Explore:
Inequities in early childhood education and care (ECEC), formal education and youth training.
Test:
Novel solutions to known problems, collaborating with stakeholders.
Create:
Knowledge mobilization tools, including evidence-informed policy.
We draw on multidisciplinary insights from many fields, including economics, applied psychology and human development, and political science. We work with researchers across Canada and abroad to answer questions, develop interventions and mobilize information.
Featured Insight…
Navigating Technology in the classroom
A scoping review of technology use during peer collaboration in early educational settings. Early educational settings such as early childhood education and care and kindergarten (i.e. formal schooling) are important contexts to foster children’s peer collaboration, an important skill for the 21st century.
Quantitative Analysis and Methods
More Money Is Not Enough: (Re)Considering Policy Proposals to Increase Federal Funding for Special Education
New policy proposals to increase funding for the American Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA)—including recent efforts by the Biden-Harris administration to “fully fund” IDEA—bring a new sense of urgency to understanding how federal special education...
Unequal and Increasingly Unfair: How Federal Policy Creates Disparities in Special Education Funding
The formula used to allocate federal funding to US states for special education is one of IDEA's most critical components. The formula serves as the primary mechanism for dividing available federal dollars among states and represents policy makers’ intent to equalize...
Will the Increased Investment in Early Childhood Education and Care in Canada Pay off? It Depends!
This article explores the potential impact of the increased investment in early childhood education and care (ECEC) in Canada. With a multi-billion-dollar investment committed to making high-quality care accessible, affordable, flexible, and inclusive for all...
Intervention Creation and Testing
Can a Brief Professional Development Improve Early Childhood Educators’ Responsivity and Interaction Quality in Childcare Centers?
High-quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) – particularly care defined by highly responsive interactions between educators and children – has the potential to have lasting positive impacts on children’s development. While there is variability in the level of quality among early education and care settings, professional development for early childhood educators has been shown to be an effective means to improve both ECEC quality and child outcomes.
Cultivating Young Minds
Creativity and self-directed learning (SDL) have been identified as two key skills that children need to develop for success in the 21st century. As such, developing such skills has become a priority. High quality early childhood education and care (ECEC) can play a pivotal role in supporting a myriad of children’s developmental outcomes.
Increasing engagement with online learning platforms for unemployed youth
Exposure to online learning platforms, such as LinkedIn Learning, Coursera, and EdX has been increasing. However, keeping people engaged once they sign up remains a significant barrier.
Designing Effective Policy Responses
Understanding Unlicensed Early Childhood Education and Care Utilization in Canada
This study examined early childhood education and care (ECEC) utilization in Canada,
focusing on use of unlicensed home child care (HCC) from an equity perspective. Data from the 2011 cycle of the General Social Survey (GSS) were used. Across Canada, parent responses reveal that 16.6% of children between the age of 12 months and entry to school were in unlicensed HCC.
Child care policy and child care burden
The policy feedback literature highlights that the design of public policies can affect recipients’ experience of those policies and programs. In this paper, we examine the largely unexplored distributional implications of market-based early childhood education and care (ECEC) services.
Charting the Rise of School Choice across Canadian Provinces
This article introduces and discusses the findings of the Canada School Choice Policy Index (CSCPI). This is the first index of its kind that measures the development of school choice policies across the Canadian provinces from 1980 to 2020 using eight unique indicators of choice.
Mailing Address
Department of Management
University of Toronto Scarborough
UTSC Instructional Centre
1095 Military Trail
Toronto, ON M1C 1A4
