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…
Enhancing Children’s Creativity in Early Childhood Education and Care: A Systematic Review and Multivariate Meta-Analysis of Studies Between 1969 and 2019
This study integrates evidence on the effectiveness of interventions within early childhood education and care (ECEC) settings that aimed to promote the development of creativity in young children, from birth to six years of age. We explored 44 studies based on 5,817...
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
Both Me and My Daughter Would Cry Sometimes: Parents’ and Children’s Experiences with Home Education During the Early and Later COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic led to unprecedented disruptions to children’s education across the globe, including abrupt transitions from in-person learning to learning from home. The current study investigates patterns of change in the educational challenges that 453...
Defining Peer Collaboration: A scoping review and network analysis
Peer collaboration is a complex skill that emerges in early childhood. However, researchers and practitioners lack a shared understanding/definition of what peer collaboration means and how to observe it in early educational settings. This review aimed to examine...
Conceptualizing and Operationalizing Creativity in Early Childhood Education and Care: A Scoping Review
Creativity has been identified as one of the most important skills of the 21st century. The development of creativity begins at an early age. Given that most children attend early childhood education and care (ECEC) during this critical developmental period, it is...
Designing Effective Policy Responses
The Role of Reflexive Learning in Universal Pre-kindergarten (UPK) Policy Formulation in Canada and the USA
Building on theories of social learning and policy change, this article argues that reflexive learning provides a causal mechanism for how public engagement in policy formulation can trigger policy innovation. Reflexive learning is a mode of learning that takes place during policy formulation and is most likely to occur in policy areas marked by considerable uncertainty and complexity (low problem tractability) and the participation of a wide range of actors (low actor certification).
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.
Mailing Address
Department of Management
University of Toronto Scarborough
UTSC Instructional Centre
1095 Military Trail
Toronto, ON M1C 1A4
