This article in the "Economic Insights" series examines participation in early learning and child care for young children in Canada. Child care is an important economic contributor for families since provision of non-parental child care is a necessity for some parents to engage in the labour market or to study. In addition, child care…

This study examined early childhood education and care (ECEC) utilization in Canada, focusing on use of unlicensed home child care (HCC) from an equity perspective. Data from the 2011 cycle of the General Social Survey (GSS) were used. Across Canada, parent responses reveal that 16.6% of children between the age of 12 months and entry to school…

Providing the best start for our youngest generation is a growing priority internationally. Integrated Service Delivery (ISD) offers an approach to address complex system challenges and improve access to early childhood public services for young children and their families. The purpose of this paper is to use the Integrative Framework for…

Background: Child care centers are important for children's behaviors. Aims: To examine the cross-sectional associations between child care environmental characteristics and physical activity and sedentary time in children. Methods: Participants were 124 toddlers and 118 preschoolers from 19 centers in Alberta and Ontario, Canada, in the…

The purpose of this study was to understand typically developing children's repetitive behavior in a freeplay, daycare setting. By studying repetition in a non-Montessori setting, we tested the assumption that repetition is a characteristic behavior of all young children and not limited to the Montessori environment. Although Maria Montessori…

The COVID-19 pandemic has created an opportunity to examine the initial policies developed by Australian, Canadian, English, German, Greek and Irish governments to limit the spread of the virus. This has revealed governments' conceptualisation of the early childhood sector and its workforce. This paper argues that neoliberal ideology and…

Recent advances in policy development and professional practice in the field of early learning and child care have led to the expectation that it is appropriate and advantageous to include children with disabilities and extra support needs in early child care and learning programs. Yet, to date, evidence-based research on the effects of…

New approaches to examining the language environment are putting greater emphasis on the use of highly naturalistic audio recordings and questions about cross-cultural differences in children's real-world language experiences. These new approaches and questions require careful examination of different kinds of variables that may influence…

Policymakers, child care providers, and parents face tradeoffs in determining how much to spend on child care, including how many hours to purchase, and the features of programs that might influence quality. Given these tradeoffs, it is useful to understand what constitutes quality, the cost of care features associated with quality, the effects of…

Using case study methodology including weekly focus group meetings and individual interviews, this article reports results of a study in a Canadian childcare centre in which four educators shared their attitudes and experiences on their role as educators and on building relationships with the children transitioning into their care and their…

Background: Access to quality child care is an important support for families with children with disabilities. The objectives of this study were to determine: (1) the current state of inclusion of children with special needs in child care programmes, and (2) the presence of child care staff practices and programme characteristics that support…

Purpose: This study aimed to: (a) compare the physical activity (PA) levels (i.e., moderate-to-vigorous PA [MVPA] and total PA [TPA]) of preschoolers in 3 different early-learning environments (center-based childcare, home-based childcare, and full-day kindergarten [FDK]); and (b) assess which characteristics (e.g., play equipment, policies, etc.)…

This paper aims to describe the quality of play as offered by early childhood educators working with four-year-olds within an educational childcare service. It also aims to identify the correlation between the quality of play support and a child's cognitive, language and socio-emotional development. Finally, it focuses on the factors associated…

The objective of this study was to examine how quantity, type, and quality of care interact in predicting externalizing and internalizing behaviors of 36-month-old children attending Quebec's educational child care from their first years of life. To do so, the authors examined two hypothesized models: (1) a mediation model where quantity, type,…

Research Findings: The amount and quality of communication between staff and guardians in child care centers was examined using extensive naturalistic observations. Interactions between staff and more than 1,000 guardians who dropped their child off at their child care center were captured through a series of 20-s time-sampled observations.…