Child care in Canada

My research program to date has focused on the needs of migrant children and families in early childhood education and care settings in Canada. I have sought to document the numerous and often subtle barriers that migrant families face in the Canadian context in attempting to support their children’s education and I have acted to develop interventions to improve the lives of these families. One of my main concerns has been to investigate ways and means to ensure that early childhood educators and professionals are more appropriately prepared to work with culturally and linguistically diverse groups. Until recently, this area has remained largely neglected, a situation that has produced a series of negative effects, not the least of which has been a significantly lower educational success rate among these groups beginning at the early childhood education stage and carrying through at primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.

As numerous respected international studies over the last decade have shown, culturally and linguistically responsive curricula and programs at the early childhood stage can bring about marked improvement, not only for minority children but for their families as well. While these issues have been receiving unprecedented attention of late in the Canadian media, research, policy, and practice have tended to remain behind. With the rapid growth and increasing diversity of the transnational migrant population in Canada, it is critical that research, policy, and practice in early childhood education and care be kept current with the most rigorous, up-to-date findings and that greater efforts are made by researchers, policy-makers, and practitioners to more accurately and equitably address changes in Canadian demographic realities.