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The growth, internationally, in professional doctorates over the last 25 years has been well documented, as are the forms, fields and disciplines that such doctorates embrace. Yet relatively little is known about the professional tensions teachers encounter, in relation to their positionality, when carrying out doctoral research in the schools where they work. This paper draws attention, not only to the contribution the Professional Doctorate in Education (EdD) makes to research as a whole, but also to the significance of teachers as invaluable members of the research community. Findings will be presented from interviews with 30 senior teachers from schools in England who are carrying out practitioner research as part of their doctoral studies. The paper draws attention to how power relations in the research process ferment the structural and agentic concerns of the participants in this study when discussing their researcher positionality. The scholarly significance of this study is its contribution to knowledge of how schools are increasingly becoming both sites of research and research-rich environments. With its focus on researcher positionality the paper draws attention not just to the tensions and dilemmas these participants encounter on their doctoral journey, but also to the importance of teacher researchers and their role in research knowledge production.

In BERA's 50th anniversary, this special issue of the Curriculum Journal recognises the debt to the work of Lawrence Stenhouse, former BERA President, and founder of the British Curriculum Forum (BCF), and his influence on teachers' work in researching and developing the curriculum. Papers in this issue address what Stenhouse called the central problem of evidence‐informed practice: ‘the gap between our ideas and our aspirations and our attempts to operationalise them’ (Stenhouse, 1975, 2–3). Stenhouse's legacy for curriculum models and thinking, both within the four home countries and internationally, highlights the methodologies and theoretical perspectives that inform teachers as researchers and how we understand and evaluate such frames of reference. Approaches to involving teachers as researchers examined in this collection resonate with BERA's strategic plan to build on its links with practitioners, set in the context of BCF and its work to support teachers' curriculum research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]