2B: Pedagogical Documentation: What does it mean to learn?

This workshop considers documenting the meaning children are making of their experience and making it visible to others. If our purpose is to make  children’s learning, thinking, and feeling visible so we might dialogue and reflect about it with others, then what is it valuable to document? How do we choose what to document? If we are trying to make learning visible, have we thought about what it means to learn? Do we as educators take for granted that we know what learning looks like? How might we think about that?

Many educators have developed the habits of collecting photo images of children’s activities and taking down bits of recorded conversation. Many educators send photos of children’s activity to parents. Have we thought about how to move from masses of images and text to a form of documentation worthy of sharing with someone else---children themselves first, then someone outside the experience? The process of creating documentation from collected images and text is a process of editing and synthesizing our data to make a story clear and readable to someone outside the experience. I will share recent examples of this process. Educators on PEI have been invited to share documentation with me for analysis, interpretation, and discussion --- an exciting prospect, if educators are willing to participate, for the local audience will hear from its own context.

Facilitator: Carol Anne Wien