Document Type
Report
Publication Date
2008
Department
Social Science and Human Services
Abstract
Documentation is the process of record-keeping and collection of children's work at different stages of development and of making children's thinking and learning visible. Documentation is done for a variety of purposes such as guiding instruction, assessment of development, studying pedagogy, and communicating with others. Documentation (sometimes called "pedagogical documentation") guides instruction by focusing teachers on what children know, what they are interested in, and providing clues as to the best ways to reach and teach individuals and groups of children. Assessing the development of individual children is probably one of the most common uses of documentation. Documentation gives us a picture of a child or group of children at a point in time. It gives us an idea of how a child is forming knowledge. One of the least discussed purposes of documentation is that of studying pedagogy. It helps us to better understand learning and development-the "how'' of teaching and learning. Understanding how children learn helps us to become better teachers. One of the uses I was most interested in was that of sharing and communicating children's learning with others through the development of documentation panels. I had seen many great examples of documentation panels and was very interested in learning how to do it in order to better see the value of the practice.
Rights
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Recommended Citation
Barrick Gaumer, Nancy, "Documentation and the Use of Technology in the Study of Early Childhood Learning" (2008). Sabbaticals. 7.
https://spark.parkland.edu/sabbaticals/7
