Rethinking knowledge mobilisation in teacher education: epistemic coordination, AI-auditors, and lessons from Asia

The growing emphasis on evidence-informed education has increased interest in knowledge mobilisation (KM) in teacher education and in how research informs policy and classroom practice. This discussion paper critically examines the OECD report How can research and initial teacher education institutions support research use? and considers its implications for teacher education in the AI era. Drawing on conceptual analysis and international comparison, we argue that the report gives insufficient attention to the challenge of epistemic coordination, namely how educational systems organise, distribute, validate, and translate knowledge across institutions and professional communities. Two limitations are identified. First, the report is largely informed by Western and relatively decentralised systems and pays limited attention to alternative approaches represented by Asian contexts. Second, it underestimates the transformative potential of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) for knowledge translation and synthesis. We argue that China’s institutional arrangements and emerging AI technologies represent complementary responses to the same epistemic challenge. The paper introduces the concept of the AI-auditor and proposes an AI-enabled KM ecosystem that redistributes epistemic work across researchers, institutions, AI systems, and practitioners, offering a future-oriented framework for teacher education reform.