Childhood Education In Canada Research Articles

Centering Black life in Canadian early childhood education

ABSTRACT This paper is a response to multiculturalism’s reductionist and othering constructions of Black presence in Canadian early childhood research and practice. We engage in possibilities for creating movement away from multiculturalism as the primary way of responding to anti-Blackness in Canadian early childhood education. We put forward orientations that emerge when we imagine the abolition of Canadian early childhood education pedagogies and curriculum that are shaped by neoliberal multiculturalism. We organize our abolitionist praxis in relation to what kinds of stories and modes of storytelling of Black life might be needed in early childhood education in Canada. We focus our attention on three interconnected pedagogical orientations: storying abolition geographies, storying Black ecologies, and storying Black aliveness.

Early Childhood Education in Canada During a Pandemic

Early Childhood Education in Canada During a Pandemic

Propositions toward educating pedagogists: Decentering the child

The authors propose decentering the child as a critical motion in the education of pedagogists who work to refuse developmental pedagogies in early childhood education. Tracing how child-centered developmental practices are obstacles for deeper ethical and intellectual work and reiterate anthropocentric relationalities, they offer two propositions toward decentering the child that they emphasize in pedagogists’ learning: refusing legitimation through mastery and abandoning narratives of linearity. The authors advance these propositions within an intention to reinvent the relational commons that anchor pedagogists’ learning and practice while responding to the complexities of early childhood education in Canada.

Doing pedagogical conversations (with spirituality and fat) as pedagogists in early childhood education

Abstract In this article, the authors respond to emerging articulations of the work of a pedagogist or pedagogical facilitator in early childhood education in Canada. This article is grounded in two intentions: we (1) share the tentative pedagogical conversations that we have as pedagogists who centre particular concerns, interests, and accountabilities; and we (2) launch our conversation from our desire to re-imagine how everyday pedagogies shape children’s experiences with spiritual knowings and children’s relations with fat. Sharing a narration from a pedagogical inquiry research project, we each offer a familiar developmental reading of the moment, gesture toward a partial re-engagement grounded in post-developmental pedagogies, and then weave our thinking with spirituality and fat together to complexify our propositions. We intentionally refuse to define the work of a pedagogist in a universalizable or technical manner. Instead, we argue that putting our pedagogist work into conversation draws our practices into uneasy, difficult, often contradictory relations and makes visible some potential futures (and their exclusions) we enact as we work to answer to the complex education spaces we inherit and re-create with educators and children.

Early Childhood Education in Canada: Are We in Motion or Are We Stepping Forward?

Early Childhood Education in Canada: Are We in Motion or Are We Stepping Forward?

Aboriginal early childhood education in Canada: Issues of context

Herein we provide a literature synthesis pertaining to the state of Aboriginal early childhood education in Canada. We identify key features of quality Aboriginal early childhood programs. The background and significance of early childhood education for Aboriginal peoples is explicated. Cultural compatibility theory is employed as the philosophical basis to conceptualize quality Aboriginal early childhood education. Based on this theoretical premise, we suggest Aboriginal early childhood programs should incorporate Aboriginal pedagogy, be infused with Aboriginal language and culture, be adequately staffed by qualified Aboriginal educators, be structured to empower Aboriginal communities and incorporate full-day kindergarten. Prominent Aboriginal early childhood programs are featured within the article.

Larry Prochner. A History of Early Childhood Education in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Larry Prochner. A History of Early Childhood Education in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.

Building a Strong and Equal Partnership between Childcare and Early Childhood Education in Canada

AbstractSplit early childhood education and childcare systems (ECEC) have historically been a common phenomenon, but today many countries are moving towards more coherent approaches to ECEC. Canada, however, has continued to maintain a divided ECEC situation. Reviewing Canada’s ECEC in 2004, the OECD suggested that greater integration of kindergarten and childcare would bring real advantages. In 2007, Ontario, Canada’s largest province, began to develop integrated “full-day early learning” for all four and five year olds. In the initial phase, several key challenges have emerged: first, merging the public kindergarten system with market-driven childcare; second, financing the new program; third, maintaining stability in user-pay childcare as four and five year olds move to the new program; fourth, determining staffing models, bridging differences between kindergarten and childcare staff; and fifth, managing the phase-in. How Ontario meets these challenges will have major implications for the future of ECEC programs across Canada.