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Drawing on socio-cultural theory, this paper describes how teams of teachers and researchers have developed ways of embedding information and communications technology (ICT) into everyday classroom practices to enhance learning. The focus is on teaching and learning across a range of subjects: English, history, geography, mathematics, modern foreign languages, music and science. The influence of young people's out-of-school uses of ICT on inschool learning is discussed. The creative tension between idiosyncratic and institutional knowledge construction is emphasised and we argue that this is exacerbated by the use of ICT in the classroom.

This article presents an argument for the greater use of design experiments, which can assist policy making because they provide both robust and timely evidence. We discuss their origins in education research, set out the methodology and propose some adaptations to the techniques used in these education studies to foster their application to a range of policy fields and problem areas. Design experiments need to meet two challenges. Can they provide valid evidence? Can they provide evidence that will be used by policy makers? Our argument shows how design experiments are robust when set against the classical canons of scientific study. We further claim that the design experiment approach offers a more viable means to developing evidence‐based policy making than other forms of evaluation because of the timeliness of the insights that it provides.

Using the concept of 'layers of community', this paper describes and explains the ways in which teams of teachers, teacher educators and researchers worked together on the research project InterActive Education: teaching and learning in the information age. The focus is on the development and dissemination of professional knowledge as it relates to teaching and learning that incorporates information and communications technology (ICT) as a tool. Drawing on a range of data, we illustrate how 'micro-', 'meso-' and 'macro'-communities inter-connect to create the settings for improved professional growth. The purpose is to challenge the linearity embedded in much of the professional development processes associated with ICT and to re-model the relationship between practice and research.

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