Red River College and The Science of Early Child Development: Bridging the gap between research and practice in early child development

May 2011

The Early Childhood Education Program at Red River College has been working on The Science of Early Child Development project since 2001. They began this work partly to fill a gap discovered when they tried to find undergraduate resource material on early brain development and the early years as a sensitive period of development. Instructors across Canada echoed their concern and were eager for up-to-date information to include in post-secondary programs. Since then, the project has grown in ways that Red River College hardly could have imagined in the beginning phase.

The healthy development of very young children has been at the heart of The Lawson Foundation’s grantmaking for over 20 years, bridging two generations of family leadership. The goal of the Foundation’s Beginning Years funding is to ensure children’s positive social, emotional and intellectual development during their early years. Red River College’s innovative initiative was an ideal way to take the most recent research in early child development “off the shelf” and make it available and comprehensible to those who work with young children – Early Childhood Educators.

The Foundation’s support for the project began in 2002 with a grant to the College to develop and deliver a national multimedia online core curriculum resource that translates current knowledge of the effects of early experience on neurological development and the lifelong implications for health, learning and behaviour so that it is accessible and understood by those who are directly involved with young children. Red River College in Winnipeg partnered with the Atkinson Centre for Society and Child Development at the University of Toronto to create and pilot the first edition of The Science of Early Child Development.

The partners worked with top researchers (for content) and with technical experts (for style) to create the cutting-edge resource. The first draft was tested with Early Childhood Education faculties across Canada to ensure that both the message and the media were highly relevant. Another pilot of professionals working in the community provided valuable feedback on the applicability of the resource to policy makers, people working in the frontlines of child care services, and government agencies.

The result was an informative, engaging resource that explores concepts, research and implications and explains why all children need quality early experiences. Research clearly shows that what happens when children are young sets a firm or fragile foundation for lifelong health and learning. Project leaders Janet Jamieson and Joan Kunderman saw the project as part of a larger movement to expand understanding of the importance of early child development. This alignment is evidenced by the number of Champions, including Dr. Fraser Mustard and Dr. Ron Barr, who support and promote its use. As Dr. Clyde Hertzman, Director, Human Early Learning Partnership (HELP) at the University of British Columbia, stated, “no other resource provides those on the frontlines with such high quality, easily understandable exposure to the thinking of leading researchers in the early stages of human development.”

The Science of ECD’s five modules – Developmental Health, Brain Development, The Ecology of Childhood, Coping & Competence, and Communicating & Learning – use multimedia and interactivity to make research ‘come alive’. Each module contains a combination of readings, videos, links to important websites, examples, audio clips, questions for reflection and interactive games. Over 150 videos show interviews with researchers and experts talking about their work in everyday language, scenes of children at play and in various daily routines, children interacting with parents or caregivers, scientific presentations and footage of research activities, and complete video programs related to early child development. The ‘live’ curriculum with current research examples and applications and the rich variety of media, including streamed and captioned video, help make this a tool that engages people and enhances learning by individuals with different levels of knowledge and learning styles. The use of digital content also adds to this project’s versatility and appeal to so many audiences.

By 2005, the project team knew they had to focus on dissemination to make potential users in Early Childhood Development and related fields aware of the resource and the opportunities it provides for both post-secondary use and professional development. This involved raising awareness of the resource in the ECD community, ensuring a seamless online delivery, exploring opportunities to develop other versions for specific sectors and updating content to include new research. Mary Young, the World Bank’s Lead Child Development Specialist, noted that the Science of ECD resource “broadens and enriches our knowledge base about the importance of early child development. It is a gem. It is a must for every undergraduate and postgraduate student undertaking studies in social science and human development.” A Foundation grant supported the College to carry out an effective dissemination strategy to ensure that the Science of ECD resource reached a wide audience and became sustainable. During this process, the Science of ECD project grew to include an expanded Second Edition, an International Edition (supported by the World Bank) and an online introductory course (created at the request of the Manitoba Government).

The project has created a resource that is in demand in Canada and strong interest from the international community speaks to its need and value beyond Canada. The Science of ECD enhances Red River College’s own early childhood education curriculum and provides students with exciting learning opportunities, making it easy for the College to promote the resource to others. Successful promotion and marketing endeavours have included: numerous workshops, presentations and orientations; the informational brochure and folder; a revamped website (www.scienceofecd.com); electronic newsletters; and articles and advertisements in print journals. Through these efforts, individuals and institutions in Canada and around the world use the Science of ECD resource and participate in the introductory online course. Professionals and students draw on the resource to keep them up to date and to guide the work they do with children and families. Faculty, trainers and parent educators share the information and discuss the practical implications of current research with their students. The engaging material helps people to understand the long reach of early childhood so they can support firm foundations early in life.

Each year, The Introduction to the Science of Early Child Development Online Course provides hundreds of frontline workers in Manitoba with a solid understanding of the importance of the early years. For many students, this course helps solidify their commitment to Early Childhood Education as many choose to go on for further training. Given the link between well-trained staff and high quality child care, the Science of ECD team is proud of how the resource and course encourage and support successful knowledge transfer, bridging the gap between research and practice.

In 2010, The Lawson Foundation supported Red River College to evaluate the 2nd edition and develop the 3rd edition by building on the current material, highlighting new concepts, research and implications and creating new learning tools, guides, road maps and online presentations. Collaborating with both content and technical experts and drawing on the expertise of a diverse, highly accomplished Advisory Committee, Red River College is creating a flexible and attractive educational resource that is accessible and relevant for a variety of fields and maintains the high level of content and currency that promotes understanding of how to support healthy early human development.

For more information, please go to: www.scienceofecd.com

Last Updated ( Thursday, 02 June 2011 )

The Power to Move Kids

Active Healthy Kids Canada is a trusted source for “powering the movement to get kids moving.” Established in 1994, the organization aims to provide knowledge, insight and understanding to influence thinking and action among issue stakeholders and help them build better programs, campaigns and policies that promote and support increased physical activity among Canadian children and youth.

Through strategic partnerships with funders like The Lawson Foundation, as well as governments, non-government organizations, researchers and others, Active Healthy Kids Canada advances knowledge and provides the evidence base for communications and issue advocacy work to increase support for quality, accessible and enjoyable physical activity opportunities for Canadian young people.

Support from The Lawson Foundation has been critical to the success of the Report Card.  The Lawson Foundation has provided support for the Report Cards from 2007-13 which totals $2,161,500. The Lawson Foundation funds allow Active Healthy Kids Canada to maintain a network of nationally representative partners who support the distribution and media coverage of the Report Card. These funds also create opportunities for comprehensive evaluation of the Report Card, which has informed the use of the Report Card framework in other jurisdictions, helping others influence action in their own communities.  

The Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card on Physical Activity for Children and Youth is the core project of the organization.  The Report Card, a comprehensive yearly assessment of the current state of physical activity among Canadian children and youth, examines current physical activity levels as well as key sources of influence on kids’ physical activity opportunities, including family, school, community environment, and policy. 

The Report Card consolidates current physical activity research into a format that is easily accessed and understood by stakeholders and individuals.  It is designed to serve as both a knowledge and advocacy tool to inform the development and implementation of policies, programs, campaigns and research that contribute to increased physical activity among children and youth.

The target audiences for the organization’s work are governments and non-government organizations whose work in policy, public awareness and programming influences physical activity opportunities for children and youth.  This extends beyond those who work specifically in physical activity promotion, sport, health or recreation, to including those who work in areas that impact physical activity such as education, community design and development, environment, municipal affairs, etc.  

Power in Partnerships

The content for the Report Card is developed by Active Healthy Kids Canada’s Research Work Group. This group, consisting of subject matter experts from across Canada, contributes unique data sources, informs the grade assignment process and critically reviews all Report Card content. The Research Work Group is guided by Active Healthy Kids Canada’s strategic partner, the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group within the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario, who leads the research development and writing of the Report Card.

Active Healthy Kids Canada also works in strategic partnership with ParticipACTION, the national voice of physical activity and sport participation in Canada, to facilitate design, dissemination and media outreach for the Report Card across Canada.  ParticipACTION optimizes the reach of the Report Card at the time of release and beyond, through communications strategies – media advocacy, PSAs, presentations, publications - to draw attention and provoke action across government, non-governmental organizations, the media and the public.

A Powerful Impact

Evaluation findings derived from surveys, key informant interviews and consultations across the country indicate that 90% of stakeholders agree the Report Card is increasing awareness about kids’ physical activity and 86% of stakeholders agree that it supports their mandate as an organization.

• to guide strategic direction and new areas of investment
• to inform stakeholders’ message strategy for public awareness campaigns
• as a foundation for research; and
• in presentations and to justify financial investments in physical activity.

Nearly 60% of those surveyed reported using the Report Card for advocacy and policy/strategy development, and nearly half reported using it to inform program development, training and for briefing senior staff and elected officials.

Dissemination and media coverage of the Report Card has grown through each year of publication. Facilitated by a network of provincial/territorial partners, 2011 hard copy distribution surpassed 40,000 copies.  The 2011 Report Card was covered in 531 media stories, resulting in excess of 146 million media impressions across Canada. 

Active Healthy Kids Canada was asked by the Public Health Agency of Canada to present the Report Card findings to a gathering of Deputy Ministers responsible for Sport, Physical Activity and Recreation from across Canada, after which the Ministers released a joint policy statement identifying collective policy action commitments to meet child and youth physical activity targets.   

Empowering New Directions

The Active Healthy Kids Canada Report Card model has been adapted and implemented in municipal, regional and international jurisdictions in consultation with Active Healthy Kids Canada. Projects have been, or are being, developed in South Africa, the U.S. state of Louisiana, Kenya and Mexico.  Through a partnership with Saskatchewan in motion, the first provincial Report Card Supplement was released in 2009 in that province, and in 2011, an Ontario Report Card Supplement was released in collaboration with Ophea and the Ontario Trillium Foundation. The City of Toronto, through the Get Active Toronto initiative, has developed the first municipal-level report which has had 2 iterations (2010 and 2011 versions). 

Experiences that matter: discovering the connections between environment and early development at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research

A mounting body of evidence suggests that what we experience early in life plays an important role in our future health. New evidence has shifted the nature versus nurture debate, providing a fertile new area of inquiry. With the support of partners like The Lawson Foundation, researchers at the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research are discovering important insights about the healthy development of young children.

The Foundation’s support of CIFAR President and CEO and Lawson Foundation Fellow Dr. Chaviva Hošek makes it possible for Dr. Hošek to take a leadership role in sharing our advances about the healthy development of young children with federal and provincial policy-makers as well as business and community leaders. Dr. Hošek guides the Institute’s ambitious research agenda and helps to assemble the strongest team to ensure the Institute has maximum impact in its work. She connects researchers in diverse fields and encourages them to learn each other’s disciplinary language.

Nearly three decades ago, CIFAR was founded on the belief that Canada could be a world leader in creating knowledge that expands human possibilities. Today, the Institute is one of Canada’s foremost global research assets and has an impact in areas as diverse as improving human health and the environment, transforming technology, building strong societies, understanding human culture, and charting the universe.

Since 1996, The Lawson Foundation has been an important partner of the Institute. The Foundation’s recent, transformative gift of $1 million over five years has been instrumental in supporting the Institute’s mission to create groundbreaking research and share new knowledge with leaders in government, academia, business and community organizations.

The Foundation’s gift helps CIFAR to bring together some of the world’s most brilliant researchers from around the globe to engage in a discussion of how early social experiences of living creatures mould their brains, biology and genes to set the trajectory for future health and development.

For example, CIFAR researcher Michael Kobor and his team at the University of British Columbia found that a child’s early-life socioeconomic status regulates the way genes are expressed. In his research he has found that children from poorer families more powerfully express hormonal and inflammatory responses, giving rise to chronic disease in later life. Even when their socio-economic conditions improve, children from such families are more likely to have an early onset of chronic diseases.

More recently, CIFAR neurobiologist Takao Hensch and his team at Harvard were the first in the world to determine both the timing and mechanism of the critical period for visual development in mice. These critical periods – windows of opportunity or vulnerability during young brain development – shape the brain for life. CIFAR researchers are beginning to understand the molecular mechanism behind these critical periods.

Dr. Hensch has teamed up with CIFAR researcher Janet Werker, a Canada Research Chair in psychology, to investigate the mechanism of language acquisition in babies, including critical periods of brain development before children are even born. The knowledge gained from this work may lead to treatments for a wide-array of conditions, ranging from autism to brain injury.

“What is clear from CIFAR research is that early experiences do have a profound effect on our health, well-being and success,” says Dr. Hošek. “I see the goal of the Institute’s collective work as understanding how and why the brain works this way, and what we can do to help ensure the best possible start for young children.”

Together, The Lawson Foundation and CIFAR are helping to make outcomes like this possible. For more information, please visit www.cifar.ca.

Science fosters early learning

Wings of Discovery® by Let’s Talk Science

Young children are scientists by nature – always asking questions, always wanting to understand the “hows” and the “whys” of the world around them.

To encourage young children to make the most of their natural tendencies to question and explore, Let’s Talk Science, as a result of an instrumental grant of $537,000 from The Lawson Foundation, developed, researched and evaluated an innovative suite of resources to encourage Preschool and Kindergarten educators in using science as a platform for early learning.

Called Wings of Discovery, these award-winning resources, which were launched in 2004, strongly support the inquiry-based learning style we currently see in the early childhood education environment today. For this reason, several provincial governments are now working with Let’s Talk Science to increase uptake of the resources, which are currently in use in more than 1,500 childcare centres and Kindergarten classrooms across the country.

In addition, more than 500 Aboriginal Head Start On Reserve sites adapt the resources to use within their own cultural contexts. Bonnie Schmidt, PhD, Let’s Talk Science’s President and Founder, was invited to sit on the Ontario Government’s Early Years Experts Panel due to the respect Let’s Talk Science has received within the early years education community for the development of Wings of Discovery.

Research shows that Wings of Discovery has a positive impact on educators’ confidence and ability to engage children in science activities and experiential learning. It also helps two- to six-year-olds build valuable skills, knowledge and positive attitudes.

With a goal of producing a science-based summer series on the kids’ TV show Gisèle’s Big Backyard, TVO Kids approached Let’s Talk Science in 2009 to support the science content of their daily programming. The show reaches approximately 300,000 young viewers each day and Let’s Talk Science continues to collaborate on this project.

In 2010, Let’s Talk Science built on the success of Wings of Discovery by launching five new pre-Kindergarten resource books called Preschool Explorations in Science & Technology. The books cover an array of real-world subjects and are based on a science inquiry platform. To support educators in the use of Wings of Discovery, Let’s Talk Science also developed an instructional DVD to accompany the early years resources. The DVD was sent, free of charge, to nearly 250 childcare centres and is available upon request.

In addition, to improve access to the popular resources, Let’s Talk Science translated three of the Wings of Discovery Kindergarten books – Insect Investigators, Patterns in Time and Weather Watchers – along with an accompanying teacher guide, into French.

The incredible success of this innovative early years programming is without a doubt thanks to the initial grant from The Lawson Foundation. This show of support led to additional funding from other organizations, including the Ontario Trillium Foundation, that regard The Lawson Foundation as a positive benchmark. Let’s Talk Science was subsequently honoured with the 25th Anniversary Award from the Ontario Trillium Foundation for Wings of Discovery.

Finally, Let’s Talk Science as an organization would not exist today without The Lawson Foundation. In 1993, the Foundation provided then PhD student Bonnie Schmidt with funding to focus on science outreach as opposed to postdoctoral work. This foundational funding helped leverage additional support, allowing Schmidt to expand her outreach efforts and establish Let’s Talk Science as a national, non-profit science organization.

“Let’s Talk Science has become a national leader in our sector. We reach the broadest audience of any science awareness agency in Canada,” says Schmidt. “Since the organization was founded, Let’s Talk Science has reached more than 2.5 million children, youth and educators to inspire and engage them in science.”

SAVTI (Successful Academic and Vocational Transition Initiative)

Advances in the treatment of childhood cancer over the last decades have resulted in consistent and dramatic gains in survival rates through the use of various combinations of chemotherapy, surgery and radiation therapy. Overall survival rates are now in excess of 82%, resulting in an ever increasing pool of survivors of childhood cancer.

With survivorship, however, comes a cost. A substantial proportion of survivors experience significant physical, emotional and neurocognitive late effects resulting from their disease and treatment. A subset of the cured patients, notably those treated for leukemia with cranial radiation or intensive chemotherapy, and those treated for brain tumours with cranial radiation, will have varying degrees of compromised neurocognitive function, a consequence estimated to affect up to 60% of survivors.

The unique pattern of neurocognitive compromise observed in this population may include some or all of:

• slowed rate of information processing
• increased forgetfulness
• poor working memory
• lack of automatic processing
• inattention and distractibility.

Superimposed on this profile of complex learning disabilities, young survivors of brain tumors may experience:

• persistent fatigue
• weakness in one or more limbs
• impaired vision or hearing
• organically-based inertia
• physical deformity

Additionally, the peak occurrence of childhood cancer is in the 1 – 5 year old age group, a time of maximum knowledge absorption and school readiness. Consequently, educational attainment may be compromised by missing significant amounts of school time in this window

Thus a significant challenge exists for these adolescent survivors and their families as they transition from the child-centered to adult-focused education and health care systems.

The SAVTI project has, as its express purpose, achieving linkages between the silos of medical and mental health care, secondary and post-secondary education, training, vocational, community and social services, in an effort to advise and direct these adolescents toward defining realistic career goals and identifying and pursuing effective pathways to their achievement.

The goals of SAVTI are to use knowledge and information drawn from the health sector to:

• identify education and employment barriers for individual youth
• facilitate their access to identified, optimal, realistic education and employment pathways
• develop the necessary systemic and client-specific strategies to successfully achieve educational and vocational objectives, such as the alignment of neuropsychological profiles with educational and vocational opportunities
• share health care provider knowledge of survivorship with educators and counsellors who will serve as ongoing resources for the individual.

The SAVTI Project, implemented by the Pediatric Oncology Group of Ontario (POGO) began in Toronto (GTA) in 2002, operating in collaboration with the Hospital for Sick Children, the Ministry of Health and Long Term Care and George Brown College. The success of the program dictated expansion across the Province of Ontario, to enable  greater access for all appropriate survivors. In 2007, SAVTI launched a search for funding for the expansion, – and The Lawson Foundation became instrumental in our quest to go beyond the GTA. Through a very generous grant of $450,000 over three years, we were able to offer access to SAVTI to survivors attending POGO Survivor clinics at the hospitals in Hamilton, London, Ottawa and Kingston. This has made an enormous difference to a number of survivors and their families.

One such survivor is Victor Okeowo:

Victor was diagnosed at 6 months with an optic glioma – a tumour that blinded him in one eye and later left him with little vision when it reoccurred behind the other eye. Beyond the visual impairment, the tumor and its treatment have impacted his learning abilities. Victor’s struggles with school have been lifelong. “He loves to learn,” says Victor’s father Baba Okeowo. “Some kids pretend to be sick so they can stay home, but Victor would always pretend to be well when he was feeling sick so that he could go to school.”

Victor followed an independent education plan designed for special education students and obtained a high school certificate. Transitioning beyond the protected world of secondary school became a major problem for Victor. With a SAVTI counsellor’s help, he has achieved his goal to go to college and work in an office, through a college vocational program and co-op placement. He won the 2010 Xerox scholarship awarded to a successful college student who has been involved with SAVTI and the next step is to help Victor find meaningful employment.

“To be honest, before POGO’s SAVTI, we didn’t know how we were going to help Victor succeed. He is an ambitious guy and it could have all gone to waste. Now he has a certificate, he has work experience. Our son is very ambitious and now he has the opportunity to fulfill that ambition.” – Baba Okeowo

A bridging grant in the amount of $150,000 from The Lawson Foundation, in 2010, gave SAVTI the time to pursue further, stable funding from other sources - in which we have been successful. We, and the children we serve, are very grateful and truly appreciative of what The Lawson Foundation funding has allowed us to achieve. 

[1]  Hewitt M, Weiner SL, Simone JV, editors. Childhood Cancer Survivorship: Improving Care and Quality of Life. Washington DC; The National Academic Press: 2003, p49-77.