Pedagogical Documentation

Documentation as record keeping and being compliant to school systems has never really motivated me. However, pedagogical documentation as a means to evidence learning and to make informed choices about possible next steps in the learning process is a different story! I hope these gems of theory and practical strategies are useful. 

“The Hundred Languages of Children” explores the idea of pedagogical documentation explicitly. Some key ideas include:

- A process for making learning visible throughout the learning journey

- Subject to dialogue, interpretation, contestation and transformation

- It embodies subjectivity and nurtured negotiation

- Trust and listening

- Instead of reducing complexity, which is the goal of using standardised tools to measure quality, it opens up the complexity so that we can work and learn from it

- Observation, documentation and interpretation are strongly connected. 

The PYP stress the relevance of four dimensions in assessment, especially the importance of monitoring and documenting learning. 

Last week, I was working with a school in Brazil whose youngest learners were 1.5 years old and turn 2 in their first year at the school. Although officially outside of the PYP (a programme for 3-12 year olds), the teachers resonated so much with these dimensions and the relevance of pedagogical documentation to ensure children's choices, interests and thinking informed next steps. 

As I continue to write these weekly blogs each Tuesday, I am deepening my own understanding of how individual posts are inextricably linked with others. Thinking about pedagogical documentation, it is impossible to not reflect on the role of the adult, what play might look like, theory building and the pedagogy of listening - all previous blog posts of mine. 

There are many other inspiring resources out there including insightful blog posts and webinars by Fiona Zinn and Anne van Dam. 

December 2022 Update:

I have talked recently with Anne about the objective and subjective nature of documentation. She sent me this perceptive article by the wonderful Diane Kashin. 

In Story Workshop by Susan Harris MacKay, it states, "Documentation practices help us become more aware of our assumptions. As we become more aware of our assumptions - even as we become more aware that we make assumptions - we become open to more possibility. Where there is more possibility, there is less bias."

In their heartening book 'Unearthing Why', Britt and McLachlan refer to pedagogical documentation as a process to make listening visible. 

June 2023 Update:

Revisiting previous posts and reflecting on shifts in my own thinking and growth in my own learning journey is so powerful! The blog posts themselves are documentation of insights, connections and wonderings that fuel my own inquiries and connect so strongly to the thinking routine "I used to think... Now I think". 

Recently, I was lucky enough to attend PressPlay's webinar with Anne van Dam about pedagogical documentation. Anne has a gift in using words that capture the essence of big ideas, yet provide an openness and playfulness that invites possibilities and provokes inquiring minds. 

Specific moments and words that resonated with me that perhaps amplify the ideas above or place a spotlight on nuances that lurk in the shadows included:

- Seeing documentation as stories and storytelling about the process of learning and how children construct meaning

- How documentation provides opportunities to notice and dig deeper into children's theories and how the documentation itself can be used to help children form their own understandings. 

- A reminder about the importance of listening. What does it mean to listen? Here is a link to a post I wrote about the pedagogy of listening. Peter Moss states, “It (listening) doesn’t produce answers, it generates questions.” I love the implications of this in terms of the dispositions required of us as teachers in adopting an inquiry mindset with a genuine openness, curiosity and comfort to explore what is not yet known!

- Documentation should be sustainable and a source of joy! It is tempting to implement many systems that fade away after a period of time and become a source of frustration because of pressure to "keep up" and not fail. Anne's advice of starting small is key, as is the idea of making it manageable in the long term. What has worked for me is using Google Slides to curate photographs, videos and quotes to tell the story of units of inquiry. I also use an A4 exercise book - each page with the name of a different child - to document observations. I also use a couple of different tools (one-point rubrics and graphic organisers) to document children's play choices and initiative, alongside approaches to learning such as self-management, communication and thinking skills. I have used these consistently for the past two years so they have become routine. I have always struggled with 'learning walls', but I am starting to make more of a conscious effort to build these walls with the children so the documentation is always at hand for the children and I to use and refer to. 

Anne spent yesterday in Kindergarten and then facilitated dialogue around pedagogical documentation with teachers that were curious about learning more. 

Powerful ideas and moments included:

- A quote from an article by Turner and Wilson (2010) : "One of the most common misinterpretations is to understand documentation as a strategy to teach better what we as teachers already know. Instead, documentation needs to be a way to get to know better what the children, in their own way, already know." This is a powerful shift and one with huge implications. Anne discussed the idea of stepping into the unknown, illustrating the role of the teacher as a researcher, researching learning, as an act of inquiry. 

- The same article also states, “The act of pedagogical documentation becomes a dialogue”. This resonated with me, and the idea that children's images (drawings and photos, for example) and words are used explicitly and intentionally for them and others to connect to, respond to, clarify, unpack further, challenge or defend. A reminder that children are actively involved in the process of meaning making. Anne pushed our thinking even further by encouraging us to think about more ways for children to be actively involved in the documentation of their own learning journey, including conferencing regularly to check in, set and review goals and negotiate steps that might be needed to achieve these, and, ultimately, documenting children's perspectives on their own learning journeys. 

- The role of parents in documentation. Practical ideas discussed included inviting parents to share documentation they gather outside of school, the use of questions to engage parents in dialogue about documentation that is shared with them. and the importance of home languages to ensure all families have opportunities to engage with the documentation. 

Drawing to a close, I just looked back at some of the documentation I had gathered for our current unit of inquiry into nature and what happened as a result of the dialogue it triggered with the students:

- Sketching at the nature trail, children were confused about 'shading' so this led to an exploration of how dark and light marks could be made using one pencil. 

- Kindergarten were fascinated with the idea of humans living on other planets, and in sharing their theories, one child used the word 'gravity'. Another asked, 'What is gravity?' which led to an invitation for those interested to play with materials that dropped and spun. This also led to discussing different aspects of the solar system and some children continue to choose to research about suns, moons and stars using the app Pebble Go. 

- Walking to the music room, the teaching assistant heard and documented a child's question, "Why was it cold this morning and it's hot now?" Another day, we shared our theories and, measurement was discussed. There is still a group that choose to visit different parts of the school to gather data on temperature using a thermometer!

- A child doubting the connections between food and nature prompted a shopping trip for groups to find and buy a range of food that comes from nature, and to prepare a morning snack. This prompted new lines of inquiry about the origins of chocolate. 

- Noticing how children associated sharks with being dangerous to humans, we watched a video from the WWF to explore the idea of 'myths'. 

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It is important to note that documentation as a process sits within and alongside so many other values, beliefs, variables and pedagogies - play, inquiry, listening, our view of children, control and power, community, thinking, understanding... 

I feel it is also important to recognise that documentation is not the only means to enact these values. It is unrealistic to document all children's thinking all of the time. Circling back to the dimensions of assessment proposed by the PYP, monitoring is a dimension that we spend more time involved with. Last week, the children were exploring the concept of graphing through human graphs and building their own graphs. A child then asked, "Can we draw graphs?" This beautiful and powerful question wasn't scribed on my telephone, nor added to a set of Google Slides. It was responded to there and then, and led to children drawing a range of graphs in such creative ways. Today, children were drawing their theories about how plants create oxygen. I could have easily documented their verbal theories that accompanied their drawings, but in this instance, I chose to engage as an active listener, with full eye contact, asking clarifying questions. 

Considerations I will keep in mind for this coming year:

- Multiple audiences and purposes of documentation 

- Systems and tools to allow efficient ways to photograph, video, scribe and record audio

- Routines to interpret documentation as teams of educators and consider "Where to next?"

- Ways to use documentation (formally and informally) to report on learning to parents

- Using documentation with children to value the process of learning (provocations, conversations, modelling...)

Reflection

How might learning environments be even better used for pedagogical documentation?

How do you ensure that documentation is forward thinking and pedagogical, rather than just capturing the past?

How might you involve children and parents more in dialogue through the process of documentation?

What do you do to document your own learning journey to make your own learning and progress more visible?