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At-home learning initiatives arose as a response to school closures due to COVID-19. This study interviewed 17 secondary teachers to explore the implementation of at-home learning in the province of Ontario, Canada. Findings suggest four thematic areas arising from the data: growing equity disparities, poor policy communication, factors influencing successful emergency remote teaching (technological and pedagogical), and impacts to academic and socioemotional/mental health. This article proposes an integrated model for school recovery that will engage three levels of the education system: (1) school-level efforts including high-dosage tutoring and teacher collaboration and teacher looping strategies, (2) building partnerships with community organizations for wrap-around support for the most marginalized communities, and (3) parental engagement through actionable messages and tips by text to help parents support student learning. In the end, Ontario teachers rose to the challenge of providing students with consistent learning during the pandemic.

This research takes up the challenge of interpreting the two newest grounds of human rights protection across Canada -- gender identity and gender expression -- for professional practice in early childhood education. To date, no human rights tribunal ruling on these grounds has engaged early childhood education, and while the legal duty remains for early childhood educators to provide an environment free of gender-identity and gender-expression discrimination, the Ontario profession's governing bodies have provided no explicit guidance as to how. This research bridges early years educators' new and likely unfamiliar legal responsibilities in relation to both grounds and everyday life in early years contexts. The findings demonstrate that ample support exists within the profession's key guiding documents for 'gender-expansive' practice, or an approach to teaching children and supporting their development that both expects and sustains gender diversity. A similar analysis of guiding documents is needed internationally.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, schools across North America closed to in person learning in March 2020. Since then, it has becoming increasingly clear that physical distancing will need to be prolonged in the 2020/2021 school year and possibly resumed in the future. In response, education ministries shifted teaching and learning online. Research is urgently needed to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 on teaching and learning, particularly in the foundational early primary years. This research directly responds to this concern by examining the unique challenges associated with remote teaching and learning in early primary contexts. Given that learning in kindergarten and early primary grades is largely play- and inquiry- based, there is a particular need to investigate the impacts of this move for teachers, parents, and children in K-2. As such, the purpose of this research is twofold: (1) to capture the unique challenges and unanticipated successes associated with remote teaching and learning, and (2) to utilize findings to provide recommendations for remote learning as well as strategies for supporting in-person learning in the COVID-19 era (and post COVID-19 era). Data collection included 45-min semi-structured interviews with K-2 teachers (n = 25) and parents (n =11). All participants were from Ontario Canada. Data were collected from April-June 2020. The sample size was chosen to ensure saturation while uncovering a variety of perspectives. Data were analyzed in NVivo using an emergent thematic approach (Patton, 2016). The emergent thematic approach to analysis revealed five themes: equity considerations, synchronous versus asynchronous teaching and learning, social and emotional effects on students, academic impacts, and effects on parents/families.

Research has consistently demonstrated that self-regulation is essential for the development and preservation of health and well-being in the early years and across the lifespan. Based on the emerging literature on the important role of self-regulation in promoting healthy child development, policymakers have made efforts to include self-regulation skills in practice and policy documents worldwide. Despite efforts to include self-regulation skills in early years curriculum documents, there is limited understanding by teachers, scholars, and policymakers of what self-regulation is and how best to support it in the day-to-day classroom. This limited understanding is perpetuated by a lack of a unified definition of self-regulation. Thus, it becomes important to examine these efforts in a critical way. In Ontario, where the research was completed, a revised play-based full-day kindergarten program was introduced in 2016. In this research we use a qualitative document analysis approach to compare the conceptualization of self-regulation in Ontario's revised play-based kindergarten program with theory-driven models of self-regulation from empirical research. Analysis was iterative, and themes emerged based upon a coding scheme developed by the research team. Results suggest that co-regulation has a powerful influence on student learning. In addition, the policy document de-emphasizes behavioral regulation and expands cognitive regulation to include more than inhibitory control. Lastly, the kindergarten program discusses metacognition in relation to the use of language to articulate one's thinking with little attention to goal-directed behaviors. In this paper, explicit recommendations for policymakers and practitioners are provided to ensure that emerging conceptualizations of self-regulation are promoted in early years curricula. Further, empirical evidence is needed to support why it is necessary to understand emerging conceptualizations of self-regulation and outline implications for current early years curricula.

Teachers are the single most important in-school factor affecting student learning outcomes. As a result, researchers and policy makers are particularly interested in the ways that teacher-level factors influence the learning opportunities that teachers provide in their classrooms. A growing body of research suggests that the expectations a teacher sets for individuals and groups of students can significantly affect the learning opportunities that are provided to them. This is highly problematic, especially since teacher expectations can be inaccurate evaluations of student abilities and teacher expectations differentially affect the learning outcomes of racialised students as well as children living in poverty. Much of the research base regarding teacher expectations has focused on upper elementary and secondary grades with little research focus on the ways that teacher expectations are formed and impact children in the first years of formal schooling. Given the potential impact of sustained teacher expectation effects, an in-depth review of teacher expectation research in the early primary grades is warranted. This study uses a scoping review methodology (H. Arksey and L. O'Malley, 'Scoping Studies: Towards a Methodological Framework, "International Journal of Social Research Methodology," 2005, 8(1), 19-32) to analyse research on teacher expectations in the early primary grades. Five themes encapsulate the scope of research published from 2000-2021: (1) teacher expectations of school readiness skills, (2) factors that influence the formation of teacher expectations, (3) teacher expectation effects, (4) stability of teacher expectations, and (5) intervention studies. This paper presents the current state of knowledge surrounding expectations in the early primary grades, as well as highlights challenges in need of further research.

This research examines the influence of educator and child expectations on children's self-regulation, early reading, and vocabulary outcomes over two time points. Thirty educators (15 early childhood educators [ECEs] and 15 teachers) and 149 kindergarten children participated in the research. The educators participated in an expectation ranking questionnaire. Data collection with the children included an interview task and standardized and nonstandardized assessments. Results indicate that ECE and teacher expectations were congruent at Time 1 but dissonant at Time 2, with ECEs having significantly higher expectations for children's self-regulation, early reading, and vocabulary outcomes at Time 2. Path analyses were run to simultaneously test for direct and indirect (mediating) effects. Findings revealed that ECE and child expectations had significant positive direct effects on outcomes. The only significant direct effect from teacher expectations to child outcomes was for vocabulary, and this was a negative direct effect. This research has important and direct application to practice through professional development with pre- and in-service educators, specifically in considering the practices of high expectation educators.

Teachers incorporate information from various sources as they form their academic expectations for students. The student record of prior achievement is the most salient factor that educators use to form their expectations for children's achievement. Research on the factors that influence educator expectations has primarily focused on the ways teachers assimilate various pieces of information about students. More recently, there is an interest in moving away from this perspective and focusing more on teacher factors that may influence these differing expectations. The purpose of this research was to explore the factors that contribute to the formation of educator expectations in Full-Day Kindergarten. This study presents an in-depth examination of reports from Early Childhood Educators (ECEs) and teachers on their teaching philosophies, roles, teaching practices, and interactions that support students in meeting curriculum expectations. This study elucidates the differences in the two groups in terms of how their expectations are formed and in turn how they may affect processes leading to child outcomes. Furthermore, this research responds to existing gaps in the educator expectation field by extending the research to include the early years.

Preservice early childhood educators begin postsecondary programs with established beliefs about children, children's learning, and their roles as future educators. The present study examined 26 first-year students' beliefs about children, classroom practice, and guiding children's behavior. Participants completed the Teacher Beliefs Q-Sort (Rimm-Kaufman, Storm, Sawyer, Pianta, & La Paro, 2006) at three time points over the course of their first year of studies. We compared responses across the three time points to explore whether the students' beliefs changed over time. Findings are presented under three main themes: 1) beliefs about children; 2) beliefs about classroom practice; and 3) beliefs about behavior management. Overall, findings reveal that for all three themes, at each time point, practices that are most characteristic of the participants' beliefs are child-centered, whereas beliefs that are least characteristic of their beliefs are teacher-directed. To support students' application of theory to practice, they should be given opportunities during their studies to voice, explore, and critically examine their beliefs in relation to philosophies and teaching approaches.

The objective of the present study is to capture children's voices to compare traditional half-day and play-based full-day kindergarten children's perspectives on two research questions: What is important about kindergarten, and what is your favourite thing about school? Children's responses were compared for emerging academic and social themes. Half-day kindergarten children reported academic activities significantly more often as being important compared with their full-day counterparts. No significant differences were found in children's reports of their favourite thing about school, demonstrating that regardless of programme, children most enjoy play and social activities. These findings reinforce the importance of play-based full-day kindergarten programmes.

Based on emerging literature on the important role of self-regulation in supporting learning, policy makers have made efforts to include self-regulation skills in practice and policy documents worldwide. Despite these efforts, there is limited understanding of what self-regulation is and how best to support these skills in the day-to-day life of early years classrooms. Thus, there is a need to systematically analyse and examine these efforts. This research directly responds to this need by examining the ways self-regulation is discussed and promoted in early childhood curriculum frameworks in Canada. The impact of this research involves changed thinking that will evolve through improved clarity in defining and fostering self-regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined how a six-week family literacy programme contributed to supporting the efforts 12 mothers living in a residential shelter were making to foster their preschool children's literacy development. We compared pre- and post-programme interviews to explore whether the mothers applied the literacy strategies discussed in the programme during their daily interactions with their children. Guided by our theoretical perspective, funds of knowledge, data, were analysed through the lens of a Family Strengths Model and thus focused on how learning opportunities were embedded within the families' daily experiences. Findings are presented under two main themes: (1) the mothers' use of the environment as a tool for literacy teaching and (2) use of programme materials and activity ideas in the home environment. Overall, findings indicate that the mothers applied strategies they learned in the programme to their daily interactions with their children, which indicate that the families participating in this study increased their involvement in their children's literacy learning. Our experiences with this transient population illustrate the importance of educators partnering with families, respecting what they are doing to support their children's literacy learning, and building on these efforts by providing them with resources and ideas that support literacy learning. Consideration should be given to the types of resources provided to families living in non-permanent housing in order to maintain their access to literacy activities.

In this study, we explored the influence of kindergarten children's perspectives of school on their literacy and self-regulation outcomes. Children's early perspectives were captured in a three-question, finger-puppet interview. Responses to the interview questions were coded thematically as being academic and/or social in nature, and were analysed using latent-class analysis. Once children's responses were characterized into classes, further analyses were conducted to understand the application of these perspectives to direct assessments of early reading and writing and self-regulation abilities. Children with less clear perspectives, who mixed academic and social responses, had the lowest performance on all academic measures. Findings add to the existing literature while offering an innovative analytic strategy for examining relationships between children's perspectives and kindergarten outcomes.

In this study, children's self-regulation was observed, along with other social and academic activities in kindergarten classrooms during whole group, small group, transition and play contexts. We examined how children's self-regulation and engagement differed among classroom grouping, play and transition contexts. Results showed that students respond to opportunities for self-regulation significantly more often in small group and play contexts. Similarly, children demonstrate the highest engagement in play and small group contexts. Given that adults and other children comprise an important part of the environment for children's self-regulation, we also examined whether there were differences in the number of interactions children have with other children and educators across academic, social and play activities, and how these interactions broke down by classroom context. Findings have practical implications for educators working in early years settings; classroom grouping, play and transition contexts set the scene for children's engagement and opportunities to self-regulate.

This study examined how parents' own learning affected their support for their children in a school-based Family Literacy Programme. Seventy-two children in junior kindergarten (4-year-olds) and senior kindergarten (5-year-olds) and their parents participated in the programme; complete data were available for 52 parents. Comparisons of pre- and post-programme parent surveys indicated that there was no significant difference in how parents viewed their role in affecting their child's reading as a result of the programme. However, parents' teaching behaviour and provision of literacy activity (library visits) with their children significantly increased as a result of the programme. Furthermore, parents' reported level of enjoyment of literacy activities with their children increased significantly in the areas of reading, drawing and writing. Finally, parents' goals for attending the programme were aligned with what they described learning from the programme. The results suggest that family literacy programmes help parents to gain literacy knowledge and skills that they then incorporate in daily interactions with their children, particularly when programme objectives match parents' goals. The findings suggest that parents may benefit from longer programmes to provide them with additional learning strategies for engaging in literacy activities with their children.