Sunday, September 4, 2011

documentation: what's your perspective?

I am constantly inspired and provoked to think just a bit deeper by the posts and questions offered on the Google Group "Reggio List". This video on documentation was shared on the list and is the perfect provocation as I, and many others, are about to begin a new school year.

Documentation: Transforming Our Perspective from Melissa Rivard on Vimeo.



A thought that resonated with me was the power in sharing our perspective on the learning process - especially how this effects children in gaining a new perspective. I also connected with the reminder that good documentation reveals to families the potential of their children.

The term documentation seems so simple, yet the process and all it entails is incredibly complex. I feel a great sense of responsibility to grow in this area.

4 comments:

  1. Thank you for sharing this wonderful video. I spent last summer in Reggio Emilia and the documentation workshops with inspiring. Like you, it's something I want to continue to learn more about. I'm going to go back and re-read my notes from the trip. It's a process and so important to our work in growing as teachers, and with our students.
    Mary Anne

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  2. I have recently begun my study of Reggio inspired classrooms in the US and using the Reggio mindset as my approach to education with young learners. In my school this year, our big focus is on documentation. We have read articles and had in depth ponderings on what will work for acceptable documentation, best ways to showcase a child's continuum to a parent, documentation using technology and much more.

    It is such a large task. We've noticed that this will be a definite journey throughout the years that we will have to continually grow in as we grow in knowledge of the process.
    Thanks for the video connect...I will share.

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  3. Wow Mary Anne, what a wonderful experience that must have been for you. I am hopeful that one day I will be able to visit the schools of Reggio Emilia as well!

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  4. I am delighted to find a blog written by a practitioner interested in the Reggio Emilia Educational Project. I work in a Reggio Emilia inspired Early Learning Centre in Yokohama, Japan. Continuously striving to improve my understanding of pedagogical documentation, I was very interested in watching the video you posted. Thank you so much, watching it has really helped me to refocus my efforts. Despite documentation taking much time and energy, I get so much joy from discussing and publishing the children’s learning. Our pedagogical documentation supports our continual search for greater understanding of how children construct meaning and our image of the competent resourceful child. The main purpose is to record significant moments in children’s discussions, theory making and problem solving as they inquire. It supports the idea of teacher as researcher within the classroom providing a way of informing, provoking and sustaining the learning of both children and adults. The documentation is often shared with the children but also shared and interpreted with other teachers to discuss how learning might be taken to a deeper level. Again supporting our own research of how children construct their understandings.

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