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ECEs as Innovators
“Let’s try it out!”
Social Innovation in Atlantic Canada’s ECE Sector
ECE professional practice is highly compatible with the iterative test-and-learn cycles of innovation design. Every day, ECEs work with children in responsive, adaptive ways — trying out new ways to support their care and learning, gathering feedback from the children, and making adjustments to their environment and interactions. Participants in the ECE Lab applied this iterative approach to the sector’s systemic challenges around recruitment and retention of the ECE workforce. They created eight social innovation prototypes that offer new ways of addressing these challenges. Supported by embedded design coaches, each prototype was field tested and refined, and now all prototypes are offered here for use by anyone in the ECE sector.
Explore the insights and prototypes created in the Lab on this page. Then download a prototype action pack and try it out in your community.
Collaboration with North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council (NSMTC), MAWIW Council, and Wolastoqey Tribal Council Inc. (WTCI)
The work and learning in the above video stems from an ongoing exploration of Indigenous pedagogy in early childhood education, and the role of educators in providing culturally nourishing early learning and care.
The Atlantic Canada ECE Lab shared resources and support for some of the earlier work in this exploration. Through this partnership, a social innovation project for the ECE sector was created by the North Shore Mi’kmaq Tribal Council in 2022-2023. The prototype they created developed quality outdoor learning measures across nine First Nations communities in North Shore, NB, and PEI. This project applied existing Assessment for Quality Improvement (AQI) measures from an Indigenous perspective to outdoor environments, testing a four-part certificate for NB and PEI educators based on cohort feedback.
Learn more about what the Tribal Councils are doing to advance ECE pedagogy and practice through Indigenous ways of knowing and teaching by exploring their websites below:
