This document summarizes research into early childhood education programs for 3- to 8-year-old children in Ontario. The document focuses upon the problems, priorities, and practices which characterize these programs. Two factors in Ontario prompted research into its early childhood education programs: public concern over rising educational costs; and differences between educational psychologists and child psychologists as to which childhood years are the most critical for establishing learning-to-learn skills. The investigators identified six research tasks: to enumerate all the presently operating programs for 3- to 8-year-old children living in Ontario; to examine program documents, government regulations, and guidelines relating to early childhood education; to develop questionnaires for obtaining data relating to priorities, policies, and practices governing the early childhood programs; to tabulate the data by optimal scaling techniques; to describe the data as they relate to the priorities, policies, and practices of early childhood education programs; and to draw conclusions relating to the issues in early childhood education. Information obtained from questionnaires relates to school board views, core curriculum development and use, special needs of early childhood education, special services, specific curriculum areas, leadership and staff needs, community/school relations, parent/school relations, teacher association views, and parent association views. In addition to summary and introductory chapters and questionnaire results, the document provides a description of various early childhood education programs, five case studies, conclusions, and copies of the questionnaires. (Author/DB)