AECEO

This resource is produced by Diane Kashin who is a retired early childhood educator, currently a chair of the York Region Nature Collaborative. Through kashin’s posts you can find online courses on Introduction to the Reggio Emilia Approach, Capacity and Competency in the Early Years, Documenting to Link Pedagogy and Curriculum, Inspiring Learning Environment, as well as many other informational and educational articles of pedagogy.

Jones, Richardson, & Powell (2019) - Reconceptualizing Our Work: The Connection Between ECE Students and Political Action

This paper takes the position that early childhood education students are an underutilized resource in strengthening the Canadian child care advocacy movement. The authors come to this topic as undergraduate and graduate students and a contract lecturer member in Ryerson’s early childhood studies program. Over the past year and a half, we have worked with our peers and colleagues to establish and lead the Ryerson Student Childcare Advocacy Association. Drawing on student movement and devaluation of care literature, this paper describes and explores our opportunities and experiences reconceptualizing the value of early childhood education and care that motivated us to become student leaders in the child care advocacy movement. Ultimately, we hope to both illustrate that students can and do make a meaningful difference in advocacy efforts and inspire and support postsecondary early childhood education programs to build the political capacity of students in the broader child care movement.

Richardson, Hewes, & Whitty (2017 - 2018) - The centrality of Caring: Embracing Our Work as Political Practice

This Peer Reviewed article discussed the import work of ECEs, and conceptualizes many ideas related to fair pay, professional recognition, and reconceptualizing early childhood education in a political standpoint.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, Taylor, & Blaise, (2012) - Children’s Relations to the More-than-Human World

This is a peer reviewed article that speak of reconceptualizing early childhood education and implementing more child – centred and child-initiated actives. This article also discusses child development theory and positions of new theory that emerge from “more-than-human” or post-human conversations.

Nxumalo, & Pacini-Ketchabaw (2016) - Unruly Raccoons and Troubled Educators: Nature/Culture Divides in a Childcare Centre

In this article, through a series of situated, small, everyday stories from childcare centres, we relate raccoon-child-educator encounters in order to consider how raccoons' repeated boundary-crossing and their apprehension as unruly subjects might reveal the impossibility of the nature/culture divide. We tell these stories, not to offer a final fixed solution to the asymmetrical, awkward and frictional entanglements of humans' and raccoons' lives, but as a responsive telling that may bring forth new possibilities for responsible, affective and ethical co-habitations.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, Nxumalo, Kocher, Elliot, & Sanchez(2015) Book Journeys: Reconceptualizing Early Childhood Practices Through Pedagogical Narration

This Resources is created by Victoria Pacini - Ketchabaw Fikile Nxumalo, Laurie Kocher, Enid Elliot, and Alejandra Sanchez. Group of Ealy childhood pedagogues who have great passion for art of pedagogy who strive to complexify and explore the world of early childhood education further, challenging educators and children in the process.

Moss (2010) - We Cannot Continue as We Are: the educator in an education for survival

The article takes a broad view, locating discussion about the early years educator in a wider debate about the future of the educator at a time of great crisis, when even the future of our species is in question. The state we are in calls for fundamental review of the purposes and concept of education and, therefore, the values, qualities and practices needed of all educators. The article reflects on these subjects, proposing an education for survival, democracy and flourishing, and a concept of education in its broadest sense, implying an educator capable of working with diversity and democracy, an ethics of care and encounter, an attitude of research and experimentation, and pedagogical approaches to match. The article ends with several linked questions. We need well- educated educators, but what do we gain by the focus on ‘professionalism’? Should our focus be on education and the educator: the purpose of the former and the requirements of the latter? If we talk about ‘professionalism’, does that not risk diverting us from the real task in hand, an education and educators able to respond to the crisis facing us? Might we not end up reconceptualising the concept of professionalism so much to accommodate what is important, such as the idea of multiple knowledges and democratic practice, that we render the concept meaningless?

Pacini-Ketchabaw , Hodgins, Kummen, & many more - Early childhood pedagogies collaboratory

The Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory is a hybrid and experimental space where educators and pedagogues trace and experiment with the contours, conditions, and complexities of early childhood education pedagogies in the 21st century.

The participants in the Early Childhood Pedagogies Collaboratory:

conceptualize pedagogies as lively, provisional, and continually adapting to the ongoing conversations and contexts that surround children,
work with questions of how pedagogies might respond with, confront, inherit, and attend to the messy politics of contemporary childhoods,
inquire into how pedagogies unfold, evolve, and act as an entangled process of thinking (theorizing) and doing in practice.

Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada (2017)- Encounters with Materials

The Encounters with Materials provides the user with many resources of ideas and suggestions for curriculum, keeping in mind Reconceptualizing early years pedagogy and material use within early childcare setting.

Pacini-Ketchabaw, & Khattar (2021) The Pedagogist Network of Ontario

The Pedagogist Network of Ontario creates the processes and pedagogical trajectories necessary to become a pedagogist in Ontario. Through these processes, pedagogists and researchers collaborate to think intensely about the educational practice of a pedagogist, and the possibilities and commitments that this work might open up. In other words, we collectively craft spaces to co-invent pedagogies that take up questions of ‘living well with children’, and creating conditions for liveable futures.

Lara di Tommasso (2012) Engaging With Early Childhood Educators' Encounters With Race:
An Exploration of the Discursive, Material and Affective Dimensions of Whiteness and Processes of Racialization

There is a lack of critical Canadian scholarship addressing questions of racialization in early childhood education, and yet questions of identity and diversity are at the center of education with young children. Substantive engagement with issues surrounding processes of racialization in early childhood education is often stunted by assertions of childhood innocence, discourses that normalize whiteness, or responses entrenched in multicultural discourse. Using early childhood educators' engagements with racialization and whiteness as starting points, this research employs feminist post structural, postcolonial and sociometrical theories to reveal and engage with how whiteness and processes of racialization are negotiated in politically, socially, geographically and temporally located spaces. An exploration of the forces of discourse, affect and materiality in shaping and silencing race opens up new spaces for challenging whiteness and processes of racialization in early childhood education and beyond.

Krishnan, (2010) Early Child Development; A Conceptual model

This paper reviews different theoretical approaches - psychoanalytical, behavioral and social learning, biological, cognitive, and systems theories - to identify the key individual and environmental influences on child development. Based on this review and building from Bronfenbrenner’s ecological theory, a model is proposed that takes individual and environmental factors into consideration. Despite the complexity of the ecological model, it offers a holistic approach to analyze multilevel and interactive influences of child development. More specifically, the model incorporates a broad range of factors, multiple pathways by which they interact, and a multilevel approach. The proposed model has the potential, especially to address issues of socioeconomic inequality which can be at the core of programs and policies targeting children, at the community level.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS

Government of Ontario Workplace Rights

This resource highlights the Ministry of Labour, Workplace rights and fairness, highlighting various laws and guidelines regarding pay/ salary and overtime pay, public holidays, vacation time, wage deduction, employment standers, as well as other Special rules that may apply to you. This resource also highlights safe and healthy workplace rules and guidelines.

Children’s Aid Society of Toronto

This resource, locally based in Toronto provides support and care for children, youth and families experiencing abuse, mistreatment, etc. They strive to protect children and youth from abuse and neglect by supporting families and communities, and to provide nurturing environments for children and youth.

Ontario Association of Children’s Aid Society

This resource is a collective of child welfare agency who oversees advocating for and strengthening child welfare province wide by collaborating and supporting families and communities to strengthen children’s well-being.

Ministry of Children, Families, and Social Services

The Ministry of Children, Families and Social Services provides many resources for parents and families and for professionals. Resources provided on this website include support for special needs children, early years, middle years and youth justice programs, student nutrition as well as children’s aid and adoption programs.

Ontario Human Rights Commission: Employment

This resource goes in depth into the Ontario Employment Standards Act, explaining employee entitlements and benefits of the employee under the Employment Act.

Ontario Employment Standards Act

This Document is a summary of the Ontario Employment Standards Act, highlighting all important and frequently accessed information of the Employment Standards Act 2000

Tribunals Ontario: Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario

The Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario (HRTO) offers support to individuals who believe they are experiencing injustice, discrimination, and harassment. The HRTO strives to resolve any infringement of Human Rights Code by mediation, and other methods of support.

Law Society of Ontario

Created by an act of the Legislative Assembly in 1797, the Law Society of Ontario governs Ontario’s lawyers and paralegals in the public interest by ensuring that the people of Ontario are served by lawyers and paralegals who meet high standards of learning, competence and professional conduct.

KNOW YOUR RIGHTS: Legal Clinic

Human Rights Legal Support Centre

This organization is an independent agency funded by the government that provides legal services to individuals who believe they have experiences human rights violation.

Steps to Justice: Where can I get help and advice about my rights as a worker

Steps to Justice is a legal clinic focused to support people who face injustice. This law clinic dedicates big portion of their work to supporting employee rights in the workplace, such as Employments insurance, human rights at work, safety at work, and claiming your rights as a worker.

The Ontario Employment Education and Research Centre

This organization strives to improve public education and awareness on workplace legislation and implementing support strategies for employees who believe that they have experienced Human Rights violation. They cover topics such as employment standards, health and safety at work, community legal aid, and so on.

Legal Aid Ontario

The legal Aid Ontario provides legal support to those in need. They offer legal aid, lowers, and consultations to individuals who believe they experience Human Rights violations.

Tribunals Ontario: Human Rights Tribunal of Ontario

ECE WELLNESS/ MENTAL HEALTH

Importance of Early Childhood Educator Mental Health & Well Being

This article discusses the importance of Educator well-being and mental health, what it is and why it is important, what can hinder well-being of educators. This resource also offers some strategies for educators to take care of their health and wellness.

Feeling Anxious? These Tips from 2 Mental Health Experts Might Help

This resource offers perspective of two mental health experts answering questions regarding ECE mental health and well-being in the sector. they also offer some strategies to come with challenges and support their mental health

The Health and Well-Being of Early Childhood Educators: A Need for Compassion and Community

This article explores group of educators who suffer from chronic illness and stress. They explore the reasons from illnesses and stress as well as discuss the benefits of reducing challenges within the field.

Early Care and Education Teacher Well-Being

This brief examines research on ECE teachers’ experience of various forms of stress and their associations with teaching practices, children’s learning, and workplace conditions. The brief concludes with a set of policy recommendations informed by this research. For convenience, the term “stress” is used in summary statements and questions to reflect the broader range of negative states examined in the research. The following questions are addressed in this brief:

How prevalent is ECE teachers’ experience of stress?
How does ECE teachers’ work-related stress contribute to the quality of teaching practices and child outcomes?
What workplace factors contribute to ECE teacher stress?
What interventions and workplace supports promote teacher well-being?
What key policy recommendations are suggested by the research?

Minds Matter: The impact of working in the early years sector on practitioners’ mental

health and well – being

New report focusing on the mental health and stress experienced by early years practitioners in England is the outcome of a survey of over 2,000 participants. Results reveal in the authors' own words, "an incredibly concerning picture of the future of the early years sector" (Pre-school Learning Alliance, 2018, p.16), with one in four considering leaving the sector. Recommendations are many; significantly greater public funding to reduce the strain now placed on individuals and organizations is reiterated on several occasions.

Why It’s Important To Support The Psychological Well-Being of Early Childhood Educators

This article highlights main challenges that ECEs face in the field. The article mentions the importance of ECEs’ well-being and provides some resources to support the ECEs in their transition into the profession.

Gerstein Crisis Centre

Gerstein Crisis Centre provides crisis intervention, wellness and recovery activities, and training and education. 416-929-5200

Toronto Distress Centre

Since 1967, Distress Centres of Greater Toronto has provided 24-hour support, 7 days a week, 365 days a year to individuals in our community at risk and their most vulnerable. We are Canada’s oldest volunteer delivered crisis, emotional support and suicide prevention + intervention + postvention service agency.

416-408-4357

Canadian Mental Health Association

Youth Line offers confidential and non-judgemental peer support through our telephone, text and chat services. Get in touch with a peer support volunteer from Sunday to Friday, 4:00PM to 9:30 PM.

1-866-531-2600

General mental Health Tips

BouncBack Reclaim Your Health

A free, guided self-help program that’s effective in helping people aged 15 and up who are experiencing mild-to-moderate anxiety or depression, or may be feeling low, stressed, worried, irritable or angry

Crisis Services Canada

1-833-456-4566 Suicide prevention and support.

Talk4healing (for Indigenous women)

1-855-554-4325

LGBT Youthline Ontario: 647-694-4275 + chat, text and email currently available) https://www.youthline.ca
Ontario-wide peer-support for lesbian, gay bisexual, transgender, transsexual, two-spirited, queer and questioning young people.

CURRICULUM RESOURCES ECE INPUT IN OUR SECTOR

This website provides lesson ideas and categorizes them based on age or medium: Kinderart.com

For information on different curriculum, theories read this article: http://www.oecd.org/edu/school/31672150.pdf

For activity, ideas check out this website: http://www.educationworld.com/a_earlychildhood/

ECE INPUT IN OUR SECTOR

childcare Revolution Podcast

Community of practice

Diane Kashin blog

Sparks and Gems: Teaching through the Thoughtful Exploration of Educator Questions

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