Shani Prendergast is the Senior Research Analyst at Catholic Education Melbourne, responsible for developing and implementing the jurisdiction’s research strategy. Shani has worked in education (the schooling sector) for 17 years across a variety of function areas – teaching, professional learning, project management, policy, research and evaluation. Having worked on a number of educational research projects over the past 7 years, Shani is particularly interested in how schools engage in, and with research. Mark Rickinson is an Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Engagement) in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. Mark’s work is focused on improving the use and usefulness of educational research in policy and practice. In Australia and before that in the UK, he has undertaken research, evaluation and consultancy projects on many aspects of evidence-based policy and evidence-informed practice. He is currently undertaking work with Catholic Education Melbourne on schools’ engagement with research, and recently led an innovative study on the use of evidence in education policy with the Victorian Department of Education and Training.