Chapter 2: Early Life and Learning, Behaviour and Health
Biological and social scientists have made significant advances in understanding how experience-based brain development in the early years affects learning, behaviour and mental and physical health. Our earliest experiences, beginning at conception, shape our brain and biological systems for life. Integrating knowledge from many disciplinary approaches is difficult. The application of this knowledge towards societal improvements to enhance human development is more difficult. But the synthesis of findings from animal and human studies, birth cohort data, population data, observational studies and clinical trials establishes a compelling transdisciplinary approach to understanding human development.
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- Introduction: Foundations are Stepping up for Children
- Introduction: Mothers and others needed for healthy human development
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Chapter 1: A Smart Start for School and Life
- 1. Good education cares
- 2. The child care dilemma
- 3. The loop in the public debate
- 4. Starting from education's base
- 5. One-in-four start out disadvantaged
- 6. Democracy in trouble
- 7. Making a difference
- 8. Paying for inaction
- 9. Turning chaos into systems
- 10. Changing populations
- 11. Changing families
- Chapter 1: Figures
- Chapter 1: References
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Chapter 2: Early Life and Learning, Behaviour and Health
- 1. Genes and environments
- 2. Building the brain's architecture
- 3. Sensory Pathways
- 4. The limbic system pathways
- 5. Prefrontal cortex pathways
- 6. Language pathways
- 7. Learning, behaviour and health
- 8. Early adversity and later life
- 9. Consilience: A new framework of understanding
- Chapter 2: Figures
- Chapter 2: References
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Chapter 3: Creating Spaces and Places for Young Children and Families
- 1. Celebrating childhood
- 2. What early childhood education offers children and families
- 3. Components of quality early childhood education
- 4. Educators matter
- 5. Early childhood options for all
- 6. Challenges to early childhood service integration
- 7. Benefits of early childhood program integration
- 8. New thinking for new challenges
- 9. Influencing policy change
- Chapter 3: Figures
- Chapter 3: References
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Chapter 4: Early Childhood Education as Economic Development
- 1. Decades of research reveal benefits
- 2. Canadian cost-benefit analyses
- 3. Developing community capacity to support children
- 4. Child care as regional economic development
- 5. Preschool as economic stimulus
- 6. Early childhood programming: A no cost solution
- 7. Wisely investing in early childhood
- Chapter 4: Figures
- Chapter 4: References
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Chapter 5: Public Policy Shapes Early Childhood Programs
- 1. Federal involvement in ECE policy and programs
- 2. Direct federal funding to ECE programs
- 3.1 Policy developments: The provinces and territories - Governance
- 3.2 Policy developments: The provinces and territories - Funding
- 3.3 Policy developments: The Provinces and Territories - Access
- 3.4 Policy developments: The Provinces and Territories - Learning Environments
- 4. Curriculum
- 5. Next Steps
- Chapter 5: Figures
- Chapter 5: References
- Chapter 6: Where are we? How Far do we have to go?
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