How can research and initial teacher education institutions support research use?

1. What role do research and initial teacher education institutions play in knowledge mobilisation today?

1.1 Research and ITE institutions can play a key role in supporting evidence use in education policy and practice. But are they there yet?

Research and initial teacher education institutions are seen as key actors in countries’ knowledge mobilisation systems for education ...

In 2021, the OECD carried out a Policy Survey on Strengthening the Impact of Education Research, collecting responses from 37 ministries of education on the production, dissemination and use of education research in policy and practice in their respective jurisdictions (OECD, 2022[1]). In that survey, responding ministries identified research institutions (RIs) and initial teacher education institutions (ITEs) as some of the most active and important actors in the production and dissemination of education research. One of the reasons for this is because RIs and ITEs are often located in or connected to the same higher education institution (HEI) or education department. This creates opportunities to connect the research and practice communities and functions, and to mobilise knowledge. For example, the research conducted in HEIs can be directly integrated into teacher education curricula; the practice of teacher educators can model effective teaching, based on research; and the connection of teacher education with schools can help to identify research needs.

In this paper, knowledge mobilisation is defined as follows:

Knowledge mobilisation refers to all intentional efforts aimed at facilitating policymakers’ and practitioners’ engagement with research. It includes generating policy‑ and practice-relevant evidence and making it accessible, building relationships to connect the research, practice and policy communities, and building stakeholders’ capacity in engaging with research (OECD, 2025[2]).

... but few have a formal mandate for knowledge mobilisation

Despite research and ITE institutions being seen as important knowledge mobilisers, evidence from the intermediaries’ survey suggests that few have a formal mandate to facilitate research use in education policy or practice (OECD, 2025[2]). In total, only 29 RIs and 5 ITEs responding to the intermediaries’ survey indicated that they are also a formal knowledge intermediary, meaning that they operate as an independent or government-affiliated What Works Centre or brokerage agency at the national or regional level. Giving RIs and ITEs a formal knowledge mobilisation mandate, however, may increase their activity levels in knowledge mobilisation. In all but four of 21 different knowledge mobilisation activity types, RIs and ITEs with a formal knowledge mobilisation mandate are more active than those without such as mandate (see Figure 1).

The differences are most pronounced for the activities “disseminating research in user-friendly formats”, “establishing/maintaining communication channels to disseminate research”, “facilitating connections/collaboration among actors to facilitate research use” and “building partnerships to facilitate research use”. For each of these four activities, on average 80% or more of RIs/ITEs with a formal mandate indicated that they engaged in them either to a large extent or systematically. For RIs/ITEs without an explicit mandate, the responses range between 40% and 60% on average. They are also more likely to provide organisational and system-level support to governments and schools (see Box 1 for examples).

Figure 1. Research and ITE institutions with and without an explicit knowledge mobilisation mandate engaging in selected knowledge mobilisation activities

Notes: Dark-coloured bars represent the percentage of RIs and ITEs with a formal knowledge mobilisation mandate engaging to a large extent or systematically in a given knowledge mobilisation activity. Light-coloured bars indicate the percentage of RIs and ITEs without a formal mandate doing so. Knowledge mobilisation activities are grouped by type of knowledge mobilisation approach: Evidence generation and dissemination; Collaboration, partnerships and capacity building; Organisational and system-level support.

Source: OECD Survey of Knowledge Mobilisation in Education data, in OECD (2025[2]), Everybody Cares About Using Education Research Sometimes: Perspectives of Knowledge Intermediaries, OECD Publishing, Paris, https://doi.org/10.1787/5ef88972-en.

Box 1. Examples of organisational and system-level support by research and ITE institutions

Building partnerships with actors to facilitate research use (Netherlands)

In the Netherlands, 28 HEIs are part of seven “Regional Higher Education-School Clusters” that were established by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science to support close to 360 primary and secondary schools to improve their teaching and learning practice (HE-School Clusters, 2018[3]).

Directly supporting policy organisations/schools (University of Warsaw, Poland)

In Poland, the University of Warsaw was formally appointed by the City Council of Ostrołęka to develop a series of diagnostic reports for all schools in the region over a four-year period (2019-23). Based on these reports, cross-cutting issues were identified and discussed with the schools and local authorities to jointly develop school improvement plans. Academics involved in the project offered assistance in implementing those plans and helped to monitor progress (Ostrołęka, 2023[4]).

Co-ordinating knowledge mobilisation at the system level (University of Stavanger, Norway)

In Norway, the Ministry of Education and Research established the Knowledge Centre for Education at the University of Stavanger, following a public call for tenders (University of Stavenger, n.d.[5]). Since 2013, the university centre has been operating as a formal knowledge intermediary in Norway.

1.2 What if research institutions were given a system-level mandate to evaluate the impact of knowledge mobilisation?

Evaluating other intermediaries’ knowledge mobilisation activities could be a well-suited role for research institutions with demonstrated expertise in evaluation. RIs have a lot of expertise that can be leveraged to support other institutions with the evaluation of their knowledge mobilisation activities. Evidence from the intermediaries’ survey suggests that RIs are slightly more active than other organisation types in evaluating their knowledge mobilisation activities, especially RIs located outside HEIs. On average 26% of all responding RIs (and 34% of RIs located outside of a HEI) reported that they evaluated most or all of their knowledge mobilisation activities. This compares with only 18% for all other organisation types.

Giving RIs a formal mandate to evaluate the knowledge mobilisation activities of other intermediaries could help to better understand what effective knowledge mobilisation looks like, i.e. build the limited evidence on “what works in what works” (OECD, 2025[2]). Box 2 offers an example from the United Kingdom, where a research centre is evaluating the knowledge mobilisation activities of eight other intermediaries.

Box 2. Evaluating the impact of knowledge mobilisation activities in the United Kingdom

In the United Kingdom (UK), researchers at the Wales Centre for Public Policy have carried out an external evaluation of the UK What Works Network, a network of nine independent What Works Centres (WWCs) and three affiliate members. The study points to the importance of relations between WWCs, policymakers and other users or stakeholders to facilitate the use of research in policy and practice. Several WWCs are also developing their own frameworks to monitor their knowledge mobilisation activities and employ varied methods to gather evidence on the use of their work. Based on the findings of this evaluation, the Centre plans to develop a (self-)evaluation framework to help improve the quality and relevance of other intermediaries’ knowledge mobilisation initiatives (Vallance et al., 2025[6]).