Engaging with research, and ensuring research evidence is used well, is key to professionalising education policy making processes, and ultimately to improving educational outcomes. But the systematic use of evidence in policy making faces many challenges. This policy brief draws on evidence from the OECD Strengthening the Impact of Education Research project’s country learning seminars, as well as the project’s policy survey that collected responses from ministries of education in 37 education systems from 29 countries. The project is based in the OECD’s Centre for Educational Research and Innovation (CERI). This brief presents a set of case studies on two questions: • What human resource strategies can build individual and collective civil service professionalism? • What stable structures and mechanisms can contribute to the systematic and thoughtful use of evidence in policy processes?