Pedagogical documentation as a lens for examining equality in early childhood education

ABSTRACT

In this paper, we consider pedagogical quality particularly as equal opportunities for participating in decision-making in preschool. Relying on Ferraris’ [2013. Documentality: Why it is necessary to leave traces. New York: Fordham University Press] theory of Documentality, we demonstrate how pedagogical documentation can contribute to understanding children’s perspectives and discuss how it may help facilitate children’s perspectives to become part of their everyday lives at preschool. In addition, we examine, using a multi method approach, how our conceptualizations help critically examine equality in early childhood education (ECE). The study was conducted in Finnish preschools. The data source for this study is composed of the researcher’s observation diary, self-documentation conducted by teachers (n = 13), individual ECE plans of 104 2 to 7-year-old children and document-aided interviews with their teachers (n = 13). Finally, we critically discuss the consequences of our findings in terms of documentation, pedagogy and the equality of ECE.

KEYWORDS:

• Pedagogical documentation
• equality
• quality

Acknowledgement

We would like to show our gratitude to our colleague Jaakko Hilppö for sharing his wisdom with us during the course of this research and for his comments that greatly improved the manuscript. We are also immensely grateful for two anonymous reviewers for their important insights concerning the earlier version of the manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Maiju Paananen is a Doctoral Fellow at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. Her dissertation study concerns diffusion of global and local trends of policy and governance in ECEC. Currently, she is also working as a reseacherat University of Tampere where she continue her studies concerning policy and governance of ECEC with special focus on the issues of equity and equity.

Lasse Lipponen is a professor of education, with special reference to early childhood education, at the Department of Teacher Education, University of Helsinki. His research work is directed to childrens agency; childrensexperiences and perceptions in their life-world with digital documentation and participatory research methods; and cultures of compassion.