Background The project Teaching and Learning for the 21st Century (TL21) was a major research and development initiative in CPD, running from 2003 to 2008. Funding of €1.35 million came from a philanthropic foundation, with supplementary funding from Ireland’s Ministry of Education and from our own university. The project had two main dimensions: (a) an action research dimension to promote new attitudes and practices among teachers and school leaders; (b) a policy development dimension to promote innovative CPD policy in Ireland and to inform policy discourse on CPD internationally. The project’s National Advisory Committee and International Consultative Panel featured leading figures in Irish education and in educational research internationally (www.nuim.ie/TL21). Recent educational reforms in Ireland didn’t commence until the late nineties. They were stimulated not by concerns about standards, but by a necessity for modernisation. The schools – particularly post-primary schools – had largely become prisoners of the past. Because this past was widely seen as successful, though on a narrow idea of success, there was much resistance to change. Research Questions (1) The fundamental question for the action research dimension was: How might the project’s CPD interventions best promote a shift in the professional cultures of the 15 participating schools, thus cultivating teachers as the authors of their own work and enabling students to become active and responsible participants in their own learning? The project’s interventions featured workshops for teachers and school leaders, leading to specific initiatives by practitioners in their schools, followed by exchanges of progress reports at the next workshops, followed by further practitioner initiatives – and so on in an intensifying cycle. (2) The main question for the policy development dimension was: How might emergent gains and insights from the action research dimension best be shared with policymakers, so as to promote a research-informed consensus on the development of national policy on CPD? A visit to the project in September 2005 by an EU delegation – policymakers and educational researchers from 12 European countries – strongly affirmed this dimension's work and helped to refine it further. Conceptual Framework. The action research dimension had a fallibilist (i.e. self-critical) character, as distinct from following one or other school of AR methodology. The ‘conversational’ character of the policy development dimension embraced a similarly demanding discipline. It owed much, though in an unannounced way, to the kinds of understanding yielded by hermeneutic philosophy.

Methodology or Methods etc. In the action research dimension, regular workshops and seminars were hosted by the project team to increase teachers’ capacities in becoming innovative practitioners and their own best critics as action researchers. Features like the five following ones distinguished these workshops from more traditional forms of CPD: active participation, clearly-defined tasks, purposeful collaboration, continuity between workshops, feedback. There were also overnight seminars on campus at the beginning and end of each school year, featuring International Consultative Panel members. In the policy development dimension, the dynamics of productive dialogue received particular attention. It was important to understand, but also work outside of, the internal politics of the various national agencies that were the project’s conversational partners. We focused on eliciting, and refining co-operatively, the ingredients of a research-informed consensus. Communicative action approaches suggested by works of Gadamer, Habermas, Benhabib, R.J. Bernstein, proved especially fruitful in this connection.

The exhibitions and colloquia that accompanied the project’s interim report (Autumn 2005), its final active phase (Spring 2007) and the collective review of its final report (May 2008), all provided convincing evidence of the project’s achievements. This evidence included DVD recordings with many examples of changed practices and attitudes in classrooms and staffrooms. Ministry officials acknowledged that the TL21 project had deeply influenced their thinking on the future of CPD provision. The project’s experience has also suggested some illuminating, yet tentative answers to questions like the following, which we would like to share with European colleagues: 1. Is there a danger that, in engaging regularly with policymaking agencies, one’s critical distance and research objectivity will be compromised? 2. Do considerations of methodological rigour lose out here in favour of more pragmatic considerations? 3. Can a ‘research-informed consensus’ be distinguished from the ‘consensualism’ frequently condemned by critical theorists in education?