The disciplining effects of impact evaluation practices: negotiating the pressures of impact within an ESRC-DFID project
The disciplining effects of impact evaluation practices: negotiating the pressures of impact within an ESRC-DFID project
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影响评估实践的约束效果：在 ESRC-DFID 项目中协商影响压力
DOI：
10.1111/j.1475-5661.2011.00494.x
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发表时间：
2012
影响因子：
3.3
通讯作者：
Williams G
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Williams G
可以理解，衡量学术研究的影响是当前英国大学非常感兴趣的课题。高等教育经费的压力意味着越来越多的学者被要求证明他们工作的公共利益（Maddrell 2010），英国2014年的卓越研究框架（REF）将首次尝试评估研究的社会和经济影响。尽管，正如Staeheli和Mitchell（2005）所指出的那样，地理学家长期以来一直关注相关性问题，但英国目前转向影响已经引发了该学科内部关于研究价值和评估的辩论。虽然Tariq Jazeel认为英国的影响评估实践是“知识生产日益经济、社会和制度评估”的一部分（Jazeel 2010, np）， Rachel Pain和她的合著者提醒我们，强调影响可以带来很多积极的东西。他们认为，如果将影响视为知识双向共同生产的一部分，这就可以认可和奖励那些建立研究人员和非学术研究参与者能力的研究过程（Pain et al. 2011）。因此，转向影响可以鼓励学者更密切地参与更广泛的社会转型过程，将价值归因于影响当然是为了改变我们的研究文化。但是，作为学者，影响评估实践对“我们的动机和我们的智力指南针”（Phillips 2010, 451）以及与我们一起研究和为我们研究的人有什么影响呢？在这里，我回顾了自己管理一个研究项目的经验，以检验这些问题。具体地说，它解决了两个伦理上复杂的边界跨越，研究“超越学院”的运动，以及影响评估对远远超出其起源点的地方的研究行为的影响-在这种情况下，在印度农村。尽管该项目是由其在英国高等教育体系中的特殊地位塑造的，但这一反思旨在突出有关影响议程的激励、要求的绩效和纪律效应的更广泛问题，以及它们重塑这些边界的方式。首先，重要的是要注意，“影响议程”在英国的出现并不是独一无二的：让大学研究更相关的管理鼓励并不是什么新鲜事，它们也不一定与Jazeel正确质疑的知识生产的新自由主义估值有关。十多年来，南非的“政策转向”已经很明显了，地理学家们在种族隔离后重建的时代中努力应对理论创新和政策相关性的对比需求（Parnell 2007）。自2006年以来，荷兰制定了自己的评估研究影响的流程，重要的是，其评估研究背景项目具有前瞻性，强调机构反思、学习和分享最佳实践
Measuring the impact of academic research is understandably a subject of great current interest within British universities. Pressures on higher education funding mean that academics are increasingly being asked to demonstrate the public benefit of their work (Maddrell 2010), and the UK's 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF) will, for the first time, attempt to assess the social and economic impact of research. Although, as Staeheli and Mitchell (2005) note, geographers have long been concerned with questions of relevance, the UK's current turn to impact has sparked debate within the discipline over the values and valuation of research. Whilst Tariq Jazeel sees the UK's impact evaluation practices as part of an'increas-ingly economistic, social and institutional valuation of knowledge production'(Jazeel 2010, np), Rachel Pain and her co-authors remind us that emphasising impact could deliver much that is positive. If impact were conceived as part of a two-way coproduction of knowledge, they argue, this could recognise and reward research processes that build the capacities of researchers and non-academic research participants alike (Pain et al. 2011). A turn to impact could, therefore, encourage aca-demics to engage more closely with wider processes of social transformation, and attributing value to impact is certainly intended to change our research culture. But what are the effects of impact evaluation practices on'our motivation and our intellectual compass'(Phillips 2010, 451) as academics, and on those with and for whom we research? Here, I reflect on my own experiences of managing a research project1 to examine these questions. Specifically, it addresses two ethically complex bound-ary crossings, the movement of research'beyond the academy', and the effect of impact evaluation on the conduct of research in places far beyond their point of origin-in this case, in rural India. Although the project was shaped by its particular position within the UK Higher Education system, this reflection aims to highlight wider issues about the incentives, required performances and disciplin-ing effects of impact agendas, and the ways in which they reshape these boundary crossings. At the outset, it is important to note that the emergence of an'impact agenda'within the UK is not unique: managerial encouragements to make university research more relevant are nothing new, nor are they necessarily tied to the neoliberal valuation of knowledge production that Jazeel rightly questions. A'policy turn'in South Africa has been evident for well over a decade, with geographers juggling the contrasting demands of theoretical innovation and policy relevance within an era of post-apartheid reconstruction (Parnell 2007). Since 2006, the Netherlands has developed its own pro-cesses to evaluate research impact, and significantly its Evaluating Research in Context project has been forward-looking and emphasises institutional reflection, learning and sharing of best practice