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Content and pedagogy should be integrated” (American Association of Colleges for
Teacher Education, 2004, p. 7).
The highest education requirement for child care teachers in any jurisdiction is
Ontario’s regulation that at least one person with each group of children must have a twoyear
early childhood diploma. In the other six provinces with a regulatory requirement for
the educational level of child care teachers, the only requirement is that one person in
each group have related training of one year or less (Doherty et al., 2000). Moving
toward a degree requirement as well as teaching certification seems a far-reaching goal
with the current propensity for untrained, unqualified staff. The likely increment toward
increased educational requirements for child care teachers will be that all have a two-year
diploma. In Ontario, the government’s promise of an impeding regulatory college for
early childhood educators comes with the recommendation that all teaching staff be
required to have a two-year diploma (Ontario Ministry of Child and Youth Services,
2005).
Wages.
Wages for early childhood educators in Canada have long been considered
inadequate and not comparable to kindergarten teachers and nurses. In You Bet I Care!
(2000), a parking lot attendant is featured as the occupation most closely resembling the
remuneration levels of child care teachers. However, a parking lot attendant is dissimilar
in many ways to that of child care teacher. “There are no formal education requirements;
the job involves passively watching inanimate objects” (Doherty et al., 2000, p. 81).
Nationally, the average annual salary for a parking lot attendant is almost the same as that