Children are complex learners, and their learning is episodic and uneven. That's why it is important to remember that "it is the learner who decides what to learn, not the teacher" (Sands, 2017). Sands continues, "all we can do is create the opportunities for children to be excited, engaged, committed, and then learning will happen, often at rates far beyond what might be considered ‘developmentally’ appropriate. When children are deeply, internally motivated they push the limits far beyond anything adults might set as learning goals”.
Ioannou-Georgiou and Pavlou (2003: 4-5) note that teachers are accountable for children's progress and consequently need evidence of the progress. However, if we look at the documentation of children’s achievements, we'll see that it is often constructed and aimed at adults. Thus, for example, the ‘tick-box’ assessment results in children being assessed against simplistic levels of learning. It can also diminish “children’s identities down to a list of judgements about their academic abilities, or lack thereof” (McNair et al., 2021: 479). This means that standardised tracking measures leave little space for a holistic view of development (Froebel, 1887).
If our aim is to understand children and to enhance their learning instead of checking against a list of skills, our attention should shift from testing to pedagogical documentation.
Forman and Fyfe (2012: 250) describe documentation as "any record of performance that contains sufficient detail to help others understand the behavior recorded". It records the performance and the documenter's interpretation of that performance. They highlight that "the intent of documentation is to explain not merely to describe".
Example: A photograph with text which describes and interprets the unrecorded behavior. It can be displayed on the classroom walls or filed in a portfolio.
Although documentation is more focused on children than on a child (Forman and Fyfe, 2012: 254), we should be aware of who remains invisible. Clark (2019) suggests the following questions about visibility:
Who are represented?
Who are represented very often?
Who are not represented?
Could we find a pattern?
Could we find some hypotheses about our intentions behind we often or never take photos of?
What sort of situations are represented in the material?
Where are they – which places are documented?
What happens in the situations documented?
Which themes are possible to read out of the pictures?
Documentation is critical to teaching and learning. It helps teachers recognise the different needs of each child and highlight the real richness of their experiences.
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