We are only a few weeks away from the Cluster ‘C’ meeting at Cambridge, to which our cluster partners at Reading, LSBU and Brunel, and our critical friend will be coming.
On 5th December we will be having a day meeting with two foci. The first is a more broadly-scoped discussion about the nature, structure and role of evidence bases for projects such as ours, in which we hope to address questions such as:
- what counts as ‘evidence’ in evidence-informed practice?
- case data, case records and case studies – at what ‘level’ do practitioners and researchers engage?
- how to address the twin aims of high quality research and practitioner engagement?
The second is a ‘swap-shop’ of engagement, research and analysis tools and approaches, with each cluster partner contributing examples. Vignettes are being collected in the Cluster’s online collaboration space and it is already evident that the distinction between research, engagement and dissemination processes are blurred. Engagement activities can also serve as valuable research ‘sites’, and participatory research approaches seem to take on a life of their own, ‘diffusing’ within and beyond projects and institutions.