Documentation and analysis of children’s experience: an ongoing collegial activity for early childhood professionals

Abstract

Systematic documentation and analysis of educational practice can be a powerful tool for continuous support to the professionalism of early childhood education practitioners. This paper discusses data from a three-year action-research initiative carried out by a research agency in collaboration with a network of Italian municipal nido services. The action research aimed at elaborating and implementing documentation procedures that nido practitioners could accomplish continuously and that could form the basis of a collegial reflection on children's experience and the improvement of practices. The analysis of practitioners' discussions about weaknesses and strengths of the new procedures shows how they could be inscribed within the framework of their current professional engagement and support their processes of reflexivity. The analysis also highlights the important role of collegiality in sustaining practitioners' analysis, evaluation and improvement of their practice.

Professional development for ECEC practitioners with responsibilities for children at risk: which competences and in-service training are needed?

“…One of the guiding principles of the action research conducted by the VBJK is the use of documentation (Dahlberg and Moss 2005;Picchio et al 2012;Rinaldi 2005). Since the first project in 1979, all action research projects (11 in total) have been documented by 'little narratives' (Lyotard 1979) of ECEC practitioners involved in a process of change: video and written interviews with practitioners compiled in journals and book chapters.…”

Documentation and communication in Swedish preschools

“…Lenz Taguchi 1997;Kennedy 1999;Rinaldi 2001;Picchio et al 2012), but very little research in this area, either nationally or internationally. In a discourse analysis study by Bjervås (2011) examining how preschool teachers, Early Years 177 in planning meetings, talk about and assess the children related to their own documentation; the results show that teachers talk about children as competent and with diverse abilities.…”

Democratic Experimentation in Early Childhood Education

“…Educators there spend much time and energy in documenting their practice, as well as the learning of children. The pedagogical documentation serves as a memory of the institution, but also as the start of discussions with children, parents and practitioners from other institutions about the meaning of education Picchio et al, 2012;Rinaldi, 2005). It is, when carefully done, probably one of the most powerful ways to challenge the hegemony of the human capital paradigm, since it 'makes heard a discourse where once there was only place for noise ' (Rancière, 2003, quoted in Biesta, 2011.…”

“…One of the diverse ways in which the democratic debates about the meaning of early childhood education is put into practice, is the use of documentation. Practitioners not only document the learning of the children (as well as other activities and the life of the early childhood centre itself), but also discuss this documentation with peers and parents, both within and across centres as a means to explore the meaning making of different stakeholders and to place the discussion on the meaning of ECEC in the public sphere (Dahlberg & Moss, 2005;Picchio et al, 2012;Rinaldi, 2005).…”