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…
The Economics of Age at School Entry: Insights from Evidence and Methods
This article reviews the growing literature on age at school entry and its effects over the life course. Age at school entry affects a broad range of outcomes, including education, labor-market performance, health, social relationships, and family formation. We...
Quantitative Analysis and Methods
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.
Does work-integrated learning provide a labour market advantage?
Proponents of “on-the-job” training say it provides a vital supplement to in-class learning. But does it really help graduates get jobs?
The book or the bank?
Our latest report breaks down which factor has a greater effect on Canadians’ educational attainment: their parents’ education, or their parents’ income level.
Intervention Creation and Testing
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...
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,...
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
