The gap between policymakers and academics can be bridged. Here’s how

Knowledge creation is valuable, but many academics don’t just want to create knowledge; we also want to improve the world.

“Mobilising” knowledge can be a real challenge, however. For the last two years, I have been senior policy fellow at the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (Pedal) at the University of Cambridge. The centre undertakes valuable research that could inform policy for children and hired me, a former civil servant and charity leader, to spearhead its policy work.

We know that building effective collaborations with civil servants is not always straightforward. There is a widely recognised gap between academics and civil servants, and institutions often struggle to bridge this when trying to achieve policy impact with their research.

One problem is incentives. Universities are under pressure from funders to generate impact, but most academics are too busy to think about it most of the time. Policy engagement is rarely recognised, valued and rewarded on the same terms as teaching and research. And for all their aspirations, funders only allocate limited amounts of resource for impact in practice, often only covering the dissemination of findings at a project’s end.

Academics shouldn’t have to do all the work. It would be great to create multidisciplinary teams in universities, encompassing complementary expertise in research, teaching, engagement and impact. But my experience suggests that universities currently only really conceive of two categories of staff: academics and those who provide admin or operational support.

On the other side of the divide, it can be hard for UK civil servants to engage with and use evidence. They are expected to be “generalists”, regularly moving between portfolios without developing deep, specialist expertise. They often want to use evidence, but they work in a fast-paced environment that makes accessing, reviewing and evaluating the evidence base difficult.

Rather than engaging seriously with how to close the gap between academia and policy, universities typically just keep shouting into the void – sending out briefings, hoping that policymakers will see and use them. At Pedal, however, we decided to try something different.

With funding from the LEGO Foundation, we developed a new kind of policy engagement programme, called Mobilise, which was itself evidence-informed. We reviewed existing literature on policy engagement and spoke to others leading promising projects. As psychologists and educators, we also drew on our understanding of behaviour change and the science of learning.

Rather than seeking merely to tell civil servants our findings, we set out to convene and curate evidence from various sources that would be useful for them in their work. We devised a six-month programme for a small group of civil servants and local leaders that blended aspects of training, networking, action learning and consultancy support.

There were three 24-hour residential events in Cambridge, online learning exercises, weekly emails, a specially produced podcast and bespoke support. Participants talked to academics, other local leaders and front-line practitioners. They also spent time with children and families to build a richer understanding of how evidence is applied.

The model was informed by several core values. These included that the programme had to be co-produced with the participants, so the content was adapted and customised according to what they needed. The activities had to be interactive, engaging, iterative and meaningful. And, critically, we focused on building relationships with and between participants to support learning and reflection.

Our evaluation suggests that this approach had various benefits. It improved participants’ knowledge and understanding of the science and how to implement evidence-informed policy. It created an openness to new insights and an awareness of different evidence. It increased confidence to advocate for early childhood and improved participants’ communication skills and ability to make compelling arguments. And, finally, it strengthened professional relationships and networks. Participants now use Mobilise content in policy discussions and are drawing on wider evidence from a range of sources.

This shows that a thoughtfully designed programme, with dedicated funding and specialist expertise, can bridge the academia-policy gap. That might still sound unrealistic in resource-constrained university settings, but this is not a call for more investment. Universities already plough time and resources into a patchwork of research dissemination activities. If funders and universities thought more strategically about this work, we could do better with what we have.

Academics and civil servants seem perpetually time-poor (something that itself deserves wider consideration). We do not have time for ineffective engagement, but we make time for meaningful collaboration. Mobilise showed that policymakers can – and will – engage when there are clear benefits for their work. Interestingly, our group found it easier to protect a day to attend our events than take time out of a busy working day to read material or join a short call.

There are lessons here for any policy engagement activity: in particular, the importance of a relational approach, of listening to policymakers’ needs and of convening evidence that they will actually find useful.

I hope that, eventually, leaders on both sides of the academic-policymaking divide will focus more on making the cultural and structural changes that might reduce that divide. In the meantime, Mobilise gives us hope that we can bridge the gap.

Sally Hogg is a senior policy fellow at the Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (Pedal) at the University of Cambridge.