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Register Online Now“Documentation is an act of love. By making their learning visible the
children truly become citizens”
-Carlina Rinaldi
In prior Quick Notes the image of the child as strong, resourceful and competent has been linked to democratic community in education. We have also presented the value of intention as a pedagogical (teaching and learning) tool. Now we intertwine these philosophical theories and practices with the theory of reflection, and documentation as a means of reflection. Recently Voyagers Community School teaching staff and a parent attended a roundtable discussion with Reggio-inspired teachers from around New Jersey. In preparation for this meeting we read and analyzed a chapter addressing documentation and the role it plays in our environment in the book Authentic Childhood: Experiencing Reggio Emilia in the Classroom, (2001). Along with colleagues we considered the theory of documentation as a means of reflection and its value in teaching and learning within an academic community.
When documenting learning there is intense focus on children’s experience, memories, thoughts, and ideas during the course of their work. This practice or method emphasizes the importance of displaying children’s work with great care and attention to both content and aesthetic qualities. This documentation stimulates and grows from reflection. Reflection is the practice of considering the work in progress, talking about the experiences, sharing possibilities, challenging thinking and visiting the work again. This occurs between teachers and children, children and children, and teachers and teachers in the form of dialogue. Awareness grows from this exchange and gives the teacher/researcher a flow of hypotheses and curriculum direction. The documentation, the reflection and the dialogue that ensues between all members of the community strengthen their bond to each other and to learning.
In contrast in traditional schooling, children are observed and their work is evaluated in isolation. Typically a teacher writes down her observations of each child, prepares an evaluation and either presents her evaluation or places it in a child’s file for use in preparing an assessment some time in the future. Rarely is this evaluation or the process of observation shared with other teachers or used to gain insight into what the child is interested in, what she might want to do next, or what the teacher contributed or might contribute in the future. Even more importantly, these observations are limited to notes and rarely include any other media such as video or audio recordings. The lack of these items limits how a teacher can understand, assess and reassess what transpired. Since there is no representation of work beyond the teacher’s own notes there is no opportunity to create documentation panels or to engage in deep reflective dialogue with other teachers, children, parents and community members.
Progressive schools like Voyagers’ Community School have a long history of engaging in observation that is associated with the child study movement that began with G. Stanley Hall in the United States in the late nineteenth century (Weber, 1984). The focus of this movement was direct observation of children for the collection of data, as it was thought that “the true needs” of the pupil would be revealed through direct study of the child in naturalistic settings” (Weber, 1984, p. 48). This led Hall to make a major claim on the basis of the data he was collecting: “the data of child development should provide the content of the curriculum” (Weber, 1984, p. 49). While child observation has since come to serve diverse purposes in the health, welfare and education professions, in early childhood education it became one of the central tenets of a child-centered curriculum (McAuley, 1993). Within this tradition, teachers are considered gathers of information about children “in order to build a more complete picture of them” (Perry, 1997, p. 27). Teachers also reflect on this information in order to “make connections between the new information and their previous readings and knowledge” (Perry, 1997, p.27). According to Lillian Katz, professor of early childhood education at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, “documentation, in the forms of observation of children and extensive record keeping, has long been encouraged and practiced in many academic settings” (1998, p. 16).
Loris Malaguzzi, a progressive educator and founder of Reggio Emilia schools, took children’s minds and imagination seriously. He believed that all curriculum should grow out of the children’s interests, knowledge, current understanding and need to know. He suggested that observation is one part of the process of creating learning with children. He proposed that teachers should observe, document and reflect on children’s skills and imagination and that this should lead to the cultivation of dialogue with all members in a school (1994). We at Voyagers’ refer to this as reflective documentation.
As we engage in reflective documentation we consider it a means of looking more thoughtfully on children’s experiences, memories, thoughts, and ideas while they are in the process of working. This form of documentation, which relies on reflection, starts at the beginning of an educational experience and continues until the conclusion of the experience. In this way we hypothesize and observe the progress and process children rely on. We discuss our observations with each other and with students and develop new hypotheses. We enhance curriculum, provide guidance, facilitate discussion and stir interaction among participants while documenting the experience. The result is most often documentation boards, transcripts, photo evidence, video, and written interpretations. This process allows for further interaction between members of our immediate and larger community. This reflective documentation and the dialogue that ensues between all members of our community strengthens our bond to each other and thus to the community as a whole. Through reflective documentation we define and repeat that which works well and identify the actions and issues that require change. We more often recognize the needs, desires, and wants of individual community members and the effect of these conditions on our community as a whole. In a community-minded school like ours we take the time to ask what we are learning from what we are doing within our own walls and in the community at large.
When we engage in documentation as a means of reflection we make a unique contribution to education because of the value we place on children’s processes and experiences. This brings us back to an understanding of our school’s commitment to the child as strong, confident and resourceful and to democratic community. Children’s process and work is embraced, considered, and honored by all community members for its power to engage everyone in thinking, sharing, debating, analyzing and hypothesizing on the current days experiences and what might follow tomorrow.
The Practice of Reflective Documentation
At Voyagers’ reflective documentation is not performed in isolation; combinations of people, teachers, parents and children, engage in reflection together. We essentially hold each other’s thinking, practices and interpretations up for analysis. For documentation to provide a means for reflection we consider what occurred, how it occurred, why it occurred in the way that it did and what it means for the future work of the class, group of students or student. In this exchange we willingly ask hard questions and challenge others to question what they hold as truth. This is difficult and can often be missed unless we are able to trust each other and accept that it is the existence of caring and respect that allows for this honest exchange.
In our school reflective documentation is seen as a valuable routine. The mechanical aspect of keeping equipment such as tape recorders and cameras available and ready is second nature. We rely on notes, observation charts, diaries, audiotapes, photographs, slides and video to document learning. In addition our students address the task of representing what they are studying through drawing, intentionally and ardently. They are accustom to using their own field drawings as the foundation for discussion, argument, and further work, such as making murals, sculptures, and paintings. Our teachers often transcribe recorded comments, which are used to extend the production of documentation. This allows us to revisit ideas with children as we bring their words back to them for clarification. Teachers’ commentary on the purpose of a study and the children’s learning process evolve from transcripts of the children’s verbal language, photographs of their activity, and representations of their thinking. These are composed in carefully designed panels, books, movies, slide shows and photomontages, which present the process of learning in our school.
Our teachers receive 8 compensated hours each week for participation in professional development, planning, preparation and meetings with families. Time is an essential ingredient as it provides for reading, reflecting, thinking, discussing, and re-proposing. Malaguzzi (1994) declares, “Documentation and time to study the documentation are essential to our success.” The allocation of time and the ensuing outcome of reflection is perhaps the first priority in our school. The outcome of this process becomes an engine for research. It provides an opportunity to examine the past and to adapt in order to reach new goals while taking into account that children are always different. Documentation is useful for knowing what has been before, for planning, for training, and for evaluation. It allows for all possibilities within our community.
The collective evolution of reflective documentation travels a path from informing to educating. It allows movement along a continuum from observing children to studying children. Each document makes a compelling attempt to walk the viewer through an explanation. It invites inquiry, thinking, prediction, pleasure, and satisfaction. According to Forman and Fyfe, reflective documentation moves beyond recording and scoring to enhancing discourse (1998). Documentation readily draws the observer into the project being depicted and in time into the culture of our school. This connects the viewer to the teacher and the children and enables her to participate in discussion with those familiar with the experience being shared. In essence this documentation as a means for reflection shores up both the image of the child and democratic community as discussed earlier.
These three philosophies are intertwined because they enable each other.
• The practice of reflective documentation only occurs because the community, what it thinks and what it does, matters.
• The image of the child as strong, competent and resourceful is expressed because his or her actions and thoughts are at the center of our teacher/researchers’ work when they document and reflect together. Adults become cognizant of this work and begin to connect with children’s power, competence and resourcefulness. They better understand and respect children’s inquisitive nature and are empowered to provoke further exploration among all involved.
• A democratic community grows as adults challenge each other to embrace the thinking and the work of the teachers and children together and to see things in a new way therefore accepting continued possibilities. In this engagement adults develop a stronger connection to the children around them and begin to understand and embrace each child more fully.
Reflective documentation connects the image of the child as person to democratic community more securely.
References
Forman, G. & Fyfe, B. (1998). Negotiated learning through design, documentation, and discourse. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini, & G. Forman (Eds.). The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach-Advanced Reflections. Greenwich, CT: Ablex Publishing, pp. 239-260.
Katz, L. (1998). Foreword. In J. H. Helm, S. Beneke, & K. Steinheimer. Windows on Learning: Documenting Young Children’s Work. New York: Teachers College Press.
Malaguzzi, L. (1994). Your image of the child: Where teaching begins. Childcare Information Exchange, 96, 52-61.
Perry, R. (1997). Teaching Practice: A Guide for Early Childhood Students. London, UK: Routledge.
Rinaldi, C. (1993). Projected Curriculum Constructed Through Documentation. In Edwards, C., Gandini, L., and Forman, G. (Eds.). The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education. Westport, CT: Ablex Publishers, pp. 114-125.
Weber, E. (1984). Ideas Influencing Early Childhood Education: A Theoretical Analysis. New York: Teachers College Press.
