In July 2021, the first edition of the Roadmap to Universal Child Care in Ontario was released by the Ontario Coalition for Better Childcare (OCBCC) and the Association of Early Childhood Educators Ontario (AECEO). The Roadmap set out our vision and shared our path forward but did not delve deeply into each area of transformation needed.
Our sector continues to face exciting successes, changes, challenges, and ebbs and flows with the implementation of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care System. We believe as we continue on the journey of system-building, the knowledge, experience and innovation of Ontario’s ELCC community should lead the way.
We are honoured and grateful to build our collective voice and learn together. As we develop the second edition of the Roadmap, we are inspired and informed by the important work the ELCC community is doing. To share the inspiring work and innovative thinking more broadly, we are releasing policy briefs that discuss specific issues in more detail, and program profiles highlighting innovative practices and programs in Ontario.
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Reimagining Quality
In the Roadmap, we described how, “a growing number of early childhood education and care theorists and philosophers have called for a rethinking of dominant, technical approaches to defining and monitoring quality” and that, “it is the important role of well-educated early childhood educators with decent work who bring “quality” to life through caring relationships and pedagogy with young children and families.”
The dominant narrative of quality is that it is universal, objective, and measurable through standardized evaluations, however, we know this is not the case. Quality is subjective, it is relative, and it can look completely different in different contexts. With that in mind, we’d like to invite you to learn and think alongside the Reimagining Quality Project, a partnership between Dufferin County and the Seneca College Lab School. We hope you find inspiration, joy, and excitement in imagining how you might begin to reimagine quality in your work.
Program Profile: Learning Enrichment Foundation
In this Program Profile we join the Learning Enrichment Foundation on their journey of learning with and from Indigenous Peoples and allies. We explore their work to provide outdoor play experiences that support relationships with the natural world in an urban setting, including their implementation of a seasonal pedagogy approach and their collaboration on the research project Designing and Implementing Environmental Inquiry Strategies in Early Years Programs.