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works with a number
of funders to advance the inclusion of children with special
support needs in Canadian early learning programs. We thank
these funders for sharing our vision for of an inclusive
Canada that begins in the early years.
With funding support
by the Canadian Council on Learning (http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL
) SpeciaLink is currently planning for our Early Childhood
Inclusion: Applying Lessons Learned Symposium & Source
Book. This work will allow us to apply our shared knowledge
of early intervention and inclusive practices for children
with special support needs. Our national transdisciplinary
gathering of researchers and the practice communities will
be held August 21-28, 2008 at the University of Winnipeg.
In its lead-up, participants will help to develop the themes
and symposium agenda; will influence the documentation which
occurs through the event; and the subsequent writing of
papers and bulletins, and the source book itself. Other
knowledge exchange plans include updates to SpeciaLink’s
website and popularized print and electronic communications.
Watch our website for more information!
With funding support
by Canadian Council On Learning (http://www.ccl-cca.ca/CCL
) SpeciaLink is currently well underway in our project,
Assessing inclusion quality in early childhood
learning and child care (ELCC) in Canada with the SpeciaLink
Child Care Inclusion Practices and Principles Scales.The
overall purpose of project is to complete the development
of a statistically sound, valid, reliable, user-friendly
and well-accepted assessment tool for assessing inclusion
quality in early childhood learning and child care settings.
The completion of this tool will advance the development
of children with special needs as well as typically developing
children and children of diverse ethno-cultural status in
inclusive early childhood learning and child care (ELCC)
settings, by contributing objective, evidence-based inclusion
quality measures to the field — measures that will
suggest next steps for parents, individual practitioners,
classrooms, centres, trainers, researchers and policy makers.
The tool will help to improve the assessment of early childhood
learning, as it applies to children with disabilities in
inclusive services. This research will complete an evidence-based,
valid, reliable, well-accepted and user-friendly tool for
assessing of inclusion quality in early childhood learning
and child care settings — critical for go-forward
funding and programming, but also for on-going evaluation
and program review.
Several thousand Canadians have taken part in our inclusion
training over the past three years and many are regularly
using the tools in their own support for inclusion. Key
work in 2007-2008 will be to 1) incorporate all participant
comments and suggestions in an updated version of the inclusion
quality assessment tools and manual, and 2) refine the instruments,
the SpeciaLink Child Care Inclusion Practices and Principles
Scale (Workshop Version) to meet standards for high quality
research.
SpeciaLink-the
National Centre for Child Care Inclusion
University of Winnipeg, 2E22-515 Portage Avenue, Winnipeg,
MB, R3B 2E9
Phone: (204) 258-2901 · Toll Free: 1-866-902-6333
· Fax: (204) 786-7803
info@specialinkcanada.org
© 2004 SpeciaLink. All rights reserved.
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