Evidence-based practice in social care and health is widely promoted. Making it a reality remains challenging, largely because practitioners generally see practice-based knowledge as more relevant than empirical research.<br />A further challenge regarding the creative, contextual use of research and other evidence including lived experience and practice-based knowledge is that practitioners, especially in frontline care services, are often seen not as innovators, but recipients of rules and guidelines or followers of predetermined plans. Likewise, older people are not generally recognised as co-creators of knowledge, learning and development but as passive recipients of care, or objects of research.<br />This paper outlines a participatory action research project which brought together researchers, social care and health practitioners, managers, older people and carers in six sites across Wales and Scotland. Working collaboratively, and using a dialogic storytelling approach, they explored and addressed seven already published research-based ‘Challenges’ regarding what matters most to older people with high-support needs.<br />Taking a participatory, caring and emergent approach, participants discovered and addressed five elements required in developing evidence-enriched practice: the creation of supportive and relationship-centred research and practice environments; the valuing of diverse types of evidence; the use of engaging narratives to capture and share evidence; the use of dialogue-based approaches to learning and development; and the recognition and resolution of systemic barriers to development. Although existing literature covers each element, this project was novel in collectively exploring and addressing all five elements together, and in its use of multiple forms of story, which engaged hearts and minds.<br /><br />Key messages<br /><ul><li>People meaningfully engage with research evidence if they feel valued and have agency to lead their own learning</li><br /><li>People engage with research evidence when they can relate it to their own knowledge and experience</li><br /><li>Research evidence presented in story format is accessible and can act as a catalyst for dialogue-learning</li><br /><li>Dialogue-learning, stimulated by stories, supports the co-creation of knowledge and policy</li></ul>

The act of explaining can help students to develop new understandings of mathematical ideas, construct rules for solving problems, become aware of misunderstandings or a lack of understanding and develop their mathematical communication. Their explanations can also offer opportunities for a teacher to understand more fully what the students are thinking. Yet, previous research has focused mainly on tasks, questions and other teacher actions that prompt student explanations and on generalising what counts as an explanation. Using a conversation analytic approach, transcripts of mathematics lessons from different schools and different teachers were analysed, looking specifically at the interactions where students gave explanations. This paper describes two interactional contexts where students gave explanations without being explicitly asked for one by the teacher. The structures and content of the interactions in which these student explanations occur reveal further ways in which teachers can encourage students to offer explanations beyond asking how or why questions. We suggest that awareness of the underlying structures of interactions is likely to leave the teacher better equipped to exploit such situations as they arise in their classrooms.

Purpose – For health and social care services to become truly person-centred requires a fundamentally positive mindset from professionals and care workers, and a willingness to take some risks. The purpose of this paper is to explore how this will apply to delivering dementia services, where almost all of the initial impressions are of deficits, disability and disadvantage. Design/methodology/approach – The co-authors combine their knowledge and experience of supporting and developing staff working in dementia services. The concept of positive risk-taking is explored within the legislative framework of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, Safeguarding and the Care Act 2014. Findings – Practitioners face a range of challenges when it comes to supporting people living with dementia to take risks through exercising personal choices and making their own decisions. However, the concept of positive risk-taking applies equally to people living with dementia who have or who lack mental capacity in relation to their decision making. Originality/value – This paper places positive risk-taking within a context of strengths-based, values-based and relationship-based working. Practical tips are offered for putting positive risk-taking into practice.

Students explaining their mathematics is vital to the teaching and learning of mathematics, yet we know little about how to enable and support students to explain in whole class discussions beyond teachers asking particular questions. In this chapter we use a conversation analytic approach to explore the interactional structures that make student explanations relevant. Through a detailed examination of interactions where a student explanation occurs, three distinct structures are identified where a student explanation is perceived to be relevant Our focus in the analysis is the social actions students themselves do in their explanations to display their interpretation of the interaction as requiring an explanation and constraining the type of explanation. However, these structures also offer ways that teachers can use the structure of interaction to encourage students to offer explanations in their responses.

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