This paper adds to a growing body of European work on research mobilisation which explores how research moves around educational systems with a view to understanding how research influences educational practice at local, national, regional and levels and to enhancing relationships between research and educational practice (e.g. see EIPSI, n.d.; Maxwell et al., 2022). Recent years have seen a shift away from universities as the primary source of research-based knowledge and expertise in education. New organisations dedicated to the accrual and dissemination of research evidence have emerged across Europe. Moreover social media enables a vast array of individuals and associations to address teachers and schools directly within and across national boundaries. Against this background, one area that has received little attention is the relative mobility of different kinds of research. The field of literacy education illustrates why this is an important focus. Literacy research is a dynamic and expansive field with potential to speak to literacy education in diverse ways. However, in recent years, certain strands of literacy research, for example associated with ‘The Science of Reading’ (Goodwin and Jiménez, 2020). have gained considerable international influence while research exploring a broad range of literacy topics using diverse methodologies has been marginalised. This paper contributes to debates about evidence-based education across Europe by examining how and why – given the diversity of educational research produced – some kinds of research gain considerable influence while others do not. 

We draw on findings from a 2-year ESRC funded project which is exploring how and why some kinds of literacy research gain greater traction than others in educational contexts regardless of research quality or the efforts of researchers.  While the focus for data collection is literacy education in England, the project has identified themes relevant to research mobilisation more generally and across Europe. In this paper we focus on one of these themes: the accrual and conferral of credibility. 

There are various well-established markers and processes through which credibility is conferred in academia, such as promotion, journal editorships and invitations to give keynotes or join advisory groups. Our interest however is in processes through which individuals, groups and institutions come to be recognised as credible experts beyond academia – in schools and by teachers – given a complex educational landscape and the rapid expansion of communicative possibilities.  This paper considers:  

 How is credibility accrued and conferred?   

What is the relationship between credibility and research mobilisation?  

(How) are processes of research mobilisation relevant to the diversity of research evidence gaining traction in schools and for teachers?  

Our theoretical framework is rooted in the interdisciplinary field of knowledge mobilities which has explored how some types of knowledge travel more easily than others (Heike et al., 2017) and how ideas morph as they move across time and space (Barnes & Abrahamsson, 2017). It reflects a sociomaterial sensitivity to understanding the complex actors and the relations between them that propel (or block) movements of research evidence. This focus draws in more-than-human theorising to foreground the contribution of assemblages of human and nonhuman actors, allowing us to account for the work of algorithms, digital platforms and so on in mobilising research – and hence, in tracing appearances of expertise. Specifically, we draw on Law’s (2004) take on the Deleuzo-Guattarian notion of assemblage (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987), which highlights how ‘social, semiotic and material flows’ combine to produce relational effects in ‘an uncertain and unfolding process’ (Law, 2004, p.41). As we will explore in this paper, this stance  provides ways of understanding credibility– whether conferred or enacted –  as fluid and as produced through diverse and sometimes unpredictable relational effects.    

This project has used an innovative multi-stranded, interdisciplinary methodology to enable the examination of mobilisations of research from different vantage points generating insights that are rich, dynamic and textured, if necessarily incomplete. In this paper we draw on two datasets: 1.A qualitative dataset drawn from interviews, focus groups and lifelogging with 32 primary teachers in England. Teachers were asked to log their encounters with research, discuss their experience of these encounters, and identify any opportunities and barriers to engaging with research. These could be encounters with research that derived from primary sources such as journals and books, were mediated by individuals or organisations or were embedded in policies and practices. Thematic analysis of teachers’ accounts highlighted not just the nature of these encounters and the diverse range of multimodal print and digital sources on which they drew, but also their reasons for believing some sources to be more credible than others and their motivations for seeking out certain sources of expertise, including and beyond traditional academic ones. This dataset also allowed us to identify the range of research topics that this sample of teachers encountered and the nature of the sources on which they drew (including research institutions and organisations but also independent consultants, charities, colleagues and so on). 2.Ten case studies that drew on adaptations of controversy mapping (Venturini and Munk 2022) and networked ethnography (Ball et al., 2016) to trace the movements of specific literacy research studies and research-informed literacy initiatives across social media, national policy directives, and local, national and international developments. These were selected from those identified by the teachers we worked with. Using sociomaterial heuristics developed by Adams and Thompson (2016) and adapting Ball et al.’s (2017) Networked Policy Ethnography, each case study traced materialisations of research across the educational landscape, including for example social media outputs, academic journals, media coverage, policy frameworks, websites, and blog posts. These tracings highlighted: key human and digital actors mobilising this research; associations between these actors and the assemblages created; the work that goes into this movement; and the sort of power and capacities the research output accrues.

We draw on exemplar material from across these two datasets to identify research which has gained influence with teachers and offer a series of insights into how credibility builds. Firstly we note patterns in the kinds of research, topics, people and organisations that were gaining influence with the teachers who participated in our study. We note that teachers made few references to universities as the originators of research and that: a) most references to research were to research produced or mediated by commercial or charitable organisations not universities; b) there is a reliance on independent consultants as research brokers; c) a narrow range of literacy research topics were explored. Secondly we explore some reasons for these emergent findings by sharing what we have learned about how credibility is established, both from teachers and from our tracings of specific studies. We suggest that relationships between expertise and perceived credibility may be tenuous, and that patterns in the circulation of research mean that a minority of research topics and studies can gain disproportionate influence. We argue that, if replicated more widely, these findings have considerable implications for relationships between research evidence and teaching as a diversification in sources of expertise may be undermining the diversity of educational research that gains influence in schools. In the light of this, we call for further research into what we call ‘research mobilities in education’ – i.e. the ways in which research moves to and between teachers, schools, policy makers and other actors. In doing so we argue for moving beyond analysis of planned dissemination activities to an examination of research movements ‘in the wild’ that take account of how research moves through complex and intersecting networks generated by communications, digital technologies, and a shifting educational landscape.

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