Making Learning Visible through Documentation: Creating a Culture of Inquiry among Pre-Service Teachers

Abstract

This article explores the use of documentation—to observe, record, and interpret the learning of children and their pre-service teachers to make that learning visible in order to point to it and engage in a collaborative dialogue. Inspired by the work of the Reggio Emilia infant-toddler and pre-schools in Italy, this study extends the idea of documenting young children’s individual and group learning to adult learning in a graduate seminar with nine pre-service teachers. Shifts made to teaching a seminar included professor and pre-service teachers co-constructing the meaning of a learning group, following a protocol to look at children’s work, sharing public reflections, interpreting the learning that took place both between and in each seminar. The explicit effort to document adult learning led to creating a collective body of knowledge that extended to documenting children’s learning in elementary inclusive classrooms.

Notes

*Adapted by S. Cox Suarez from: Evidence Project Staff (2001), The Evidence Process: A Collaborative Approach to Understanding and Improving Teaching and Learning. Cambridge, MA: Project Zero.

NOTES

1. Teacher educators included Bobbi Rosenquest from Wheelock College, Lisa Fiore from Lesley University, and Project Zero researchers, Terri Turner and Mara Krechevsky. This research was conducted in collaboration with the Making Learning Visible Project at Project Zero at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Funding for this research was supported in part by the foundation Atlantic Philanthropies, Inc. in New York. Additional information may be found on the Making Learning Visible website: http://www.pz.harvard.edu/mlv/index.cfm

2. This research received Institutional Review Board approval in October 2004. Informed consent to publish the children’s photos and work samples was received by the children’s families in March 2005.