Bridging the Knowledge Culture Gap between Early Childhood Development Practitioners and Academic Researchers

Abstract: The key definitional features of culture identified by Oliver and Reddy Kandadi (2006), include the group or the collectiveness; a way of life; and the learned behaviors, and values, knowledge and perceptions of the people and their definition of knowledge culture as “an organizational lifestyle which empowers individuals and motivates them to create, share, and apply knowledge in order to reach consistent organizational success and benefits. Walczck (2005) in Dilmaghani, Fahimnia, Abouei Ardakan and Naghshineh (2015: 4) intimates that the creation of a knowledge culture has the potential to facilitate and promote knowledge creation, sharing, transmission, and effective application for making decisions, strategic planning and measurable development of economic assets. This case study focuses on the difference in knowledge cultures between academic researchers and early childhood development (ECD) practitioners in Durban, South Africa, and how to bridge this gap in the field of early childhood development education. The participants comprise authors of this chapter, a doctoral student at a university in Durban, South Africa supervised by the authors; and three early childhood development (ECD) practitioners based in a historically Black township of Umbumbulu, forty kilometres south of Durban. The research undertaken is part of a macro project developed by the UNESCO Chair in Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, the Bridging Knowledge Culture (BKC) Project. It explores in the context of community-university research partnerships, how to address extant power inequalities between diverse knowledge cultures of collaborating partners to make these partnerships inclusive, sustainable and secure over time.

Narrative: Differences in knowledge cultures exist within and between different knowledge sites, while power dynamics are at play. For example, the privileging of knowledge production through standardized western academic forms of research is one way in which the unequal and hierarchical relationship between academic researchers and community members is evident. As part of a multinational Bridging Knowledge Culture (BKC) Project, developed by the UNESCO Chair: Community Based Research and Social Responsibility in Higher Education, academic researchers and community partners from a university in Durban, South Africa, explored how extant power inequalities between diverse knowledge cultures of collaborating partners could be addressed to make these partnerships sustainable, inclusive and secure over time.

The objectives of this qualitative case study were to: (i) understand different ways in which knowledge is understood, constructed, validated and disseminated in academic and non-academic (community) settings; (ii) examine practical challenges that differences create for working across knowledge cultures and how to address these challenges. The case study method supported the explorative and descriptive nature of this study - in depth and within its real-world context (Yin 2014). The phenomenon under investigation in this case study was the epistemological worldview in community-university research relationships, with a focus on the ways of knowing and learning that highlights the different knowledge cultures in community-university research relationships and its impact on the co-creation of knowledge. Purposive sampling was used in this case study in selecting three Early Childhood Development practitioners as the sample for this study.

This study comprised six participants - five females and a male. Three ECD practitioners, two academic researchers (the authors of the chapter capturing all of the findings) and co-supervisors of a doctoral student. The ECD practitioners and the two academic researchers were originally brought together in 2019 during the exploratory phase of the doctoral study titled, Integral Education for Early Childhood Development: Building Values through Indigenous Knowledge (unpublished, Padayachee, 2022). The ECD practitioners work in three different community-based pre-schools established by NGOs in the historically Black township of Umbumbulu, 40 km south of Durban. The practitioners each have an entry level ECD qualification, which is meant to provide ECD practitioners with the necessary skills to facilitate the holistic development of young children and to offer quality ECD services in a variety of settings. With eighteen years of ECD experience between them, the practitioners are rooted in the communities in which they practice. They were considered well qualified experientially to form the participating practitioner team responsible for co-creating with the doctoral student, the ECD integral education programme that was the final objective of the doctoral study. Prior to the commencement of the doctoral study, the doctoral student spent more than five years working on the co-development of community training programmes in the field of Early Childhood Development. At the time, she worked for a civil society organisation (CSO), whose office was located on the DUT campus where we are currently based. Our paths inevitably crossed because of our work with communities.
The doctoral student anchored the relationship between the community and university partners, representing the interests of both from the commencement of her doctoral research. She was a boundary spanner as contemplated by Christopherson, Howell, Scheufele, Viswanath & West (2021), namely an individual who crosses the boundaries of a social group to enable knowledge exchange, translate language, and share values among various groups. Over the years, their relationships transcended the boundaries created by varying approaches to the recognition of knowledge generated outside of academia, making then suitable co-participants in the the Durban version of the BKC Project.

Data was collected through focus group interviews to achieve our objective of exploring differences in ECD knowledge cultures. The pre-determined questions were instruments of academic culture and opportunities were afforded to participants to bear them in mind rather than be governed by them. The interview schedule contained six questions to guide conversations, but only one of them is highlighted for this presentation: (i) How do we approach a process of co-creation, validation and dissemination of knowledge? The most significant unanimous response to this question was:
“the barriers, especially the mindset/thinking that one is superior, and the other is inferior, needs to be broken from both sides. When people are told often enough that they do not know anything, they eventually believe it. It is not enough to require of those who think they are superior to stop. Those who have started to believe in their inferiority need to undo the damage and not wait for the other side to act”.
All participants concluded that co-creation was an organic process, leading to further questions and possible answers. The practitioners were of the view that the responsibility is on the academics to realize that they are not the experts on knowledge with regards to communities. The behavior and attitudes emanating from academics serve to perpetuate the notion that the majority community are inferior, a notion that was instilled during the apartheid system of inferior education for the majority black community.

Godinho, Borda, Kariotis, Molnar, Kostkova and Liaw (2021) highlight that the use of participatory knowledge co-creation provides a means to address pertinent societal crises. One way of ensuring its sustainability is through institutionalization of knowledge co-creation within existing and novel structures (Godinho et al. 2021). Oeberst, Kimmerle, and Cress (2016) suggest a systemic perspective to knowledge creation where the different systems become epistemic agents and collaboratively construct knowledge. If people participate in different knowledge-related communities, their activities would be expected to differ as a function of the different social system - their knowledge culture. Their approach stresses that for successfully achieving the goal of collaborative knowledge creation, reflection about the conditions imposed by a system, is an imperative. Higher education institutions need to reflect on and promote community based participatory research for collaborative knowledge creation between community and university. The longer the latter take to be intentionally inclusive, the longer they are likely to remain less relevant to the former, and the sooner our work in community engagement will become a pejorative.