Preschools for Science: The Child Study Centre at the University of British Columbia, 1960–1997

Abstract

Although not entirely neglected, the history of preschool reform and child study in Canada is understudied. Historians have documented the fate of “progressivism” in Canadian schooling through the 1930s along with postwar reforms that shaped the school system through the 1960s. But there are few case studies of child study centers and laboratory schools in Canada, despite their popularity in the latter half of the twentieth century. Histories of child study and child development tend to focus on the well-known Institute of Child Study directed by the renowned William E. Blatz in the Department of Psychology at the University of Toronto (U of T). Yet there were over twenty other child study centers established in Canadian universities during the 1960s and 1970s directed by little-known figures such as Alice Borden and Grace Bredin at the University of British Columbia (UBC).