AECEA Connect

At the beginning of October 2024, The Muttart Foundation, in partnership with the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Alberta (AECEA) and the Alberta Early Learning and Care Leaders’ Caucus (ALC) released a report on Strategies to Improve the Total Compensation and Working Conditions of Certified ECEs in Alberta. This report presents findings from focus group discussions with early childhood educators held in the fall of 2023. It examines the current working conditions, compensation, and benefits available to early childhood educators and identifies critical areas for improvement to better support their work with young children.

Review the report by going to: https://aecea.ca/news/strategies-improve-total-compensation-and-working-conditions-certified-early-childhood.

In November 2022, the Government of Alberta (Children’s Services) issued a request for proposals to develop a competency-based model for early childhood educators (ECEs). AECEA, in partnership with Ottawa-based Human Resource Systems Group (HRSG), is thrilled to have submitted the winning proposal!

With this project, Children’s Services intends to further professionalize the early learning and child care (ELCC) sector by setting foundational requirements for knowledge of early learning and child development theory and application. The project recognizes that ECEs play a critical role in the lives of children and as such, must demonstrate a core body of knowledge, competencies and skills. The project aims to further professionalize the ELCC sector, expand existing investments in quality frameworks and standards, professional development and skills training, and improve certification levels of the ECE workforce and includes the development of a compensation review for ECEs, including wages and benefits.

WHO’S INVOLVED?
A team of well-known ELCC researchers from across Canada have been brought together, including Jane Beach (BC), Kathleen Flanagan (PEI), Jane Hewes (BC, formerly from AB) to work alongside Nicki Dublenko (past AECEA chair) and a team working with AECEA on a compensation framework project: Mary-Frances Smith, Miranda Brown, and Abhiroop Saha. The HRSG team includes experts in competency-based assessment, with broad experiences across Canada over the past 30+ years.

If you are interested in participating in the consultations for the competency-based model, register here: https://aecea.ca/form/competency-based-model-for-early

A post-graduate research team, supported by the Community-University Partnership (CUP), the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN), and the Edmonton Council of Early Learning and Care (ECELC) in partnership with the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Alberta (AECEA), has been conducting community-engaged, qualitative research on a compensation framework for early childhood educators of Alberta.

Over the past few months, the aim for the team has been to create a values-based wage grid recommendation focused on professionalizing the workforce and ensuring experience, education, and training are embedded in the grid. This presentation will show the wage grid recommendation and highlight the journey to creating the grid.

The post-graduate research team includes:

• Mary-Frances Smith, a master's student at the University of Alberta in Community Engagement. Her research uses a qualitative, community-engaged approach to understand workforce stability in the early learning and child care sector. Partnering with AECEA, her research is supported by Community-University Partnership (CUP) and the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN) and funded by SSHRC and WCHRI. Through this research, she hopes to reveal the complex nature of ECE’s experiences by examining their motivations to enter and remain in the sector, give voice and agency to their hopes and struggles, and provide policymakers with frontline solutions as we build a system of ELCC. The wage grid recommendation is the focus of the pan-Canadian post-graduate research team.

• Miranda Brown, a master's student at York University in Development Studies and a research assistant at ECELC. Her master's research uses data from the Canadian Health Measures Survey to make regional comparisons of biomonitoring data collected from 2009-2019. She has been working on research and advocacy for the ELCC sector since May 2021. With a focus on economic well-being and human development indicators, since the summer of 2022, Miranda has been a part of a pan-Canadian research team working on a wage grid for early childhood educators. The wage-grid project is a partnership with AECEA, supported by Community-University Partnership (CUP) and the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN).

• Abhiroop Saha is a Master of Public Health Student at the University of Saskatchewan. His focus in the program is to learn more about social determinants of health, health promotion, Indigenous health, and effective leadership and communication strategies. He is currently a research assistant with AECEA and is collaborating with the Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN) and Community-University Partnership (CUP). His research is focused on creating a values-based wage grid for early childhood educators with the goal of increasing workforce stability and retention in the early learning and care sector. He hopes to work in collaboration with community partners and members to reach effective and thorough solutions.

To view the research team's written recommendation report, go here.

Want to be a part of the wage grid engagement? Complete an expression of interest at https://aecea.ca/form/wage-grid-engagement-expression-

In Fall 2022, The Muttart Foundation, in partnership with the Association of Early Childhood Educators of Alberta (AECEA) and the Alberta Early Learning and Care Leaders’ Caucus (ALC) within the Canadian Child Care Federation hosted a series of focus group discussions with early childhood educators. The research aimed to identify the challenges facing the early childhood educator (ECE) workforce and strategies for increasing its size and capacity to support high-quality early learning and child care (ELCC) delivery in Alberta. In light of the proposed expansion of services in the Canada-Wide agreement, the partners felt it important to gather insights from certified early childhood educators on the workforce challenges they face and the strategies they recommend to address these challenges. They were also asked what they knew and understood about the Canada-Alberta Canada-Wide Early Learning and Child Care Agreement and how they would like to contribute to the work that lies ahead. This AECEA Connect will have Christopher Smith and Tara Stang share the findings from the research. Review the report by going to: https://aecea.ca/news/workforce-investments-required-ELCC-system-buildi….

The Government of Alberta has released its plan to reduce child care fees in Alberta by an average of 50% by early 2022. Under this plan, every family’s out-of-pocket fees will decrease, but lower-income families will not see a 50% decrease—and some may see a decrease of less than 15%. As a result, child care may still be unaffordable for lower-income families under the new system. This talk will explain how the new system works, why it creates uneven decreases for different families across Alberta and will discuss both short-term and long-term options for changing this situation. 

Our Guest
Rob Buschmann, PhD is a research associate at the Community-University Partnership for the Study of Children, Youth, and Families in the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. He is currently CUP’s representative to the Edmonton Council for Early Learning and Care (ECELC), an organization with the vision of early learning and care for all children that is high in quality, universally available, accessible, affordable, and responsive to the diversity of individual children and their families.

In this session, Miranda Brown focused specifically on early childhood educator (ECE) wages in Alberta from a historical perspective using wage data from 2000-2020. She discussed what wages mean for retention in a labour market as "unique" as Alberta's and what Alberta's current retention philosophy communicates about how the province values ECEs and care work more generally.

Miranda Brown is a Master’s student at York University in Toronto and a Research Assistant at the Community-University Partnership at the School of Public Health at the University of Alberta. Miranda spent the last year working closely with the Edmonton Council for Early Learning and Care (ECELC) with supervisor Rob Buschmann on policy research in the early learning and care sector.

Session Slides

In this session, Jennifer Usher* talked about how the new ELCC Regulations & Act align with AECEA's recommendations.

AECEA's response to the changes in the Regulations can be viewed here.

AECEA's response to the changes in the Act can be viewed here.

*Jennifer works for the Medicine Hat and District Child Care Association and is a past AECEA board member (2017-2020). In January 2021, Jennifer authored AECEA's Response to the Regulations and Act papers.

In this session, we were joined by Christopher Smith and Tara Stang from the Muttart Foundation to present the Alberta results from a National Survey During the COVID-19 Pandemic and to discuss early learning and child care funding in Alberta.

Due to a technical difficulty, the first 10 minutes were not recorded. To view the slides from the session to catch up on what was missed, go here.

Documents referenced in the webinar:

• Canadian child care: Preliminary results from a national survey during the COVID-19 pandemic by the Childcare Resource and Research Unit, Child Care Now, and the Canadian Child Care Federation
• Early Learning and Child Care in Alberta: Results from a National Survey During the COVID-19 Pandemic by the Muttart Foundation and the Canadian Child Care Federation
• Highlights from 'Early Learning and Child Care in Alberta: Results from a National Survey During the COVID-19 Pandemic'