ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on documenting children’s meanings in early childhood research and practice. It opens with a broad contemplation on the role and nature of documenting children’s meanings in the early years. The chapter also focuses more specifically to the role of pedagogical documentation as research, with a particular emphasis on early childhood educators’ skills and dispositions in accessing children’s views and their ability to accurately interpret and co-construct young children’s meanings. It then focuses on the importance of pedagogical documentation as a generative process of learning in action where, through reviewing and re-organising thought and action, a transformation of thinking can take place. An important feature in an effective pedagogical approach to learning and development is a calm, slow pace in which children have space and time to lead their learning. Learning stories are a particular form of pedagogical documentation, in which early years practitioners formulate details of a child’s learning process.
