Whatever you do don’t let them mess with your head!”

Exploring the role of the professional doctorate as a vehicle for development of research practice within the context of CPD in Ireland State driven priorities and agendas have emerged in recent years as significant forces in the field of educational research and further professional learning. The arrival of the Teaching Council in 2006 and the rapid encroachment of performativity and competency based models in undergraduate teacher education programmes (where traditionally there has been much greater levels of state involvement), has led to a concern that these will supplant traditional university priorities in the domain of doctoral education in the field of education in Ireland. This is in contrast to the historical situation in which much educational research and higher professional studies were ad hoc and individualistic, based on committed, but eclectic personal inquiry.The introduction of the professional doctorate in 2004 in the Republic of Ireland is a new phenomenon and whilst much has been written on the rise (and supposed fall) of this kind of programme in other advanced capitalist societies, it has been greeted with much enthusiasm. The TCD course was designed to provide practitioners with a teaching and learning model which has at its core an enabling critical pedagogy concerned with building research capacity in Ireland in the context of the tensions of professional, university and state agendas. Drawing on data collected from students involved in the programme since its inception in 2005, our intention in this paper is to critically discuss this course in relation to the emergence of the students as reflexively oriented researchers. Our central argument in this paper is that for doctoral level work to have personal and professional impact, it needs to be set in a culture of critical co-enquiry within a non-teleological structure. More specifically, it has aimed to provide a context in which students can develop the skills, knowledge and understanding in order to be both critical ‘producers’ and ‘consumers’ of research. This emphasis on criticality is seen as being essential for ‘growth’ in becoming an educational researcher.