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Summary (PDF 32 KB)
Full Report: Caregivers' use of metacognitive language (PDF, 142 KB)
Full Report: Math Instruction in Child-care Centres (PDF, 291 KB)
Full Report: Literacy Instruction in Canadian Child Care Centers (PDF, 334 KB)
Full Report: Promoting Diversity in Early Childcare Education (PDF, 314 KB)
The goals of this study were to examine the nature and quality of school-readiness instruction in child-care centres in Toronto. Several areas of instruction that have been identified as important in preparing children for a successful transition to school were examined, namely: Literacy, Numeracy, and Social Competence. A rich, existing dataset were used to answer four sets of questions about instruction. Below is described the background for the study, the four questions posed, the data used to answer them and the findings and implications from this research. Each of these questions was answered in a separate paper. The four papers make up the final report associated with this executive summary.
More and more children are cared for outside their homes. This increases the need to understand and monitor the quality of care they receive. Child-care quality is generally categorized into Process and Structural quality. Process quality indicators capture children’s direct experience including their interactions with peers and caregivers and the activities they engage in. Structural quality refers to characteristics such as staff to child ratios, group size, caregiver education and experience. These are generally easier to legislate and monitor. Although less directly connected to the child’s experience, they are assumed to create the conditions that drive children’s experiences. Multiple measures of both types of quality characteristics were assessed in the current study. This is an important are of study as children’s experiences in child care can foster important aspects of school readiness including academic, social, and behavioural functioning through kindergarten and the first grade.
What needs to happen in child care centres so that children are prepared for school? Exposure to environments that are rich in opportunities to acquire early academic skills (e.g., literacy) is critical for children. For example, the literacy and math skills that children enter school with drive their later academic success. Thus it is important for child-care centre staff to provide children with environments that support the early development of these skills. Kindergarten teachers have also identified several social skills, independent of academic skills, that they view as essential to successful adjustment in the classroom. In particular, children who communicate effectively, follow directions, are attentive and cooperate well with their peers are found to be better prepared for school. There is evidence that children’s social behaviours prior to school entry influence the quality of interactions with peers and with teachers during the transition to school. The quality of teacher-child relationships in child-care settings, especially high levels of teacher-child closeness and low levels of negativity, are important for children’s language, cognitive, and social skills, and each is a key indicator of school readiness. Thus, child-care providers have an important role to play in promoting children’s competence.
Yet, we know very little about what takes place in early learning and care environments in Canada to foster children’s academic and social development. To address some of these gaps we answered the following four questions about instruction in child-care centres:
Encouraging children to be accepting of diversity is a key social value that is important to impart to children early on. We asked whether staff support children’s acceptance of diversity and what predicts instruction about diversity.
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