Would you have glanced at this abstract had the title been: ‘Deontological perspectives in professional motivation: developing an epistemology by action research’? If you’re a practising school leader, probably not. And that’s the challenge for academics wanting to see our theories translated into practice in schools. How should we best communicate our findings to professionals? Conventional conference papers are not designed to provide information ready to be downloaded into daily school practice. Newspaper-style titles, like the one heading this abstract, can over-simplify carefully wrought, cautious research. Finding a compromise between these two extremes so that theory can indeed be linked to praxis is part of the debate engendered by the post-modernist disaspora in research methodology. Pluralism in research methodologies has become accepted but pluralism in the ways in which research can be reported is much less welcomed. This is a concern because research reports should tell their amazing stories of discovery in ways that so capture readers’ imaginations that they will act upon the outcomes. Research shows, however, that traditional academic formats for research writing are not very effective in encouraging professional action and in the UK, this has led to politicians being able to disparage research in education, especially small-scale, qualitative or narrative studies. This paper therefore explores alternative ways for reporting research. It needs an audience of academics willing to try something different and practising educationalists willing to advise on what they need. Oh – and the wine, of course.