A Pan-Canadian document analysis: examining policies and practices that foster self-regulation in the early years

ABSTRACT

Based on emerging literature on the important role of self-regulation in supporting learning, policy makers have made efforts to include self-regulation skills in practice and policy documents worldwide. Despite these efforts, there is limited understanding of what self-regulation is and how best to support these skills in the day-to-day life of early years classrooms. Thus, there is a need to systematically analyse and examine these efforts. This research directly responds to this need by examining the ways self-regulation is discussed and promoted in early childhood curriculum frameworks in Canada. The impact of this research involves changed thinking that will evolve through improved clarity in defining and fostering self-regulation.

KEYWORDS:

• Self-regulation
• early years
• kindergarten
• policy
• co-regulation

Acknowledgements

We would like to acknowledge the support of Dr. Janette Pelletier, Dr. Carl Corter and their research teams who supported with data analysis for the Ontario document scan.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Research ethics

This research involved a document analysis of curriculum documents and therefore ethical review was not required.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the [Atkinson Charitable Foundation]; [SSHRC Institutional Grant (Queen’s University)]; and [the UofT Connaught Global Challenge Fund].