Enhancing the Impact of Research and Knowledge Co-production in Higher Education Through Communities of Practice

Abstract

Communities of Practice (CoP) are increasingly being nurtured in higher education but there is little literature on how CoP can be used to enable the dis-semination and impact of research, to support the academic community to engage with its stakeholders or to encourage knowledge transfer, knowledge exchange or knowledge co-production with the end users of research. This chapter focuses on how a group of researchers worked with school practitioners and other stakeholders to develop a professional development program for school staff who work with pupils with autism. The chapter outlines how this community became a thriving community of practice that helped bridge the gap between theory and practice and also generated new knowledge. Themes such as the 'landscape of practice', 'structural and organizational issues', 'knowledgeability', 'competence', and 'en-gagement' are explored as a way of discussing the key considerations that need to be taken into account when examining how CoP can support the process of ensuring that research is of relevance to the communities it seeks to serve.