Spaces, Rhythms and Bodies: An exploration of epistemology and language in the construction of academic/practitioner relationships

Abstract

Increasingly, formal links are being made between the care sector and the university, with wide implications for both carers of looked after children and academics. Within the context of looked after children, carers are increasingly expected to relate their practice to an empirical evidence-base derived from academic literature. Academics are, now more than ever, expected to be able to demonstrate research impact beyond the university. In this study I critically reflect on the language of the impact agenda and how it architects relationships between academia and practice, with an aim to ‘come to grips with the categories of value and exchange at a level more essential than their surface manifestation’ (Holquist 1990: xli). This study is underpinned by qualitative research philosophy and values, characterised methodologically by its case study design and emphasis on personal (hi)stories through narrative enquiry. The case study used was research on symbolic food practices with looked after children that received a follow on grant in order to develop a set of resources based on the findings . The data consisted of secondary sources: interviews with both steering group and working group members before the launch of Food for Thought and evaluation form feedback from Food for Thought activities. Primary interviews were also conducted with participants of Food for Thought around three years after the resources were launched. Employing a case study approach guided by Bakhtin’s (1981) concept of ‘heteroglossia’, as well as centripetal/centrifugal forces, the research examines the ways in which the impact agenda has emerged from a particular socio-political context, creating an ‘impact architecture’. Based on an assemblage of the participant’s stories, it is suggested that both academics and practitioners working in the context of looked after children inhabit the impact architecture in diverse ways. As a result, academics and practitioners need a language beyond dichotomies of successful and unsuccessful research/practice relations, in order to be able to capture complex spatial and temporal practices. Furthermore, it emerged that the body, underrepresented in impact literature, was central to the work of both academics and practitioners. Overlooking this, as a result of deeply engrained Cartesian dual rhetoric, had important implications for both the mental and physical well-being of some of the participants. The findings from this study suggest that researchers interested in a qualitative perspective on the relationship between academic knowledge and practice might want to attend to elements such as space, time and the body where appropriate. Attention to these details have shone a light on the nuanced experience of the academic/practice relationship, accenting elements such as identity, power, rhythms and biographies, materiality, embodied ways of knowing and ethics of care.