Article Link: http://exchangepress.com/article/making-learning-visible/5012835/
In recent years, "documentation" has become a buzz word in early childhood programs. When I first started working in child care, documentation was primarily a reference to keeping records of important incidents or activities related to liability or accountability issues. These included such things as reference checks on prospective employees, TB tests, accident reports, and meal counts for USDA.Today, with a growing emphasis on individualizing for children, documentation increasingly refers to gathering observation notes and samples of children's work into portfolios for the purpose of assessment and planning. The Italian educators of Reggio Emilia have further influenced us to create documentation displays of children's project work using photos, transcripts of children's conversations, and teacher narration of the evolution and meaning of the children's thinking and activities. The traveling exhibit The Hundred Languages of Children has stunning examples of this and can be currently viewed at Mills College in Oakland, California, and will be brought to the NAEYC conference in Atlanta in November 2000.
My own thinking about documentation as a staff development tool initially took shape as I read the books of Vivian Paley and developed a dialog with Betty Jones. As part of a partnership project between Pacific Oaks College and ...