In this first issue of our Research Digest, we highlight three different articles and two progress notes, that intersect in the area of education and public policies. For our Research in Progress notes, Mark Ariba describes work he did with Dr. Phil Triadafilopoulos that seeks to understand the impact of immigration on schools in Ontario. I Younan An, working with Dr. Linda White, takes us to Cambodia, where he is examining the contradiction that is Cambodia: an authoritarian state that has surprising policies supporting social welfare.
For our articles, the three in this group explore different aspects of policies relating to education. In our first article, Dr. Samantha Burns, Jesseca Perlman and Dr. Michal Perlman examine children’s understandings of their early childhood education and care environments, to explore whether child perspectives should be included in policy related discussion around quality in those spaces. Tammy Kolbe and Dr. Elizabeth Dhuey examine the funding formulas around special education in the United States, and find that attempts to shift formulas in more equitable directions do not seem to have worked. And finally, Dr. Burns, Esther Yu, Jesseca Perlman, Kashish Kahlon and Dr. Perlman examine parental responses to a relatively new childcare policy in Canada, seeking to understand how it is shaping their family’s lives.
Future digests will explore other aspects of our work, including the development of interventions to promote learning in early childhood, and economic issues related to education systems
