1 ICT Professional Development and Teacher Training in the New Zealand Education Sector

communications technology (ICT) initiatives across the education sector from early childhood to the tertiary level, including initial teacher education and continuing professional development. It centres on ‘connectivity’, ‘content ’ and building ‘confidence and capability’. This paper focuses mostly on confidence and capability initiatives. It takes a critical look at the framework and other related policy documents to explore progress in developing and supporting e-learning and to identify some of the challenges inherent in making sustainable and consistent progress towards the integration of ICT in learning. An e-Learning Action Plan was released by the Ministry in July 2006, to complement the ICT Strategic Framework, just as a new draft curriculum was released for consultation. While there are many points of positive progress, and the overall direction is apparent, the key challenge appears to lie in creating substantial interactions between initiatives. At this stage, it is difficult to get a sense of how the outcomes of each initiative are being deliberately amalgamated to build the momentum tha