Course:LIBR559A/Thomas, A. (2014)

Citation

Thomas, A., Menon, A., Boruff, J., Rodriguez, A. M., & Ahmed, S. (2014). Applications of social constructivist learning theories in knowledge translation for healthcare professionals: A scoping review. Implementation Science, 9(54), e1-20. doi: 10.1186/1748-5908-9-54

Annotation

This article aims to describe how social constructivist theory could be used to study knowledge translation in the health sciences. Social constructivist theory understands the acquisition of knowledge as occurring through societal interactions, and knowledge translation refers to the conversion of experimental research findings into sound evidence-based practices by the end user (traditionally a health professional). A literature review was conducted, in order to find where where social constructivist theory has been applied to the practice of knowledge translation.

The main argument is that many healthcare professionals are not translating scientific evidence into their professional practices, and that social constructivist theory could be a promising direction help to develop knowledge translation interventions to solve this problem. According to the authors, knowledge is not static or uniform, but instead is actively developed based on the receivers past experiences, attempts to settle cognitive dissonance, and through socially mediated processes - based on the previous studies of the nature of knowledge (but not within the field of knowledge translation).

The authors used a scoping review to identify relevant literature, and searched across six databases with specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. Of 514 unique results, only 35 papers were analyzed. The primary analysis was in qualitatively identifying themes within the articles which demonstrated social constructivist theory application. Many of the papers they identified were actually published before the crucial articles that first called for theoretical studies of knowledge translation.

The results demonstrated that social constructivist theory in knowledge translation literature was sparse, non-comprehensive, and unjustified. The authors suggest that more research should investigate the link between knowledge translation and social constructivist theory in order to improve healthcare practices. This article presents a unique theoretical perspective into knowledge translation that has not yet been thoroughly explored.

The inclusion and exclusion criteria selected by the authors may have limited their ability to locate relevant articles, and they could have used a more exhaustive list of keywords to locate a broader range of articles. Since the theoretical study of knowledge translation appears to be relatively new, they may have had more success by looking somewhat outside of the field. Another consequence of the newness of the field is that the authors themselves did not have a large amount of evidence to support using social constructivist theory in knowledge translation.

This article is especially beneficial to health librarians, who serve as an informational resource to healthcare professionals. Understanding how to best convert scientific findings into evidence-based practices would be incredibly valuable to health librarians, so that information could be presented in such a way to have the most practical and beneficial effects. Technologies, library services, and publications could potentially be modified to best serve the knowledge translation needs of health library patrons. Knowledge translation is also relevant to the fields of HCI and health education, in developing technologies that facilitate user experience and understanding of information.

Areas/Topics/Keywords

Knowledge translation, social constructivism, health professional education, health librarianship.

Page author: Maddy Walter