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This article draws on evidence from a partnership action research project concerning curriculum organization in three English primary schools. Using a case‐study of site visit planning, teaching and learning in an age 5‐11 rural primary school, it argues that, despite major centralizing initiatives such as the English National Curriculum and OFSTED inspection systems, teacher planning remains a complex, variable and necessarily individualized activity. The teacher planning discussed has been highly commended through a local school inspection under the OFSTED system; but the teachers’ organically influenced views of planning contrast with the more mechanistic written guidance from governmental and advisory bodies. Such centralized advice, driven by the assumption that educational improvement means ‘raising standards’, tends to model formulaic planning procedures which ignore evidence of how rich teacher thinking and planning can be in practice. The argument is made not simply to undermine nationally agreed curricula or inspection systems, but to advocate that policy‐makers should build from teachers’ natural diversities and avoid the over‐ambitious, even dangerous task of attempting to standardize their planning.

This article contrasts the often ambivalent attitudes of teachers towards television and generalised research on teachers' uses of television, with detailed empirical evidence from primary school history co-ordinators describing their reactions to and expectations of the medium. The data describes a wide variety of reasons why television is educationally useful in the teaching and learning of history. The argument is articulated that teachers and children can be sophisticated viewers of televisual schools history, offering useful guidelines for programme makers; but that teacher conservatism and lack of advisory support for teachers' deployment of the medium may be hindering its educational effectiveness.

This article explores a universal issue in higher education: how in practice can we secure the most productive relationships between the research universities pursue and the education they provide? It opens by drawing from three recent international literature reviews summarising research on research-teaching links, sometimes termed a 'nexus'. It then proceeds inductively to analyse grounded empirical data from practitioners in an English post-1992 University. This data describes what participants think should change and where, to increase its amount and quality. To illuminate how things might change, the same data is then re-analysed deductively against six 'lessons learnt' from a 2012 review of literature examining the diffusion of innovative teaching and learning in higher education. Lessons are confirmed or lacunae pointed out, before the concluding discussion offers recommendations and observations for universities pursuing research-rich education.