Excerpts from the report:
In 2006, the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Ontario in partnership with Thorncliffe
Neighbourhood Office and the School of Early Childhood at George Brown College established
the Access to Early Childhood Education Program (referred to as the ECE Bridging Program) to
address the need to bridge internationally trained early childhood educators into the Canadian
workforce and to rectify the labour force shortage in the early childhood sector. During the
second phase of the project, additional funding was secured expanding the project's capacity by
providing direct services in two identified high need immigrant communities in Hamilton and
Ottawa. The project added Alqonguin College, Mohawk College and Hamilton's Affiliated
Services for Children and Youth to its partnership roster.
In the last decade there have been an increasing number of internationally trained educators seeking early childhood equivalency in Ontario (AECEO 2011). Despite a wide variety of education credentials and professional experience, like other immigrants, early childhood educators with international training are not recognized by employers for their knowledge and expertise. As a result, the ECE Bridging Program was developed to provide an opportunity to combine international education with relevant early childhood courses in Ontario that would lead to ECE credential equivalency.
The current research initiative examines the pathway to employment in the field of early childhood education for internationally trained professionals. In particular, the study's aim is to investigate the experiences of internationally trained professionals in the ECE Bridging Program (first step in the accreditation process in Ontario for internationally trained educators). The study also explored the experiences of participants in applying for jobs prior to and after achieving their ECE equivalency. The second goal was to explore whether international education credentials had any impact on employability. The study brought together a community consortium working on the project and the Atkinson Centre at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) was contracted to complete the research project with support from the Dr. Eric Jackman Institute of Child Study.