An Evaluation of Ministry of Education Funded Early Childhood Education Professional Development Programmes 2003

Introduction

The Ministry of Education commissioned this evaluation to examine three aspects of professional development (PD) in the early childhood education (ECE) sector: describing the current delivery of PD; identifying barriers and success factors for delivery of the PD programmes; and identifying their impact. The evaluation covered the provision of whole centre PD in the calendar year 2000.

Three factors have been identified by two earlier studies (Allan and Gibson, 1994; Gaffney and Smith, 1997) as central to any evaluation of PD in the early childhood sector. They are: the process of facilitation, including the development of relationships; the structure of the PD programmes; and those features of the PD programmes or the sector itself that impact on the ability to maximise the gains from undertaking PD.