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Late-stage refocusing of Irish-language programme evaluation: Maximizing the potential for productive debate and remediation

The teaching and learning of Irish in primary school is both an important educational issue and central to the national language revitalization effort. The findings of Irish-language programme evaluations, therefore, are invariably scrutinized very closely by different sectors. This paper examines how the later stages of a major evaluation took account of challenging initial findings and anticipated likely misinterpretations of their implications. It documents how additional analyses, interpretative work, and careful reporting were used to provide a rich contextualization of the findings. In this way, the potential of the evaluation to generate productive debate and effective remedial action was maximized. The paper concludes with recommendations for how language program evaluators can guide the evaluation process in order to maximize contributions to critical decisions on language policy and educational practice.