Documentation is a vital path for making learning visible and as a way to share learning, discovery and development within our learning community. However, it is also a deeper and richer creative process that involves the children, teachers, parents and the environment. It emerges through the power of observation, noticing, conversations, intentions, listening, questions and responses. Documentation can be seen as a tool, resource and a process for thought; a process that draws on the past, sits in the present, and weaves itself into the future of our children’s learning and possibilities for development.
Through observation, noticing what intrigues the children, and discussing what we see within our teaching teams, potentials are inspired into action. It is a ‘thoughtful’ process which takes place over time. Documenting our observations gives rise to questions of purpose, intentions of how we may envisage the children’s learning going forward, and how the children’s engagement and interests inform our practice. Documentation can be seen as “a kind of thread that connects things to each other” , an “interconnectedness” where everyone and everything is an encounter with possibility.
“Documentation is not about what we do, but what we are searching for.” Carla Rinaldi
Documentation is, in essence, “The Story of Us”. It is a narrative from the children’s and our own past experiences, and yet creates and encourages possibilities for the present and future from which to begin again. Therefore, while it is the story of your child, it constructs both personal stories and a shared history, making documentation a process of intersubjectivity, where we are all involved in the unfoldment of the children’s learning, growth and life experiences.
“One has to have the courage to think that if a flower is born this influences upon the sun and the moon… every human being is a context of hundred’s of expressions, experiences and memories. This context is continuously changing through experience and knowledge. It is an illusion that one is alone. We consist of many, one speaks with ones own voice but also with many other human being voices.”
Malaguzzi (1993)
Through listening and observation, ‘The Story of Us’ becomes visible and shareable. Thought is never held only in the mind, or in the spoken voice, rather it is an embodied creation, which can be seen in the curiosity of a child, in the shine of the eye, as a soft touch of texture, or in the laugh of delight. Thought wells up within the children as they experience ‘life’, in teachers as they make meaning of their observations, and from parents as we share this incredible process.
Providing the children with a richly resourced, diverse, and enlivening environment, with thoughtful provocations and experiences creates the atmosphere to inspire the children towards engaged discovery. When we embark on, and document, an investigation or other learning encounters, we are offering a way for children to review, remember or be re-minded of their experiences, and their ‘story’.
Reconnecting with these moments over time, whether it be the actual ongoing and developing experience, or in the documentation of it, helps children and teachers integrate their learning and fuel their thought processes. This causes the firing and wiring of new neural networks in the brain through repetition, and forms long term memories. The more neural networks created through experience, the more connections between networks can be made, and thought, new possibilities and ideas emerge.
Documentation then becomes an important element in learning; an embodied remembrance, sitting beside the sense of belonging, identity, and empowerment in our shared experiences that are visible.
– Mandie Hall at Bear Park St Heliers
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