This introductory paper will contextualise some of the issues the papers grapple with by a depiction of the CETL programme as an explicit theory of change and also within the broadly social practice theoretical stance they adopt to work, learning connections. By this, the papers have broadly adopted the perspective that denotes a concern with activity, with behaviour, with what people do, what they value and what meanings they ascribe either singly, in groups, in institutions through their systems, or nationally through national managing structures