Reach­ing Out and Listening

Under­stand­ing what is hap­pen­ing in the Early Learn­ing Kinder­garten program

Pro­fes­sional Ser­vices staff always try to keep a fin­ger on the pulse of our mem­ber­ship. What do our mem­bers need in the area of pro­fes­sional learn­ing? What are their issues and con­cerns when new pro­grams are imple­mented? Do new resources need to be developed?

Con­duct­ing mem­ber research is one way to get feed­back. Over the years, ETFO researcher Pat McAdie has asked for your opin­ion on many issues. ETFO has used this research to lobby the gov­ern­ment, pro­vide feed­back to the pres­i­dent and the exec­u­tive, advo­cate for new pro­grams, and nego­ti­ate col­lec­tive agreements.

ETFO sur­veys its members

Last April, 481 ETFO mem­bers work­ing in the Early Learn­ing Kinder­garten (ELK) pro­gram responded to a sur­vey about their expe­ri­ences dur­ing the program’s first year. The respon­dents included 327 teach­ers from all but two boards, and 128 des­ig­nated early child­hood edu­ca­tors (DECEs) from all of the locals that ETFO rep­re­sents. Here is an overview of what we learned.

A suc­cess­ful first year

The full-day Early Learning–Kindergarten pro­gram is deliv­ered by a teacher and a DECE work­ing together using a play-based cur­ricu­lum. This is a new approach for Ontario kinder­garten programs.

The sur­vey showed that both teach­ers and DECEs felt the pro­gram was suc­cess­ful in its first year. The vast major­ity agreed that stu­dents were pro­gress­ing well.

Play-based learn­ing

Play as a teach­ing strat­egy is regain­ing impor­tance, and most teach­ers and DECEs agreed that they have a good under­stand­ing of this method­ol­ogy and are able to imple­ment it. How­ever, access to resources was an issue for a sig­nif­i­cant number.

Sup­port for the ELK program

A num­ber of ques­tions asked whether oth­ers in the school and com­mu­nity sup­ported the pro­gram. Gen­er­ally, teach­ers and DECEs had a very sim­i­lar per­spec­tive on the level of sup­port from par­ents, other teach­ing staff, school admin­is­tra­tors, and boards. The over­whelm­ing major­ity said these groups sup­port the pro­gram. Some sur­vey respon­dents believed that for non-ELK teach­ers and admin­is­tra­tors under­stand­ing the pro­gram was some­times a challenge.

Plan­ning time

Find­ing joint plan­ning time was an issue for many: 68 per­cent of teach­ers and 48 per­cent of DECEs stated that they did not have any reg­u­larly sched­uled, coor­di­nated, or com­mon plan­ning time. Fewer than one in five said they had such time sched­uled every week or had com­mon plan­ning time with their part­ner prior to the start of the school year.

Roles and responsibilities

A sig­nif­i­cant minor­ity of teach­ers (37 per­cent) and DECEs (43 per­cent) felt that they had not received clear direc­tion from their school board about the ELK pro­gram and their role. Both teach­ers and DECEs felt they needed more clar­ity about their roles in the class­room. They also felt they needed time and sup­port to under­stand work­ing as a team. Despite this, most agreed that they worked well with their partners.

Class size and facilities

Through­out the sur­vey, there were many com­ments about large class sizes – classes of 28, 30, or more. A major­ity (58 per­cent) said their class­room was too small. For some, a pre­vi­ous kinder­garten class­room was not large enough for the addi­tional stu­dents; oth­ers were using a class­room that was not designed for kinder­garten. Lack of stor­age space and inad­e­quate wash­room facil­i­ties were also concerns.

What would you like to change? What would you keep the same?

Most com­monly, mem­bers wanted smaller classes. Many men­tioned a cap on class size, often refer­ring to the cap on other pri­mary classes. Other pre­ferred changes included more resources and facil­i­ties, more train­ing and pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment, more com­mon plan­ning time, and clearer role definitions.

Many DECEs would like to improve their rights, refer­ring to such changes as improved plan­ning time and recog­ni­tion of their qual­i­fi­ca­tions by par­ents and other staff.

Many teach­ers high­lighted the pos­i­tive nature of work­ing with an DECE. Both teach­ers and DECEs val­ued the full-day pro­gram and the play-based curriculum.

Look­ing ahead

This research pro­vided ETFO with some won­der­ful data on what hap­pened to our mem­bers in the ELK class­rooms. But, as we move into the sec­ond year of imple­men­ta­tion, we want to find out more. Do the find­ings still hold true? Have atti­tudes to the ELK pro­gram changed?

In order to explore this topic fur­ther, ETFO exec­u­tive staff Dr. Janet Millar-Grant and Dr. Anne Rodrigue will con­duct three focus group ses­sions with ELK teach­ers and DECEs. Focus groups let researchers observe inter­ac­tions on a spe­cific topic and help us under­stand the per­cep­tions and nuances attached to these issues from the per­spec­tives of class­room educators.

These ses­sions will pro­vide us with a deeper under­stand­ing of the issues that we need to dis­cuss with min­istry of edu­ca­tion offi­cials or to address at the bar­gain­ing table. We also hope to learn what spe­cific pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties and resources would be most ben­e­fi­cial to our members.

Many mem­bers quickly responded to an invi­ta­tion to attend focus group ses­sions when it was posted on the ETFO web­site. Obvi­ously, our mem­bers want to talk with us about their day-to-day expe­ri­ences in the ELK class­room. We selected par­tic­i­pants on the basis of geog­ra­phy, local rep­re­sen­ta­tion, and demo­graph­ics. The focus groups will be held Jan­u­ary 21 and the results of the research will be the sub­ject of a future arti­cle in Voice.

Dr. Anne Rodrigue, coor­di­na­tor of ETFO Pro­fes­sional Ser­vices, researcher Pat McAdie, and edi­tor Johanna Brand con­tributed to this article.