Children's Inquiry and Documentation

• In Event: 41.079 - Documentation and Inquiry in Early Childhood: Research Stories on Building School Communities of Reflective Practice

Abstract

Purpose
This panel highlights how the inquiry and documentation processes carried out by ECE teachers serve to support the development of children’s inquiry and agency. Two teachers from two different sites will represent this aspect of teacher research.

Perspective
The documentation and professional development of teachers apparent in the preschools and infant toddler centers of Reggio Emilia (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 2012) have inspired not only teachers’ use of documentation to communicate with school and local communities about children’s learning, but this visual record of children’s thinking and play has been used by teachers to develop an inquiry and reflective stance in their young students. This process goes beyond following children’s interests, which is a long-standing foundation of curriculum in early childhood centers. It takes the idea of children’s interests and curiosity and supports them in participating in an inquiry community—to develop their questions, to investigate these questions, to build and experiment, to discover their own ability to become expert, and to reflect back on what they have learned as they continue inquiring into their interests. Using documentation to foster a reflective stance in young children is an important aspect of the documentation process, but an often neglected one.

Modes of Inquiry and Data Sources
Each panelist will explain briefly the processes used in their particular settings and present examples of young children’s reflection and commentary on the documentation, demonstrating how this reflective process builds children’s agency in enacting their own education. Their research focuses on how children develop reflective abilities and an inquiry stance, and how this stance empowers their learning. The school sites are characteristic of the diversity of ECE centers and schools—one school is a Spanish language parent participation school which is part of the Preschool for All program in San Francisco, where the city provides tuition support for four-year-olds to attend high-quality preschools, and the other school is an independent preschool also in San Francisco that uses the city and its outdoor spaces as an extension of the classrooms. Each teacher is one of a team that carries out research on her own practice.

Conclusions and Scholarly Significance of the Work
Teacher research into children’s inquiry is an important part of the teacher research agenda. As teachers take their work seriously as an area for investigation and learning to improve their teaching, using inquiry to provoke children’s inquiry and reflection enhances children’s learning and their sense of agency with regard to their own learning. Using documentation and inquiry, these teachers are able to collaborate with their students, building both their own learning and that of the children.

Authors

• Tracy Neal, Stretch the Imagination Preschool

• Elizabeth Quinn, Centro las Olas