This paper reports on findings emerging from the analysis of data collected when evaluating an online professional development course for teachers from four different countries, with a particular focus on comparison of attitudes to professional development. The underlying motivation for the course lay in a concern that teacher should be able to address the needs of schoolchildren today growing up to face complex, changing environments ‘where creativity, innovation, initiative, entrepreneurship and commitment to continuous learning are as important as knowledge’ (Caena, 2011: 2). For children and young people to acquire the complex and analytical skills and dispositions needed to adapt to such environments, schools should provide appropriate teaching to develop students’ ‘21st century skills’ - collaboration, creativity, ICT (information and communication technology), communication and problem-solving - to meet workplace requirements (Dede, 2004; 2009). Teachers, particularly those trained before the relevance of such skills became apparent, are likely to need to develop their practice and perhaps also to change their attitudes to what children need to learn and how teachers can help them to do this; they should therefore be offered accessible, sensitive and effective professional development to help them to achieve this.

Teachers’ career-long professional learning is now attracting widespread attention (Livingston 2014) as teacher quality is seen as having the greatest influence on student outcomes, and a lack of sufficient qualified/well-performing staff as being associated with reductions in the quality of teaching in schools(Whitehouse, 2011; European Commission, 2014:10). The areas which teachers themselves identify as most in need of development include ‘skills deficits that reflect the changing circumstances of teaching, linked to ICT (both its use for teaching and teachers’ work more generally) and the growing diversity of groups of learners (teaching students with special needs and in multilingual/multicultural settings)’ (European Commission, 2014: 20)

The increasing need for professional development to promote 21^st century skills is however occurring at a time when schools are under pressure from budgetary constraints and regulatory demands that emphasise achievement in traditional/basic skills over the collaborative and communicative skills needed for lifelong learning in a changing globalised workplace. Although the importance of 21^st century skills might be recognised in policy, in practice tight budgets in schools are likely to prioritise training for more immediate concerns such as poor performance in literacy and numeracy.

These considerations, taken together, underpinned the course design; it needed to be accessible, appropriate and economical (in terms of time, money and effort). The specific topics chosen to be covered during the course emerged originally out of professional development needs in the Spanish context, but were also influenced by the interests of project partners forged through participation in numerous international projects over the last ten years, many of which had focused on supporting acquisition of European Key Competences. The course was piloted in Spain, UK, Ireland and Lithuania, with participating teachers encouraged to take on the role of co-researchers to address the following research questions:

To what extent is online study using materials developed through international projects an appropriate vehicle to develop teachers’ practice?

What variations are there in teachers’ engagement with the topics chosen, and to what extent can these be related to differences in their experiences of and attitudes towards the acquisition of 21^st century skills, or to professional development in general?

The analysis of teachers’ responses was informed by Tobin’s dialogic approach to fieldwork, and an expectation that opportunities for teachers to find out about practice in other countries, as well as making the strange familiar, might also help to make the familiar strange, thereby prompting deeper reflection on practice in their own context (Tobin, 1999).

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