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It is difficult to replicate evidence-informed models of psychosocial and assertive care interventions in non-research settings, and means to determine workforce capability for psychosocial therapies have not been readily available. The purpose of this paper is to describe and provide a rationale for the Therapy Capability Framework (TCF) which aims to enhance access to, and quality of, evidence-informed practice for consumers of mental health services (MHSs) by strengthening workforce capabilities and leadership for psychosocial therapies.

Guided by literature regarding the inadequacies and inconsistencies of evidence-informed practice provided by publicly-funded MHSs, this descriptive paper details the TCF and its application to enhance leadership and provision of evidence-informed psychosocial therapies within multi-disciplinary teams.

The TCF affords both individual and strategic workforce development opportunities. Applying the TCF as a service-wide workforce strategy may assist publicly-funded mental health leaders, and other speciality health services, establish a culture that values leadership, efficiency, and evidence-informed practice.

This paper introduces the TCF as an innovation to assist publicly-funded mental health leaders to transform standard case management roles to provide more evidence-informed psychosocial therapies. This may have clinical and cost-effective outcomes for public MHSs, the consumers, carers, and family members.

This chapter discusses the development of evidence-informed practice in Australian education. It highlights growing system-wide aspirations and support for Australian teachers, school leaders, and jurisdictions to be engaging productively with research and evidence. Our aim here is to step back from these developments and consider them in the context of: (1) the nature and distinctive characteristics of the Australian school system; (2) what is known (and not known) about Australian educators' use of research and evidence; and (3) recent insights into enablers and barriers to research use in Australian schools. We argue that the development of evidence-informed practice in Australia needs to take careful account of the complex history and fatalist nature of the wider school system. This will make it possible to identify and work with the productive places that exist within a system of this kind. It is also important to recognize that research use in schools is a topic that has been investigated surprisingly little in Australia relative to other countries internationally. Current policy aspirations around evidence-informed approaches therefore need to be matched by greater efforts to understand the dynamics of research engagement in Australian schools and school systems.

The Austrian education system can be classified as an egalitarian system. This is due to the fact that although it is a centrally governed system, the implementation of reforms is the responsibility of the schools. Regarding this implementation, in turn, there is a low level of accountability for the schools to the education administration. Consequently, this has implications for the way how and from whom evidence is handled within the system. Despite the increased emphasis on evidence-informed decision-making, current trends are leading away from nationally coordinated approaches (abolition of the regular and external assessment of national educational standards) and towards locally based initiatives (informal competences assessments). In this context, extended autonomy for schools plays a crucial role as schools received more responsibilities for decision-making. After a detailed description of the Austrian education system, the following article shows how evidence-informed practice is supported within the system by means of selected instruments and projects. Furthermore, relevant groups of actors are identified and analysed in terms of their competences and thus responsibilities for evidence-informed practice. From the analysis, facilitating and hindering factors for evidence-informed teaching and leading are identified.

Evidence-informed practice (EIP), broadly conceived as a data and research-based approach to enhance practice, has recently come to the fore of the Irish education system. With changes to the structure and duration of professional education over the last decade, most notably Initial Teacher Education (ITE) programs, coupled with the implementation of a school leadership framework upon which a mandatory data-informed school improvement process of school self-evaluation (SSE) is based, multiple reforms connected to EIP have been introduced. Furthermore, in terms of compulsory education, assessment practices at the lower secondary level have also been significantly reformed. EIP has now become a core element of almost all educational reform initiatives in Ireland. This is a remarkable achievement given that prior to the Education Act (Government of Ireland, 1998) the conception that data and research-informed decision-making should form a core component part of school life was rarely conceived if at all in the policy discourse of educational reform. We draw on the Malin et al. (2020) interpretation of Hoods (1998) social cohesion/regulation matrix to describe and classify the Irish system. The chapter concludes with a discussion of key lessons for policy and practice based on Ireland's experience over the course of the last decade.

This article examines the challenges facing agencies working across social care, health, education and voluntary sector boundaries in leading a drive for evidence‐informed practice (EIP). A study conducted by Research in Practice has identified the competencies and functions that managers deem most important to lead an EIP initiative successfully. Views about agencies' current capabilities and confidence to do so vary. Leadership development opportunities are generally perceived as poor. Plans are outlined for an action learning project within the Research in Practice network to support managers to lead EIP effectively.

Teachers across the globe have been called upon to employ evidence-informed practices to guide instructional decision-making. Using a social regulation/cohesion matrix and institutional theory analytic lens can help illuminate the barriers and enablers shaping teachers' efforts to use evidence in different policy contexts. In the US, there is social cohesion with respect to public schooling as well as a high degree of regulation with respect to accountability. In this chapter, we closely examine the work of a teacher team in a California middle school that we studied for four years using case study methods. While teachers on this team shared an interest in evidence use and were open to trying research-based practices in their own classrooms, doing so consistently was challenging. The teacher team's use of evidence to inform practice was shaped by three themes. First, several capacity-building opportunities provided teachers with support for drawing on research-based practices as well as eliciting student thinking as a form of evidence on student learning. However, lack of cohesion across these opportunities functioned as a barrier to effective implementation of strategies. Finally, a strong focus on accountability ultimately constrained the team's ability to consistently use evidence to inform daily practice. Lessons for policy and practice are discussed.

This introductory chapter to “The Emerald Handbook of Evidence-Informed Practice in Education: Learning from International Contexts” describes the volume's purpose/intended contribution, analytic framework, and organization. Accordingly, first it provides a definition of evidence-informed practice while also outlining challenges and benefits of broadly bringing it about. This chapter explains how comparative analyses using systems approaches – which have, to date, been scarce and limited – can hold great potential for achieving context-specific insights regarding how to foster EIP. The present volume, as noted in the chapter, aims to do just this: It houses a massive, international comparative study of educators' patterns of evidence use across a range of global contexts. Volume contributors each followed a particular, dual analytic framework, which is detailed in this chapter. The chapter concludes with a description of how the volume is organized and provides a brief thematic analysis to showcase the volume's intended contribution.

South Africa is a developing country with an education system that remains in crisis, despite three decades of democracy. The vestiges of South Africa's oppressive past continues to plague a system where repeated efforts at top-down transformation and curriculum renewal have failed to create the change required (Roodt, 2018). Extensive country-wide research attests to persistent inequalities linked to poverty, unemployment, and poor educational outcomes, effectively trapping disadvantaged communities in downward spirals (World Bank, 2018). As in most other countries, evidence-informed practice (EIP) has been widely discussed and advocated for in South Africa, with the matric (school leavers') results resurging the conversation annually. Unfortunately, as is the case in many developing countries, it is well documented that the actual implementation of EIP is not as widespread as desired.

This chapter reviews and analyzes the use of EIP in South Africa through an exploration of the various spaces where EIP is reported to occur within the broader education landscape. Examples of teacher and school level EIP innovations, led by a wide variety of actors within the system, are evident – this despite the pervasive lack of resources, support, and effective leadership within the formal education system. Through reflecting on these ‘pockets of hope,’ which were found to exist not only within, but also outside and alongside the system, we hope to gather insights and initiate debate on how the uptake of EIP might be better informed and facilitated within the broader South African public education system.