ImmigrantChildren.ca Archive

Category: Early Learning and Child Care

Issues related to immigrant children and parents participation in and access to early learning and child care programs and to how well EL & CC programs meet the needs of diverse groups of families in Canada.

  • Dual language learning in child care settings

    Zero to Three has released a tip sheet on Dual Language Learning in Early Care and Learning Settings.
    The tip sheet shares ideas on how practitioners working with young children can support ‘dual language learning’.
    In addition, the focus of the November 2008 edition of the Zero to Three Journal is “Children in Immigrant Families”. 

  • Children's books about immigration III

    More books for children on the theme of immigration:
    How My Parents Learned to Eat by Ina R. Friedman.
    When Jesse Came Across the Sea by Jesse Hest.
    The Memory Coat by Elvira Woodruff.
    Small Beauties by Elvira Woodruff.
    My Name is Yoon by Helen Recorvits.
    Naming Liberty by Jane Yolen.
    Marianthe’s Story: Painted Words and Spoken Memories by Aliki.
    The Great Migration by Jacob Lawrence.
    Dia’s Story Cloth: The Hmong People’s Journey of Freedom by Dia Cha.
    I Hate English! by Ellen Levine and Steve Bjorkman.
    The Keeping Quilt by Patricia Polacco.
    The Colour of Home by Mary Hoffman.
    Molly’s Pilgrim by Barbara Cohen.

    See former posts on this topic:
    Children’s books about immigration, posted Jan 22/08
    Children’s books about immigration II, posted Mar 11/08.

  • Best Start Resource Centre annual conference (Toronto)

    Best Start: Ontario’s Maternal, Newborn and Child Development Resource Centre (BSRC) is holding their annual conference Feb 23-25/09 in Toronto. Of interest to immigrantchildren.ca readers, these two workshops (descriptions taken from the conference website):

    Giving Birth in a New Land, with Saleha Bismilla, Toronto Public Health

    The changing demographics of Ontario have an impact for service providers such as nurses, physicians, midwives, and community workers who work in reproductive health. Women from diverse cultural backgrounds may have different needs and expectations when accessing health services. Service providers should be sensitive to these needs and can help women and their partners to prepare for having a baby in Ontario. 

    Child Language Development in Bilingual or Multilingual Environments, with Laurie-Ann Staniforth, First Words

    This concurrent session will provide an overview of normal child language development in bilingual or multilingual environments. Bilingualism in the context of language delay or disorder will also be discussed. This session will include practical considerations for service providers such as issues to consider and how to work with and support bi- and multilingual children and families.


  • CMAS / LINC conference

    The Childminding, Monitoring and Advisory Support (CMAS) is holding their annual conference from Nov 13-14/08 in downtown Toronto. The theme this year is Tools for Growth: Supporting the Newcomer Family. The conference will address the resources, practices, activities and connections that build programs and the profession, while facilitating the healthy development of the children cared for in LINC programs.
    The conference is funded by Citizenship and Immigration Canada and jointly sponsored by the Learning Enrichment Foundation and the Toronto District School Board.

    Information: Contact Rosalie Caranci or Adele Peden: APeden@lefca.org / 416-760-2570.

  • Fostering language acquisition in daycare settings

    From the Bernard van Leer Foundation, a report on 2nd language acquisition. Fostering Language Acquisition in Daycare Settings looks at the research on migrant children and “explores the course and duration of second language acquisition, as well as the common linguistic behaviours that may arise. Conditions that influence children’s adoption of a second language and culture are then examined, as well as similarities and differences between first and second language acquisition“.

  • Research papers on mylanguage.ca

    mylanguage.ca is dedicated to raising the importance of home language (L1) retention as a tool to support the development of English in newcomer children. The site, developed by Dr. Roma Chumak-Horbatsch of Ryerson University’s School of Early Childhood Education has recently been updated and two new research studies by Dr. Chumak-Horbatsch have been added:

    Early bilingualism: Children of immigrants in an English-language childcare center. (2008). Psychology of Language and Communication. Vol 12, No. 1.
    Mmmmm…I like English: Linguistic behaviors of Ukranian-English bilingual children. (2006). Psychology of Language and Communication. Vol 10, No. 2. 

    Visit mylanguage.ca to download both papers.

  • Brave new schools: Identity and power in Canadian education

    From the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development
    The 2008 R.W.B. Jackson Lecture ~ Brave New Schools: Identity and Power in Canadian Education

    We are pleased to present Professor James (Jim) Cummins, a renowned second language education scholar in the Department of Curriculum, Teaching and Learning, and Canada Research Chair, Language Learning and Literacy Development in Multilingual Contexts.

    As the 2008 Jackson Lecturer, Cummins will draw on data from a 5-year research program entitled From Literacy to Multiliteracies to stimulate re-examination of the foundational principles of Canadian education in an era of increasing diversity and urgent global challenges. Influenced by international agencies such as the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), educational policy-makers in many countries have adopted an increasingly technocratic approach to the promotion of literacy and numeracy.  The focus has been on the identification and implementation of evidence-based “best practices.” However, the frame of reference within which these “best practices” have been generated typically consigns issues related to societal power relations and teacher-student identity negotiation to the margins of consideration.

    This lecture will call for a radically different approach to educational policy-making. The constructs of teacher-student identity negotiation and societal power relations will be proposed as empirically validated influences on academic achievement and as fundamental to the development of effective educational policy and practice. Recent OECD research and policy recommendations on the education of immigrant students will be analyzed to show that the marginalization of issues related to power and identity in educational policy-making is an ideological process that is far from “evidence-based.” A very different set of policy options and pedagogical opportunities for Canadian education emerges when the empirical and theoretical frame of reference is broadened to acknowledge the centrality of the multiple forms of diversity that increasingly characterize schools both in Canada and internationally.

    The lecture will be held Wednesday, November 12, 2008 at the George Ignatieff Theatre, Toronto. Reception at 6pm, opening remarks and lecture at 7pm. 

    To RSVP and/or for more information, call 416.978.1125.

  • Migrant Head Start

    A local Idaho newspaper reports last week on the success of a Head Start program specifically targeted to children of migrants, including farm and other seasonal workers.
    The ED of the program, Irma Morin when asked about the value of such a program, said “Without Head Start we would need more resources in our public school system at the elementary level to work with children who have not had exposure to education, nutrition, social interaction and language”. 

  • Special issue of Research in Comparative and International Education

    Vol 3, No. 3 (2008) of the Research in Comparative and International Education journal is devoted to early childhood education and care, with several articles addressing issues related to immigrant, migrant, transnational children. Abstracts taken from the RCIE website:

    Not just content, but style: Gypsy children traversing boundaries. Martin P. Levinson, University of Exeter, UK

    The policy to integrate English Gypsy children in schools tends to overlook the difficulties facing such youngsters in their attempts to negotiate between contrasting practices and values at home and school. Contradictions between such practices/value systems at home and school entail not only knowledge/skills, but also differing modes of instruction/transmission. Informed by learning theories and New Literacy discourse, along with evidence from previous accounts of Romani learning practices in the home context, this article draws on findings from an ethnographic study of English Gypsies (1996?2000), and data from a follow-up study, involving original and additional participants (2005?6). The article explores attitudes across age-groups, outlining, in particular, the knowledge/skill base valued in the home setting, highlighting the mismatch between home and school expectations, and the difference of expectation in child–adult relations in each context. It argues that policy-makers need to consider the wider impact of school education on identity and group membership.

    Tracing global–local Transitions within early childhood curriculum and practice in India. Anita Gupta, School of Education, City College of New York, US
    Taking the view that curriculum and pedagogy are complex processes related to history, politics, economics, culture and knowledge, and influenced by interactions that occur between students, teachers and the larger communities, this article will discuss how curriculum takes shape and is negotiated in some early childhood classrooms in post-colonial urban India. The article draws on empirical and published research, and includes a discussion on the influence of recent local and global forces on teaching and learning, focusing specifically on issues such as: the deep divide between private and public education in India; the challenge of sustaining local government schools in India in the face of the global emphasis placed on knowledge of the English language; the recent increase in the emergence of private schools in low- as well as high-socio-economic-class neighborhoods in India; the more recent neo-colonial influences of western media on children’s lives in their homes and schools; and early childhood teachers’ perceptions on the transitions between ‘western’ and ‘Indian’ values.

    Understanding childhoods in-between: Sudanese refugee children’s transition from home to preschool. Darcey M. Dachyshyn, Eastern Washington University, USA and Anna Kirova, University of Alberta, CA

    Canada receives over 30,000 refugees each year, approximately 10% of whom are under five years of age. While to varying degrees the factors influencing the experiences of adult refugees have been identified and researched, the experiences of young refugee children ‘living in-between’ has only recently begun to capture researchers’ interest. This article considers what the experiences are of young refugee children in their day-to-day living between languages and cultures as they make a transition between home and Canadian early childhood settings. More specifically, the question addressed is: What roles do refugee children play in mediating the host culture for their parents in the hybrid place created by play? The authors propose that play in early childhood does serve, for refugees experiencing resettlement, as a site of cultural mediation, contestation, and identity negotiation. An analysis of three Sudanese refugee mothers and their four-year-old sons’ use of common early childhood artefacts – wooden building blocks – is used to demonstrate how young refugee children who experience child care outside their home for the first time not only learn to ‘be a preschooler’, but learn to ‘interpret’ this role to their parents.

  • Longer preschool stay for immigrant children in Finland

    A Finland newspaper, Kaleva, reports July 14/08 that Finland’s Minister of Education, Sari Sarkomma, wants to see immigrant children spend longer in preschool than Finnish-born children so that they can be deeply immersed in the language and culture.