As educational research intensifies so the demand that it be 'used' becomes stronger. This paper explores the ways in which different genres of educational research are read and understood by teacher educators and student teachers. The study will draw on Gee's (1996) concept of Discourses (with a capital D) which are defined as: 'ways of behaving, interacting, valuing, thinking, believing, speaking, and often reading and writing that are accepted as instantiations of particular roles (or types of people) by specific groups of people' (p. viii) Gee goes further and claims that people not only show their membership of a particular Discourse community through their choice of language and paralinguistic features but are also checking whether other people belong to the group or not. Discourses, in this sense, also have a gate-keeping function -tacitly deciding who belongs and who does not. This may account not only for the problems novice and experienced teachers have in reading, extracting and using the information embedded in educational research but also for the apparent widespread rejection of the discourse features of research papers. Kramsch (1995), however, argues that the key question is not whether teachers and researchers share the same 'Discourse' but whether communication between 'Discourses' actually works. He adds 'The problem then is not only a problem of discourse specifically but a problem of mediation between different discourse communities' p.49 Using this framework the paper will report on the ways in which different genres of research including: quantitative, qualitative, action research and case study are read and understood by student teachers (n=40) and university based teacher educators (n=12). Following Kennedy (1999) four issues will frame both the semi-structured interviews and the analysis. 1. Orientation. What do you think of the study? What did you find interesting or confusing? Was the text well written or not? Was it accessible? 2. Persuasiveness. List several things that you feel made the text persuasive or not. What do you think of the author? What about the quality of the writing? What about the sample? Is the evidence credible or fair? Is it believable? 3. Outcomes. What were the main findings of the research? Do you agree with the conclusions? What flaws were there in the evidence? 4. Relevance. Is the study relevant? Why? What implications might it have for your teaching/practice? How might you use it in your work?