A narrative account of experiences at research-policy-practice interfaces in England—warts and all.

We provide a reflective, narrative account of work at research-policy-practice interfaces in foreign education in England; a public record of work undertaken between 2018 and 2023 for a very large government Department for Education (DfE) funded initiative to support pedagogy, curricula, and assessment for French, German and Spanish, via professional development (PD) and resources. We aspire to add to “evidence which fuels the hope that strong collaborative endeavours between traditional academic researchers, teachers and practitioner researchers are possible” (Consoli & Dikilias, 2021: 350). We describe clusters of interrelated activities, driven at pace, many of which were determined by pragmatic constraints. We end with a frank discussion about challenges and legacies, potentially offering lessons for large-scale research-policy-practitioner work.