The Great Divide between academics and practitioners

On 3 and 4 October I attended the UK Energy Research Centre’s workshop on Local Energy Governance, at St. Hugh’s College in Oxford. Day one focused on research approaches, overlaps and synergies (Catalina will blog about this shortly), while day two revolved around the relationship between academia en practitioners / community groups. It is probably appropriate to note here that the term practitioner was contested by the practitioners present at the workshop, and perhaps rightly so, judging by the diversity of backgrounds. Some ‘practitioners’ also publish research (e.g. Consumer Focus, Forum for the Future) - perhaps non-academics would have been a more appropriate term?

During the day a number of themes were brought to the fore, including the perception that academic research usually only finds what practitioners already know, and that academic research is too slow, partly due to funding becoming available too late. Furthermore, funding was perceived to be too project-focused and is often not available to the many spin-offs generated by many successful projects. Another issue was that academic reports often aren’t digestible for practitioners, and that reports and case studies are available in such quantities and variety of places, that for practitioners such as community groups they often are of little value.

Another big issue that was discussed was the uneven relationship between academics and practitioners: practitioners often don’t get enough out of participating in research projects (something to keep in mind in our own case study work!). This, however, could be addressed by cooperation in the research design phase. If this isn’t possible, then perhaps academics should give something back to the practitioners, like sharing certain academic skills, for example by giving a workshop on how to do a good questionnaire/survey. Practitioners should not have too low expectations when contacted by academics for the dreaded ‘hour of your time’ – why not ask for something tangible in return rather than simply deciding on a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’ when asked to participate?

Overall, there was a sense of lack of involvement of practitioners / community groups and a disconnect between what they need to know and what academia is researching. In other words, there needs to be more of a dialogue between both groups. Suggestions to achieve this link-up even included ‘adopt a local authority’, and speed dating to link up the right research needs with the right academics. On this point, a very interesting attempt to bridge this gap has already been made by the Grassroots Innovations blog, where practitioners are called on to get in touch with their research suggestions and ideas. Let’s hope this will prove useful in building on the issues discussed!