As we discussed with regard to leadership in Part 1, the context in which the public health tools are used has a bearing on the choice of tool and how it is implemented. In the second part of Essential Public Health: Theory and Practice, we consider a range of contemporary contexts in which public health is practised and illustrate how the tools we have described are applied.

As scholars and activists seek to define and promote greater corporate political responsibility (CPR), they will benefit from understanding practitioner perspectives and how executives are responding to rising scrutiny of their political influences, reputational risk and pressure from employees, customers and investors to get involved in civic, political, and societal issues. This chapter draws on firsthand conversations with practitioners, including executives in government affairs; sustainability; senior leadership; and diversity, equity and inclusion, during the launch of a university-based CPR initiative. I summarize practitioner motivations, interests, barriers and challenges related to engaging in conversations about CPR, as well as committing or acting to improve CPR. Following the summary, I present implications for further research and several possible paths forward, including leveraging practitioners’ value on accountability, sustaining external calls for transparency, strengthening awareness of systems, and reframing CPR as part of a larger dialogue around society’s “social contract.”

In this concluding chapter, we give a brief overview of the key themes in the book, emphasizing the importance of care in the relational pedagogy we have been discussing. We argue that practitioners should take children seriously by seeking their perspectives and identifying what matters for them while building common knowledge with them and working relationally to help take forward their social situations of development. But our primary purpose here is to look forward and consider the implications of the subtle skilled work we are advocating for practitioners. Care alone is insufficient. Practitioners who work with children and families need knowledge of child and adolescent development; subject matter knowledge in schools, and for other caring professionals their core professional knowledge, such as legal responsibilities for social workers; and knowledge of pedagogy. The professional interactions with children, families and other practitioners in a relational pedagogy are reciprocal, involving ongoing mutual engagement, where power differences are played down, and professional agency is crucial. Much therefore depends on how institutional leaders mediate government policies: Creating and supporting agentic responsive practitioners is a leadership responsibility. Questions of values therefore crucially underpin the ideas shared in this book.

Working in applied settings presents unique challenges and complexities with respect to research. Researchers have often commented on the scientist–practitioner divide, but there is a lack of information about the specific challenges and constraints of doing applied work that may contribute to this divide. As a group of applied social and behavioral scientists, we discuss what individuals should know, understand, and expect regarding the work practitioners conduct in applied settings. We describe the challenges of applied work as they relate to some topics covered earlier in this volume and identify other unique aspects of applied work. We conclude by discussing how an individual can approach deciding whether applied work is a fit with one’s interests.

Given the individual and societal consequences of teen drug use, prevention efforts have increased in order to help avoid years of the debilitating effects that substance use has on the health and lifespan development of adolescents. Prevention programming focuses on changing adolescents’ existing habits that precede occurrence or worsening of the substance use behavior, whereas cessation intervention efforts focus on disrupting behavior patterns and offering proper treatment. Providing high-quality substance use prevention programs to adolescents requires sound, evidence-based material, implementation fidelity, interactive practitioner involvement, and use of appropriate delivery channels. When implementing these programs, practitioners need to consider the neurobiological, cognitive, social, and environmental aspects of substance use among youth to effectively address crucial time-points and processes during an adolescent’s life, such as puberty. Practitioners should also be aware of emerging threats to adolescents, such as use of marijuana, e-cigarettes, and opioids, and co-occurring substance use and mental disorders.

This final chapter focuses on professionalism and the contribution of research engagement to educators’ professional knowledge and identities. It briefly revisits the systemic positioning of practitioner research in other countries before elaborating on the current vision of professional standards for educators in Australia. While the standards relate to the broad and diverse aspects of professional practice for teachers, there are explicit references to research engagement in some standards and there is also scope for research to help educators to ensure they are addressing the others. Throughout this chapter we ask the reader to consider the potential of engagement with and in research for supporting educators’ professional growth, and promoting school improvement and collective leadership. The chapter also focuses on the attitudes, beliefs, and perceptions of pre-service and in-service teachers in relation to practitioner research as they seek to develop their own professional identities.

This chapter focuses primarily on: making connections among the research questions, creating a manageable research design and deciding on data collection methods. The aim is to assist you with designing a study to answer the research question or questions within the constraints of your context. The chapter begins with a focus on different research paradigms and presents a case for a pragmatic research approach that aligns with the goals of the research. Our intention is not to present a narrow view of possible research approaches, but to make a case for a diverse range of approaches, including those commonly used by practitioners such as evaluation research, action research, and self-study.

This chapter deals with the organisation, analysis and presentation of data. It begins with suggestions about how to arrange your data during and after collection. Examples of commonly used qualitative and quantitative data analyses for practitioner research are described, along with ideas for collating and presenting both quantitative and qualitative data once you have completed your analyses. Bear in mind that if your study used mixed methods, you will find both the quantitative and qualitative sections relevant to you.

In this chapter, we deal with practical considerations that need to be taken into account when planning practitioner research. Initial planning for practitioner research requires considerable thought as to the logistics of the proposed undertaking. The process for pre-service teachers is often guided by the requirements of assessment, while in-service educators are less constrained and less often guided by others. We continue the focus on practical considerations by revisiting the research questions, noting the practical considerations that are involved when formulating initial questions and planning a research project. The other important practicalities of research dealt with in this chapter are ethics and ethical approval – essential considerations that are central to any research. Ethical principles and application processes are the focus of the latter part of the chapter.

This chapter deals with the challenges, opportunities and potential outcomes of practitioner research. It reconnects with the ideas of Chapters 2 and 3 to allow readers to reflect on the practicalities of practitioner research in terms of challenges and opportunities. Rather than present the challenges as barriers to practitioner research, the chapter discusses approaches that may enable practitioner researchers to reflect on the challenges and develop strategies for managing or minimising their impact. Just as it is important to acknowledge that practitioner research is not without certain challenges (as is the case with any research), it is essential to focus on the opportunities that practitioner research affords educators; we describe what we believe to be the major sources of opportunity in this chapter. The final section of the chapter provides authentic examples of outcomes of practitioner research in multiple contexts as a means to illustrate the possibilities that practitioner research offers when educators complete their research projects.

This chapter deals with the synthesis and discussion of findings with a view to answering the research questions. In the previous chapters we focused on designing and conducting the research project, so at this stage, we are assuming you have collected and analysed your data, and are ready to write about them. At the heart of many practitioner research projects is the goal of gathering data to promote or support evidence-based decision-making in classrooms or schools. Whatever your purpose, formulating the different aspects of the discussion is an important step in the research process. It is not a simple task to provide instructions on how to write a discussion – we believe this is best achieved by providing examples to illustrate the ideas and through your own writing practice. As this chapter proceeds, we will focus on the different aspects of the discussion, using case studies to illustrate each of them.

The focus of this chapter is on disseminating practitioner research. It emphasises the reasons why dissemination of research is important and discusses why practitioners should write about their research work. In this chapter, we present a number of ideas for dissemination, including informal avenues of dissemination (such as school-level presentations), as well as more formal means, including journal articles (for both research and professional journals) and conference presentations (oral and poster). The focus on academic writing in Chapter 4 will be extended in this chapter to include writing and structural conventions common to more formal dissemination genres (such as articles and conference papers). This chapter will also revisit the ethical considerations introduced in Chapter 3 to consider ethics regarding the dissemination of results.