What is Documentation?

This project has as its goal to build a web site that shows alternative, non-traditional ways to document children’s learning. The philosophical base lies in the Reggio approach to learning and the new research supporting assessment for learning. Documentation involves using data of a wide media base to explain, interpret, and present the learning as well as to stimulate reflection on the living experience and the project we are exploring

Following is a list of documentation possibilities:

samples of children's work at several stages of completion
photographs showing work in progress
comments by teachers or other adults working with the children
transcriptions of children's discussions, comments, and explanations of intentions about the activity
comments made by parents
examples of children's work and written reflections on the processes in which the children engaged
documents reveal how the children planned, carried out, and completed the displayed work
scanned student work
student PowerPoint presentations
video
photos of process and product
panels
audiotapes either transcribed or in wav. files
transcriptions of children verbalizing their process and their thinking (metacognition)
writing about their projects
children telling about their strategies used
documenting how children solved a problem
having students reflect on work
students make recommendations for others from their learning
summations from students about what they have learned

These are all instruments for recording, understanding, debating and finally preparing appropriate documentation of an experience.

The choices of topics are based on current projects or studies for our students. The focus not only included the “intellectual” aspects of learning and higher-level thinking, but the full developmental span – emotional, social, physical, creative and spiritual dimensions.

Why is Documentation Important?

1. Children's learning is enhanced.

Children become even more curious, interested, and confident as they contemplate the meaning of what they have achieved.
The processes of preparing and displaying documentaries of the children's experience and effort provides a kind of debriefing or re-visiting of experience during which new understandings can be clarified, deepened, and strengthened.
Children also learn from and are stimulated by each other's work in ways made visible through the documents displayed.
A display documenting the work of one child or of a group often encourages other children to become involved in a new topic and to adopt a representational technique they might use.

2. Children's ideas and work is taken seriously

Careful and attractive documentary displays can convey to children that their efforts, intentions, and ideas are taken seriously.
These displays are not intended primarily to serve decorative or show-off purposes.
An important element in the project approach is the preparation of documents for display by which one group of children can let others in the class working on other aspects of the topic learn of their experience and findings.
Documentation encourages children in the disposition to approach their work responsibly, with energy and commitment, showing both delight and satisfaction in the processes and the results.

3. Teacher planning and evaluation with children

Continuous planning is based on the evaluation of work as it progresses.
As the children undertake complex individual or small group collaborative tasks over a period of several days or weeks, the teachers examine the work each day and discuss with the children their ideas and the possibilities of new options for the following days.
Planning decisions can be made on the basis of what individual or groups of children have found interesting, stimulating, puzzling, or challenging.
Experiences and activities are not planned too far in advance, so that new strands of work can emerge and be documented.
Teachers reflect on the work in progress and the discussion that surrounded it, and consider possible new directions the work might take and what suggestions might support the work.
They can also become aware of the participation and development of each individual child, enabling the teacher to optimize the children's chances of representing their ideas in interesting and satisfying ways.
When teachers and children plan together with openness to each other's ideas, the activity is likely to be undertaken with greater interest and representational skill than if the child had planned alone, or the teacher had been unaware of the challenge facing the child.
The documentation provides a kind of ongoing planning and evaluation that can be done by the team of adults who work with the children.

4. Parent appreciation and participation

Documentation makes it possible for parents to become intimately and deeply aware of their children's experience in the school. It introduces parents to a quality of knowing that tangibly changes their expectations.
Parents' comments on children's work can also contribute to the value of documentation.
Through learning about the work in which their children are engaged, parents may be able to contribute ideas for field experiences which the teachers may not have thought of, especially when parents can offer practical help in gaining access to a field site or relevant expert.
The opportunity to examine the documentation of a project in progress can also help parents to think of ways they might contribute their time and energy in their child's classroom.
There are many ways parents can be involved: listening to children's intentions, helping them find the materials they need, making suggestions, helping children write their ideas, offering assistance in finding and reading books, and measuring or counting things in the context of the project.

5. Teacher research and process awareness

Documentation is an important kind of teacher research, sharpening and focusing teachers' attention on children's plans and understandings and on their own role in children's experiences. It allows us to construct theories from the children's work and process of engagement.
As teachers examine the children's work and prepare the documentation of it, their own understanding of children's development and insight into their learning is deepened in ways not likely to occur from inspecting test results.
Documentation provides a basis for the modification and adjustment of teaching strategies, and a source of ideas for new strategies, while deepening teachers' awareness of each child's progress.
Documentation involves commentaries that share the higher level thinking involved in the learning process, no matter what the activity or topic.
On the basis of the rich data made available through documentation, teachers are able to make informed decisions about appropriate ways to support each child's development and learning.
The final product of a child's hard work rarely makes possible an appreciation of the false starts and persistent efforts entailed in the work. By examining the documented steps taken by children during their investigations and representational work, teachers and parents can appreciate the uniqueness of each child's construction of his or her experience, and the ways group efforts contribute to their learning. Documentation explains how one activity was pivotal in understanding an issue, connecting to previous learning, or provoking a new inquiry.
Documentation is a vital source for professional growth dialogue promoting a positive exchange of ideas.
Documentation highlights the issues or problems that emerge during a study or activity.
Documentation

6. Children's learning made visible

Documentation provides information about children's learning and progress that cannot be demonstrated by formal standardized tests and checklists. The focus is on how children making meaning, of how they come to understand.
While teachers often gain important information and insight from their own first-hand observations of children, documentation of the children's work in a wide variety of media provides compelling public evidence of the intellectual powers and competence of young children.
Documentation uncovers the learning process as it highlights children's theories and relationships.
Rather than focus on how each child has progressed, documentation displays how a group of children worked together to reach a common goal.
Conversation or dialogue is used to present children's words as serious attempts to understand concepts and ideas, individually, and within social construct of co-constructing understanding as a group, with children building on each other's thoughts and ideas.

Reggio Emilia Approach uses documentation of children's experience as a standard part of classroom practice.

As compared to other methods of record keeping, documentation in Reggio Emilia focuses more intensively on children's experience, memories, thoughts, and ideas in the course of their work. Documentation provide inspiring examples of the importance of displaying children's work with great care and attention to both the content and aesthetic aspects of the display. It focuses on explanation of the emotional involvement and persistence of the children in their study, discovery, and problem solving.

Children usually need adult support to find the means and the confidence to bring forth their ideas and offer them, day after day, to teachers, parents, and friends.

Teachers act as guides, careful not to impose adult ideas and beliefs upon the children.

Adults need to support and have high expectations for children’s learning. Young children are developmentally capable of classroom experiences that call for higher level thinking skills, including analysis (breaking down material into component parts to understand the structure, seeing similarities and differences); synthesis (putting parts together to form a new whole, rearranging, reorganizing); and evaluation (judging the value of material based on definite criteria).

Adults act as resource persons, problem-posers, guides, and partners to the children in the process of discovery and investigation. They take their cues from children through careful listening and observation, and know when to encourage risk-taking and when to refrain from interfering.

Teachers routinely divide responsibilities in the class so that one can systematically observe, take notes, and record conversations between children.

Children need to be engaged in absorbing, complex, interesting projects worthy of documentation.

Young children benefit from in-depth exploration and long-term, open-ended projects which are started either from a chance event, a problem posed by one or more children, or an experience planned and led in a flexible way by teachers.

The curriculum is characterized by many features advocated by contemporary research on young children, including real-life problem solving among peers, with numerous opportunities for creative thinking and exploration.

Teachers often work on projects with small groups of children, while the rest the class engages in a wide variety of self-selected activities.

The topic of investigation may derive directly from teacher observations of children's spontaneous play and exploration.

Project topics are also selected on the basis of an academic curiosity or social concern on the part of teachers or parents, or events that direct the attention of the children and teachers. Reggio teachers place a high value on their ability to improvise and respond to children's predisposition to enjoy the unexpected.

Successful projects are those that generate a sufficient amount of interest and uncertainty to provoke children's creative thinking and problem solving and are open to different avenues of exploration.

Because curriculum decisions are based on developmental and socio-cultural concerns, small groups of children of varying abilities and interests, including those with special needs, work together on projects.

Projects begin with teachers observing and questioning children about the topic of interest. Based on children's responses, teachers introduce materials, questions, and opportunities that provoke children to further explore the topic. While some of these teacher provocations are anticipated, projects often move in unanticipated directions as a result of problems children identify. Thus, curriculum planning and implementation revolve around open-ended and often long-term projects that are based on the reciprocal nature of teacher-directed and child-initiated activity.

As children proceed in an investigation, generating and testing their hypotheses, they are encouraged to depict their understanding through one of many symbolic languages, including drawing, sculpture, dramatic play, and writing. Reggio Emilia's approach to early education reflects a theoretical kinship with Dewey, Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner, among others. Much of what occurs in the class reflects a constructivist approach to early education.

Teachers in Reggio Emilia assert the importance of being confused as a contributor to learning; thus a major teaching strategy is to purposefully allow for mistakes to happen, or to begin a project with no clear sense of where it might end.

One of the most challenging aspects of the Reggio Emilia approach is the solicitation of multiple points of view regarding children's needs, interests, and abilities, and the concurrent faith in parents, teachers, and children to contribute in meaningful ways to the determination of school experiences.

Teachers trust themselves to respond appropriately to children's ideas and interests, they trust children to be interested in things worth knowing about, and they trust parents to be informed and productive members of a cooperative educational team. The result is an atmosphere of community and collaboration that is developmentally appropriate for adults and children alike.

Young children learn through meaningful activities in which different subject areas are integrated. Open-ended discussions and long-term activities bring together whole-language activities, science, social studies, dramatic play, and artistic creation. Activities that are meaningful and relevant to the child's life experiences provide opportunities to teach across the curriculum and assist children in seeing the interrelationships of things they are learning.

Young children want and need to express ideas and messages through many different expressive avenues and symbolic media.

Young children form mental images, represent their ideas, and communicate with the world in a combination of ways. They need increasing competence and integration across formats including words, gestures, drawings, paintings, sculpture, construction, music, dramatic play, movement, and dance. Through sharing and gaining others' perspectives, and then revisiting and revising their work, children move to new levels of awareness.

Creativity does not follow the clock. Children need extended, unhurried time to explore and do their best work. They should not be artificially rotated, that is, asked to move to a different learning center or activity when they are still productively engaged and motivated by a piece of creative work.

Children need a place to leave unfinished work to continue the next day, and a space that inspires them to do their best work. Children's work is fostered by a space that has natural light, harmonious colors, comfortable and child-sized areas, examples of their own and others' work (not only their classmates, but as appropriate, also their teachers' and selected adult artists), and inviting materials.

Without spending great amounts of money, teachers can organize wonderful collections of resource materials that might be bought, found, or recycled. These materials can include paper goods of all kinds; writing and drawing tools; materials for constructions and collages, such as buttons, stones, shells, beads, and seeds; and sculpting materials, such as play dough, goop, clay, and shaving cream. These materials are used most productively and imaginatively by children when they themselves have helped select, organize, sort, and arrange them.

The classroom atmosphere should reflect the adults' encouragement and acceptance of mistakes, risk-taking, innovation, and uniqueness, along with a certain amount of mess, noise, and freedom. This is not a matter of chaos, or of tight control, but instead something in between. In order to create such a climate, teachers must give themselves permission to try artistic activity themselves, even when they have not been so fortunate as to have had formal art training or to feel they are naturally "good at art." Through workshops, adult education classes, or teamwork with an art teacher or parent, classroom teachers can gain the confidence for, and experience the pleasure of, venturing some distance down the road of self-expression in a medium in which they did not know they could be successful. Their skill will then translate into the work with the children.

Children's best and most exciting work involves an intense or arousing encounter between themselves and their inner or outer world. Teachers provide the occasions for these adventures. Children find it hard to be creative without any concrete inspiration. Instead, they prefer to draw on the direct evidence of their senses or memories. These memories can become more vivid and accessible through the teacher's provocations and preparations. For example, teachers can encourage children to represent their knowledge and ideas before and after they have watched an absorbing show, taken a field trip, or observed and discussed an interesting plant or animal brought into class. Teachers can put up a mirror or photos of the children in the art area, so children can study their faces as they draw their self-portrait. Teachers can offer children the opportunity to check what they have drawn against an original model and then let them revise and improve upon their first representation.

* The above material was summarized from a broad text and Internet research for a Parent and Staff display on Reggio Emilia and documentation.