AECEO Mini Course: Digital Storytelling – “Community of Care” with Meike, RECE

About this mini course: Digital Storytelling is a process used to tell personal and organizational stories in powerful, evocative ways. This versatile method for telling and deep listening begins with a story circle process. Each story then becomes the script for a 3 to 4 minute multi-media video.

“When I signed up to participate in the Digital Storytelling Workshop, the appeal was to expand my digital skills. What happened was the digital component became the backdrop to making connections with other educators. Each person in the group shared a love for early learning and were professionals who had personal stories to tell. We each shared our stories with others who understand how important human development is at any age. The feedback and support we received during this process was kind, considerate and thoughtful. We also learned how our stories are political, motivating and changemaking. It became more than just learning a new computer program.”

Check out their digital story “Community of Care”.

The Economic Benefits of Expanded Child Care Services in Ontario

This economic analysis was commissioned by the Ontario Coalition for Better Child Care and the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario from the Centre for Future Work, and published in July 2026. Written by Dr. Jim Stanford, the report shows that the $10aDay child care plan has already delivered major economic returns for Ontario. Despite the system still being in its growth phase, the expansion of child care is proving to be a powerful engine for provincial prosperity. Learn more:

• The Economic Benefits of Expanded Child Care Services in Ontario – Full Report (PDF)
• Care Counts for Ontario’s Economy – Summary of Key Findings (PDF)

MPP Toolkit: Wage Equity for EarlyOn and Family Support Professionals

The Family Supports Institute of Ontario (FSIO), in partnership with the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario (AECEO), is launching a province-wide campaign—including a formal petition— calling on the Government of Ontario to establish a comprehensive salary grid that ensures equitable recognition for RECEs, Legacy Practitioners, and staff working in EarlyON Child and Family Centres and family support programs. Learn more on the FSIO website. Check out the MPP Meeting Toolkit made especially for this campaign to find tips and resources for setting up and preparing for a meeting. More resources for this campaign can be found here.

Listening & Storytelling Community Research – Focus Group Findings

In 2026, we sought to learn more about the experiences of educators by speaking directly with them. ELCC workers from both home and centre based child care programs, EarlyON Family Support Programs, the Full Day Kindergarten Program, and members of the South Asian Women’s Rights Organization (SAWRO) participated in focus groups. We asked these individuals to share experiences about their specializations. This was defined as self-motivated interests, skills, and passions that ELCC workers bring to their work that fall outside of their job description.

Special Issues: Socially Just Ruptures in Early Childhood Education: Challenging Developmentalism in Curriculum, Pedagogy, and Policy

Guest Editors: Dr. Nidhi Menon & Dr. Adam Davies

Ghostbusters: Rupturing Ghosts of Developmentalism Through Living Stories

Abstract:

The ghosts of developmentalism haunt Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), perpetuating normative assumptions about children, learning, and teaching. In this paper, we trace the prevalence of developmentalism and propose a shift from learning stories to living stories in ECEC classrooms. We champion daily ruptures in classrooms and curricula to disrupt developmentalist scripts. Future educators can become “ghostbusters” of developmentalism, dismantling its grip on childhood and learning. As educators whose formative experiences were shaped by these scripts, we foreground scholars who question developmentalism from within lived and pedagogical tensions. Our argument is thus both a theoretical and personal reckoning with the structures that have long defined ECEC. In doing so, we examine how shifting post-secondary ECEC programs to foreground the transformative potential of daily ruptures embraces relationality, subjectivity, and superdiversity to challenge rigid, linear frameworks that marginalize diverse ways of knowing, being, and relating.

Keywords:

developmentalism, early childhood education and care, educators learning stories, superdiversity

Disrupting Disability in Colonial Contexts: Centring Critical Disability Theory and Community Perspectives in Nigeria and Canada

Abstract:

This article explores how different knowledge systems can inform early childhood education, with a focus on centring community perspectives and the material reality of disability in educational practices in Indigenous and settler contexts in Nigeria and Canada. The authors draw on our own community-engaged experiences in and work with diverse Indigenous and disabled populations in Canada and Nigeria. The article proposes valuing multiple knowledge systems, and, in doing so, decolonizing early childhood curricula that teach developmentalism alone, without the context of colonialism and ableism. Through our narrative-based reflections, we aim to contribute to the development of more inclusive and equitable educational approaches that transcend geographic and cultural boundaries.

Keywords:

Decolonization, disabled children, Indigenous knowledge, early intervention

(Not) Overcoming Depression: Depressive Ruptures and Disordering Professionalism in Early Childhood Education and Care

Abstract:
In this article, the author engages in reflections regarding the political importance of discussions regarding depression and “negative” emotions and affects in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC). Through autobiographical and Mad poetic writings, the author explores their childhood and adult experiences living with depression while theorizing the regulatory nature of happiness and joy on images of both children/childhoods and educators in early childhood education. The author concludes by writing about the important of ruptures in ECEC as new ways of thinking, being, and becoming for both educators and children.

Keywords:

affect theory, childhood, depression, mad studies, mad poetry, ruptures