This is a seminar on the IoE Doctoral School Research Training Programme and is open to all IoE research students and staff. The convenor is Dr Paul Dowling. The seminar will address research activity at the level of theorisation and conceptualisation. In part, it is interested in demystifying conceptual work and, in part, in focusing on our theoretical research activities as work which can be approached in a systematic way, without loss of creativity or innovation. The programme examines ways of critically assessing both our own and others' ideas and assumptions; sources of problems (in both positive, productive and negative unproductive senses); and the relevance of different kinds of 'theory' to different kinds of research activity, empirical or otherwise. Exemplification and development are aimed at the research students' own problems and encourage thinking in terms of the 'do-ability' of their projects.