobilisation, or for ITEs to focus on developing teacher candidates’ research engagement skills. In addition to this, governments need to develop a clear vision on the role they wish RIs and ITEs to play in their wider knowledge mobilisation systems for education. As noted, despite being among the most active, they are only one among a wider set of actors that play a role in countries’ knowledge mobilisation system.
To effectively determine the desired role for RIs and ITEs in countries’ wider knowledge mobilisation systems for education, policymakers may wish to reflect on the following questions:
What are the strengths and weaknesses of the knowledge mobilisation activities carried out by RIs and ITEs in your system?
What role do you think all RIs and ITEs should play in knowledge mobilisation? How can you support these institutions in this role (e.g. with resources and incentives)?
Which specific institutions do you think should take on a more formal mandate to support system-level knowledge mobilisation? How can the government support that?