ABSTRACT

This chapter illustrates how a child's normality and deviation are produced in different early childhood education (ECE) documentation practices and in documentalized parent-teacher collaborations. It also shows how the notions of the ordinary child are essentially related to the social and institutional orders of ECE. The chapter is based on a constructionist approach. Hence, it approaches normality as a social construction and underline the intertwinement of human and material agents, that is, documentation, for producing an understanding of various phenomena, such as normality, and in affecting the behaviour patterns of the institutional actors. The chapter presents some theoretical points of departure for how normality can be considered as constructed, as well as previous research concerning assessment and documentation in relation to children and normality. It discusses the results of our studies on how the normal preschool child is constructed in assessment and documentation practices in ECE settings, and how different communicative tools are used in practice.