An Investigation of the Features and Effectiveness of the Full-Day Early Learning Kindergarten Program in Ontario

This dissertation includes two studies. Study 1 is a qualitative case study that describes enactment of the main components of a high fidelity Full-Day Early Learning Kindergarten (FDELK) classroom, specifically play-based learning and teacher-ECE collaboration. Study 2 is a quantitative analysis that investigates how effectively the FDELK program promotes school readiness skills, namely self-regulation, literacy, and numeracy, in Kindergarteners. To describe the main components of an FDELK classroom in Study 1, a sub-sample of four high fidelity case study schools were selected from a larger case study sample. Interview data from these schools’ administrators, educators, parents, and community stakeholders were used to describe how the main components of the FDELK program enabled educators to meet the individual needs of students and promote students’ SR development. In Study 2, hierarchical regression analyses of 32,207 students’ self-regulation, literacy, and numeracy outcomes using 2012 Ontario Early Development Instrument (EDI) data revealed essentially no benefit for students participating in the FDELK program when compared to peers in Half-Day or Alternate-Day Kindergarten programs. Being older and female predicted more positive SR and literacy outcomes. Age and gender accounted for limited variance in numeracy outcomes. Results from both studies suggest that the Ontario Ministry of Education should take steps to improve the quality of the FDELK program by incorporating evidence-based guidelines and goals for play, reducing Kindergarten class sizes to more effectively scaffold learning, and revising curriculum expectations to include a greater focus on SR, literacy, and numeracy skills.

Prudent Budget Planning and Budgetary Process Effectiveness: The Canadian Federal Government’s Experience (Working Paper 47)

In 1994, the Liberal government introduced a structured approach to prudent budgeting to provide the fiscal discipline needed to meet its debt reduction targets in which explicit prudence factors were introduced into the fiscal framework to reduce the amount of fiscal flexibility available for allocation in each annual budget. Although that framework was successful in contributing to the elimination of persistent budgetary deficits, this paper advances three linked arguments: • that additional but undisclosed prudence factors were also introduced into the fiscal framework to attenuate the political risk of missing budget targets; • that these undisclosed prudence factors are one cause of a number of unintended budgetary outcomes that put the effectiveness of the budgetary process at risk; and • that there is nothing inherently politically partisan about the Liberal’s approach to prudent budget planning and, changes to terminology and display notwithstanding, the present Conservative government has continued to apply most elements of that framework in its budgets. Moving from a single-year budget target to one that is expressed as a cumulative total over the election cycle is discussed as one option that would help preserve the merits of prudent budgeting.