Building Educator Capacity in Early Learning Programs
Research in this stream examines how educators are prepared and supported, and develops and evaluates professional learning designed to strengthen practice in early years settings.
Project 1: The Sound Start Pilot Project: Building ECE expertise in early phonological awareness
Funding: SSHRC Insight Development Grant
Co-Investigators: Dr. Pamela Beach | Dr. Angela Pyle
Collaborator: Dr. Scott Compeau, BGC South East
Phonological awareness, the ability to recognize and manipulate the sound structures of language, is among the strongest predictors of later reading success (National Early Literacy Panel, 2008). The preschool years represent a critical window for developing these skills, and children who enter kindergarten with underdeveloped phonological awareness experience reading difficulties that persist throughout their elementary years. Early childhood educators play a pivotal role in supporting this development, yet research consistently demonstrates that many lack the specialized knowledge required to foster phonological awareness in young children due to insufficient training in early literacy (Cunningham et al., 2004; Piasta et al., 2020).
Our understanding of how to translate phonological awareness research into everyday practice is limited because few professional development programs have been designed specifically for preschool settings. The Ontario Human Rights Commission’s Right to Read inquiry (2022) called for evidence-based instruction in foundational reading skills, but its recommendations focus primarily on elementary grades. Concurrently, implementation of the Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care system has created new emphasis on workforce development without providing specific guidance on early literacy content. This research responds to both imperatives.
The purpose of this research is to pilot evidence-informed professional development that enhances educators’ knowledge and ability to foster phonological awareness through everyday interactions with preschool children. This research addresses three objectives: 1) to develop evidence-based professional development that meets the learning needs and practical contexts of ECEs working in preschool classrooms; 2) to pilot the professional development using a quasi-experimental design with intervention and control groups to examine feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effects on educator knowledge, confidence, and practices; and 3) to examine preliminary effects on children’s phonological awareness outcomes, generating effect size estimates to inform future large-scale research.
A three-phase sequential mixed methods design will be used. Ten licensed childcare centres in southeastern Ontario will participate, with five centres assigned to receive the professional development and five to a waitlist control group. Data will be collected from 20 to 30 educators and 100 to 115 children. Program materials will be made freely available through our partnerships.
Project 2: Comparative Analysis of the Ontario Kindergarten Curriculum (2016 and 2026)
What changed when Ontario replaced its 2016 Kindergarten Program, and what it means for play, literacy, and equity.
In December 2025, the Ontario Ministry of Education released The Ontario Curriculum: Kindergarten, replacing The Kindergarten Program (2016) for all Kindergarten classrooms beginning in September 2026. This project is a detailed comparative analysis of the two documents, identifying what has changed, what has been preserved, and what those changes mean for educators, children, and families. The core of the 2016 approach remains in place, including play-based learning, inquiry, pedagogical documentation, the educator team model, and a whole-child vision, but the way it is delivered has shifted. Pedagogical guidance now lives on a provincial website rather than within the document itself, and explicit instruction has been added alongside play rather than in place of it. The most significant content change is in literacy, where the new curriculum introduces explicit phonics, phonemic awareness, and reading fluency expectations, a research-backed response to the Ontario Human Rights Commission's Right to Read inquiry. The revision also brings Kindergarten into the same policy, assessment, and accountability framework as Grades 1 to 12, and adds new domains including coding, transferable skills, financial literacy, and a dedicated focus on Indigenous education. Taken together, these changes mark a shift in emphasis, from following the child toward preparing the child for Grade 1, and our analysis sets out the implications for practice and policy in the early years.
Project 3: Program evaluation for the Provincial Outreach Program for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (POPFASD)
Funding: Kids Brain Health Network
Co-Investigator: Dr. James Reynolds
The overarching goal of this objectives-based program evaluation is to evaluate the effectiveness of the Provincial Outreach Program for Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (POPFASD) in preparing educators in British Columbia (BC) to support students with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD). The program evaluation will be completed over the next three years, starting September 2019. Approximately 100 educators and affiliated staff will be recruited with support from our teacher consultant partner, from each of the 67 school districts in BC to participate in this program evaluation. The participants will include teachers, education assistants, youth care workers, early childhood educators, administrators, district support staff including speech pathologists, counselors, behaviour specialists, and occupational therapists. Data will be collected from annual outcome reports and pre- and post- questionnaires.
The mandate for POPFASD is to increase educators' capacity to meet the educational needs of students with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorder (FASD) through FASD-informed practice that benefits all students. This objectives-based program evaluation will support us in understanding the extent to which POPFASD is meeting their specific objectives and the ways in which they can better prepare teachers to support students with FASD.