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This report provides an overview of child care in rural areas of Ontario. Chapter 1 outlines the paper's purpose, defining "child care" and "rural." It discusses the nature of rural Ontario in the 1990s and the need for child care in rural areas. Also, implications for child care provision in a rural context are highlighted. Chapter 2 reviews child care in Ontario with regard to the roles of different levels of government. Issues of child care availability, affordability, and quality are discussed, along with child care reform initiatives. Chapter 3 looks at rural child care in Ontario in terms of the characteristics of rural communities and characteristics of successful child care programs. Chapters 4 through 6 focus on rural center-based child care, regulated home child care, and the provision of care in the child's own home, including the special challenges and issues related to each setting. Chapter 7 considers resource centers, school-age care, and care for children with special needs. Finally, chapter 8 highlights programs in Alberta, Manitoba, Prince Edward Island, and Quebec that specifically target the needs of rural families. A list of key informants, demographic information, and information on the availability and affordability of child care in Ontario are topics covered in the four Appendices. (Contains a 37-item bibliography and glossary). (AC)

This report discusses an approach for the psychoeducational evaluation of students with deafness in the Francophone population of Ontario, Canada. An introduction describes the historical context of education of deaf students and presents the idea that learning a sign language, ideally while the child is very young, furnishes a foundation for subsequently learning to read and write in a second language, French. The report contends that a revision of evaluation strategies is needed, in order to determine: the child's potential, the level of performance achieved, and which teaching strategies will best reduce the gap between the two. Subsequent chapters deal with: (1) the goals of evaluation and the evaluation process; (2) mediation as a central element of evaluation as well as teaching; (3) components of dynamic evaluation including philosophy, preparation, implementation, instruments, and interpretation of results; (4) particular concerns relating to students with deafness, including learning processes and dominant cognitive style and the impact of these concerns on teaching strategies and materials; (5) personalized intervention plans; and (6) integration of evaluation into the service system. (Contains 29 references.) (JDD)