RRC Resource Broadens Knowledge Base in Early Child Development
In the realm of early childhood education, it’s estimated it currently takes 15 years for newly-discovered knowledge to be put into practice — in other words, the same length of time it takes for a baby to grow into a teenager.
But thanks to an ongoing partnership between Red River College and researchers from around the world — and the resulting multimedia resource, called The Science of Early Child Development (SECD) — kids might not have to wait that long to benefit from discoveries made in the field.
“There’s typically a 15-year gap between new knowledge and practice,” says Janet Jamieson, Academic Chair for Community Services at Red River College.
“This project aims to narrow that gap.”
The SECD project dates back about a decade, and was inspired by the work of Canadian researcher Dr. J. Fraser Mustard, an expert on the socioeconomic determinants of human development and health and others with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research.
Working in partnership with Mustard and the University of Toronto’s Atkinson Centre — with funding from the Lawson Foundation, the World Bank, the Winnipeg Foundation and, most recently, the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) in Geneva — the College collates research involving early brain development and population health, then translates it to an accessible online format that students and frontline workers can easily understand.