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…
Beyond the mask: Decoding children’s mental health patterns amidst COVID-19 and the role of parenting
The COVID-19 pandemic has had a substantial impact on children and families worldwide. Children’s mental health has been at the forefront of pandemic research, with several observational studies documenting its decline. Limited person-centred research exists, however,...
Quantitative Analysis and Methods
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...
School segregation matters
When rich and poor kids attend separate schools, inequality deepens. The reasons why school sorting happens, and how deep it goes, varies dramatically by province.
Intervention Creation and Testing
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.
Designing Effective Policy Responses
School choice, policy feedback effects, and policy outcomes
Across OECD countries, education choice is proliferating as parents seek and governments permit choice both inside and outside public education systems. The movement of students out of the common public school, however, varies significantly across jurisdictions and sociodemographic characteristics such as race and class. This variation in individual decision making and macro policy outcomes directs us to theorise about the relationship between parental preferences, government responses, and policy outcomes.
Not Hidden but Not Visible
A growing body of comparative public policy research examines the effects of delegated delivery of public services and the related emergence of what is labelled a submerged state that obscures the role of government in the provision of public services.
Policy Frameworks and Parental Choice
Many children in Canada and the United States experience poor-quality child care on a regular basis. Under the rubric of “parent choice,” governments continue to permit a variety of licensed care providers (centers and homes) as well as unlicensed home child care providers.
Mailing Address
Department of Management
University of Toronto Scarborough
UTSC Instructional Centre
1095 Military Trail
Toronto, ON M1C 1A4
