The Needs of Evaluation in the Field of Early Childhood Development from the Early Learning and Childcare Educators' Perspective

Early childhood development (ECD) is an intersectoral and interdisciplinary field as it includes many sectors and programs that serve children from conception to six years of age. This life period is the foundation for human development. Therefore, positive early experiences set the path for adulthood in terms of education, economic stability, and health and wellbeing. In 2015, Canada committed to the United Nations’ 2030 agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The federal government is funding innovative initiatives that raise awareness around SDGs. Particularly, it is giving significant attention to enhancing early childhood experiences in Canada due to its importance in achieving the SDGs. However, there are still areas in this field that call for improvement. Evaluation is one way to identify those areas and learn how this field can be enhanced, but there are gaps in doing and using evaluation in this field. Therefore, it was important to understand the evaluation assets and needs in the ECD field. Understanding evaluation capacity assets and needs requires learning from stakeholders that are involved in this field. The Evaluation Capacity Network (ECN) conducted a study in 2021 to understand those needs and assets in ECD and to learn how it can effectively tailor its support in building the evaluation capacity of organizations and individuals. This thesis research builds on the ECN’s study to learn about the field’s capacity and context, and while this field is intersectoral, the thesis research focused on early learning and childcare (ELCC) as a subsection. ELCC is an important sector as it is where Canadian children spend most of their time when interacting with people other than the family. Among the diverse stakeholders in ELCC, this research focused on ELCC educators in Alberta, Canada. The research used qualitative methodology and drew on two data sources. Secondary data from five focus groups conducted by the ECN with ECD stakeholders in North America were used to reflect the field’s capacity at the organizational and system levels. This was followed by seven semi-structured interviews with ELCC educators in Alberta to reflect their individual capacity needs and assets to engage in evaluation. The findings revealed that educators have a unique evaluation capacity due to their natural evaluation practice with children that is embedded in their day-to-day work and interaction with children. Their natural evaluation practice makes the quality of their evaluation vary from one another based on their experiences. This research suggests that educators need evaluation capacity building at individual, organizational, and system levels. It is significant, however, to consider how educators define evaluation and the contexts in which they work to tailor evaluation capacity building opportunities more meaningfully. Improving educators’ evaluation capacity will ultimately enhance the collection of baseline data about children in the province that is currently lacking and ensure more coherent evaluation in the system to determine if significant funds and initiatives are making change.

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