I like your sporting analogy but I haven’t looked at professional development before and don’t have a view on what should be done in NZ. This paper is interesting, but it is still only one paper in a field with a vast quantity of research so I’d be very hesitant to draw policy conclusions from it. If you think cancelling professional development was crazy then perhaps the Ministerial paper recommending the change will give you an idea of the evidence that the Ministry reviewed.

As for my past assertions, I did a little work for MoE in NZ but a lot more for the Treasury and tertiary providers. More on the returns to education than operational policy.

As there was a grain of facile in my comment James, and thanks for your reply.

And back from holiday, I’m actually interested in exactly what your assertions as regards the teaching fraternity are. I have cruised back a long way in your posts here and the only relevant information I could find was that you once worked for the MoE before you departed our fair shores.

I read the paper you linked to and I was reminded of a talk by John Dybvig (remember him?) I attended where he was asked how he motivated his players. He replied that he motivated his players by teaching them skills so that when they hit the court they were ready and eager to demonstrate those skills. But our current government has all but cancelled professional development for our teachers. It seems to me that the paper you see as providing you with your empirics would support restoring and enhancing professional development for teachers.

What do you think?

They do, but it isn’t always empirical work that directly answers the question they’re talking about. Experts are usually asked about matters that require some judgment and inference because those are the interesting questions. They’re more likely to be right than a layperson, but that doesn’t mean the questions are a settled matter in their profession. So I was being facile, but it has a grain of truth!

Oh well…silly me.