Affiliated Institution
Introduction
Pedagogical documentation refers to the processes of keeping a record of the child’s thinking and learning development and using the information gathered to make the development process visible to the child and the family. The process enables the teacher to keep a record and improve the importance of the child’s development. The information can be collected using samples the child’s work such as images of different stages of their work in a bulletin board, and class books, among other methods. The documentation should include artifacts and evidence of progress in fields such as expected behavior, child growth, curriculum projects, and evidence of meeting the set targets in learning.
According to the Ontario kindergarten teaching program (2016), pedagogical documentation refers to the process of collecting and analyzing evidence of a child’s thinking and learning and making it visible to the child and their family through the insight collected. This process can be used to elicit and interpret the evidence of the student’s development in order to harness the predictive power in learning through prior knowledge. The prior knowledge can be gathered using several available techniques including images of the child’s work in progress, notes, and interaction with the child among others,. In the kindergarten, documentation involves the keeping records of the child’s sample work, taking photographs, comments, and keeping a record of the information about the child’s learning through different stages. This information should be able to tell the story and the importance of all the stages of the child’s development process to the audience. The documentation process depends on the level of children involvement and the person preparing the documentation. The documentation should be able to give explanations about all the stages of the development and learning process. The kind of information gathered will depend on the teacher’s understanding of the child and the standards set for the child. It may also depend on the ability to effectively use technology and on the curriculum,.
Documentation may involve various topics concerning the child’s development. One of these topics is the growth and development of the child. Documentation may also involve the curriculum ideas and events and evidence of meeting the learning standards,. This may involve the posting of the child’s work samples. It also involves the questions and answers and the relationships the child is involved in, including family and teachers. The documentation should involve evidence and artifacts that will make it easier to achieve the goals of documentation. Such evidence involves the teacher’s comments, overview, descriptions, and transcription of the conversation with and between children in groups. It may also involve children’s comments, work samples, photographs of their work, and other important items and evidence of their development,. The evidence collected by the documentary should tell the whole story about the child’s learning and thinking development. According to the Hilary Seitz (2008), it is important to document a specific aspect of the child’s learning fully. Once the teacher has chosen a specific aspect of learning, she/he may keep records of the child’s comments, drawings, and symbols related to the aspect. The teacher will then combine all the pieces of evidence for this aspect in order to develop the documentation panel. The knowledge gathered from such a panel will provide more information about the child’s development as compared to keeping a record of all the child’s worksheets. The evidence should be able to show the child’s development,.
Documentation enables the teachers to show accountability to the administrators and families. As a result, documentation helps to build trust among the stakeholders,. It helps the teachers understand their children and provides them with the opportunity to reflect on the effectiveness of their teaching methods. The teacher can also use documentation to prolong learning opportunities. The teacher has the opportunity to observe the children as the documentation increases their learning time and they can revisit the processes and increase their interest in the topic,. This is done through sharing of information gathered, reviews and interpretation of the information thus connecting learning and teaching,. Documentation also makes learning visible to the children. In addition, documentation makes the children more interested in learning as it increases the perception of the importance of their learning process. It raises the level of the learners’ confidence in their teachers and their teaching.
Conclusion
Documentation is a process for improving and documenting the learning process. This process generates a wide range of benefits for the stakeholders and creates a good relationship among the stakeholders. The evidence gathered can be used to understand the children and improve confidence level in the child and the teacher leading to more achievements. The process involves researchers using observation as a means of collecting information. Recording observations may involve matrices, checklists, photographs, and diagrams among others. The observers have to be objective and learn not to make assumptions that may turn out to be biased. Teachers also learn the Dos and the Don’ts in the education and documentation process. The goal is to achieve the benefits of documentation which is mainly child-oriented.
References
Hilary Seitz, P. (2008). The Power of Documentation in the Early Childhood Classroom. Retrieved from https://www.naeyc.org/files/tyc/file/Seitz.pdf
(2016). The Kindergaten Program. Retrieved from https://files.ontario.ca/books/edu_the_kindergarten_program_english_aoda_web_july21.pdf
Upper Grand District school Board. (2012). Documentation in Early Childhood Classrooms. Retrieved from http://www.edugains.ca/resourcesAER/CollaborativeInquiryProject/EffectiveAssessmentInKind_UGDSB/UGDSB_FDK_2011-12_DocumentationAndObservation.pdf
