ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates the Reggio Emilia’s conception of documentation as combining many forms of texts to make learning visible on to inform our understanding of how to develop a more sophisticated level of visual literacy in children and in professionals working with young children. It highlights illustrations of how combining text and image or video and image interact ‘to create something more communicative than is possible with the use of a single medium’. The chapter also draws on some material from steps for engaging children in research. Children have a unique and natural ability to communicate using multiple media and modes, such as textual, aural and visual representations and, in this sense, young children are ‘meaning-makers par excellence’ during the early years of child development. Draw-and-talk methods offer many possibilities for guiding and scaffolding young children’s meaning-making and for providing a more complete and comprehensive account of children’s perceptions of the research issue at hand.
