Abstract

Each of the chapters in this handbook comes to its conclusions about what is worth researching, what the impact of research is on policy, and how research and policy, in turn, affect practice. It is not necessarily the case that research informs policy; nor that policy informs practice. The relationship between these three dimensions, while seeming to become more like an equilateral triangle in the first part of the 2000s, has now reverted to a less identifiable shape. One of the encouraging aspects of the contemporary relationship between research, policy and practice, however, is that changes in practice have continued to affect policy and research.