On the theory-practice gap in the environmental realm: perspectives from and for diverse environmental professionals
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The theory-practice gap (TPG) is well known in the environmental realm, referring to disconnects between knowledge generated through scientific research and the needs, expectations, and practices of knowledge users for environmental decision-making and practice. While the presence of the TPG is well established, we have yet to fully implement mechanisms for overcoming its challenges. Thus, our goal is to characterize the TPG and identify practical recommendations for minimizing it. Here, a diverse group of experts in the environmental realm (spanning landscape planning, conservation science, environmental sociology, resource management, political science, and anthropology, among others) present our perspectives on the TPG. More specifically, we share an organized framework for understanding the TPG and suggest recommendations that can help make progress in one or more dimension(s). Conceptual topics discussed are the implications of the gap and its persistence. Organizational/institutional topics include the implications of the overabundance, inaccessibility, and uncertainty of scientific information, and a need for mainstreaming boundary spanning activities. Lastly, cultural topics include differences in culture and epistemologies across knowledge generators and users, shifting cultures through co-production, and changes in educational curricula. Recommendations for minimizing the TPG include conceptually recasting what is considered ‘success,’ institutional reform, enhanced information delivery, leveraging knowledge brokers and boundary organizations, leveraging ‘champions’ in policy, using co-production and/or integrative research, confronting the contemporary ‘fake news’ phenomenon, and rethinking researcher and practitioner training and development. By sharing our framework and recommendations, we provide insight, as well as a starting point for those looking to narrow the TPG and improve knowledge generator-user relationships.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.103 | 0.066 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.007 | 0.006 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.030 | 0.073 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.037 | 0.040 |
| Open science | 0.005 | 0.040 |
| Research integrity | 0.021 | 0.020 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.004 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".