Embodying Reconceptualism: Teaching Through the Lens of Documentation

• In Event: Rethinking Research in Early Childhood

Abstract

This paper delves into the practices of early childhood reconceptualism as they are enacted in a classroom setting. Problematizing the often exclusively academic rhetoric of reconceptualism, this paper addresses the embodiment of these theories in practice. Through teacher research in the form of daily classroom documentation, the paper demonstrates the power of documentation to provide a foundation for critical perspectives and an active practice of reconceptualization in the classroom. Through this lens, I (the classroom teacher) use documentation as a body from which the ever-shifting identities of classroom, pedagogy, and curriculum emerge. This paper is a culturally situated representation of a bridge between theory and practice, offering insight into the shape of reconceptualism in life of the early childhood classroom.

Author

• Dana Frantz Bentley, Buckingham, Browne, and Nichols School