ABSTRACT
This chapter describes how pedagogical documentation may be used to make the complexity of role-play understandable for parents, and in general to share the educational issues that arise during this form of play with the children’s families. The contemporary debate on childhood firmly acknowledges the child’s active role in his or her own personal processes of self-definition and social participation. L.S. Vygotsky argued that children’s play is invariably an imaginative process that allows children to overcome their dependence on adult figures and attain greater cognitive autonomy by learning to attribute alternative meanings to reality. Given that children spontaneously engage in symbolic play, generally from the second year of life, early childhood education and care (ECEC) educators can exploit this to foster children’s personal growth and development. Pedagogical documentation can, in these terms, make a key contribution to developing a shared awareness of the crucial role of ECECs in the growth and flourishing of the broader social community.
