Teachers as researchers, as a term, carries with it a particular dynamic. It seems to lack an authenticity. Try it out elsewhere: librarian as poet, unemployed single mother as writer, seamstress as political activist.  That these refer respectively to Philip Larkin, Rosa Parks and J.K Rowling may give a flavour of the feeling we have that the term is simply patronising.  In our respective roles as pre-service teacher educators, we do not recognise ourselves in the term researcher as teacher. We are both — not one acting as the other. So we should like to offer the term teacher and researcher to describe the group of people who have contributed to this special edition of English Teaching: Practice and Critique. Some of us work in a school context, which in itself is not an homogeneous concept, representing as our contributors do academically successful schools, struggling schools, comprehensive schools, single-sex schools, independent schools, community schools — labels do not do justice to variety but may indicate the diversity of perceptions the group holds. Some of us work in a University context; some in advisory roles with a variety of schools. We are all involved in the same quest: developing an understanding of the ways in which education works and how different practices impacts on the English/literacy classroom. And this volume, it is hoped, will enable us to contribute to that body of knowledge.