How Does Learning Happen? Ontario's Pedagogy for the Early Years
Lesson 2 of 5 in Child Development & Observation Language · 30 minutes
Read about Ontario's pedagogical document for licensed childcare and full-day kindergarten. 'How Does Learning Happen?' is built around four foundations — Belonging, Well-being, Engagement, and Expression — and a view of the child as competent, capable of complex thinking, curious, and rich in potential. This document shapes every minute of the centre's day. Other provinces have similar frameworks: BC's Early Learning Framework, Alberta's Flight, and the Pan-Canadian Joint Statement on Children and Youth.
What you'll learn
- Explain why How Does Learning Happen? is the foundation of Ontario early-years programming
- Describe each of the four foundations: Belonging, Well-being, Engagement, Expression
- Recognize what the document says about the image of the child
- Connect the four foundations to specific moments in a typical childcare day
- Identify equivalent provincial frameworks (BC, Alberta) for context
From the lesson
Why a 'Pedagogy' Document?
In 2014, Ontario's Ministry of Education published How Does Learning Happen? Ontario's Pedagogy for the Early Years. The Ministry asked: what should licensed childcare in this province actually look like — beyond the rules of the CCEYA, beyond the menus and ratios? The answer became this document.
It is not a curriculum. It is not a list of lessons. It is a pedagogy — a way of thinking about what learning is, what children are, and what educators do. Every Ontario licensed centre is required to base its programming on this document.
Other provinces have done similar work: British Columbia's Early Learning Framework, Alberta's Flight: Alberta's Early Learning and Care…