Pedagogical Documentation: Beyond Observations

This paper explores some of the issues for teachers in New Zealand / Aotearoa using pedagogical documentation. My interest in pedagogical documentation developed after visiting Sweden and Denmark as the 1996 recipient of the Margaret M. Blackwell Travel Study Fellowship. To my surprise "Reggio Emilia inspired" documentation was a prominent focus of discussion among many practitioners and some administrators and academics. The surprise was because Reggio Emilia is in Italy and I was in Scandinavia: a different cultural climate. My interest in pedagogical documentation has also stemmed from my observations, as a professional development facilitator, of stressed-out teachers collating extensive collections of unreflective written child observations for unclear reasons. The third stimulus for this paper developed from the first two, and was a small case study research project which involved myself, as a researcher and a professional development facilitator, working with four teachers in a childcare centre, over a six-month period. The professional development focus was on the teachers' use of pedagogical documentation while the research programme explored the teachers' understandings. This paper is, however, broader than the research project. It is divided into five sections. The first three sections review the literature, and the historical and current policy contexts of documentation. Sections 4 and 5 describe the research project and present some insights gained about teachers' use of documentation. The five sections are: 1. What is pedagogical documentation ? 2. Setting the scene: policy, history and culture 3. Interpretations and implications of the policy context 4. An action research project: Reflecting on some traditions and tools of pedagogical documentation 5. Considerations and challenges for teachers using documentation

Building Firm Foundations Sure Start Mellow Valley Evaluation Report 2005/ 2006

This report forms the Year 3 annual report. Alongside documenting findings from Year 2 evaluation activities, this report also brings together findings from previous evaluation activities and gives wider consideration to the overall progress and outcomes of the programme so far. Section two explains the evaluation approach that has been adopted and details the activities that have been conducted and the methods used. Section 3 highlights the key themes and findings to emerge from the workshops undertaken with the Sure Start teams and provides a summary of the indepth evaluation conducted of the Family Support Team. Section 4 is entitled ‘Pulling it all together’ and considers the work and achievements of Sure Start Mellow Valley with particular regard to the five outcomes of Every Child Matters. A conclusion and brief summary of findings is found in Section 5 followed by a range of further information within the Section 6 Appendices

Research governance in children's services: the scope for new advice (Research report DFE-RR072)

"In 2009, following a period of informal consultation with key stakeholders, the former DCSF commissioned the work reported here, with the following overarching aims: to identify and evaluate existing arrangements for research governance and ethics review in children’s services in England; and to make recommendations for the future development of those governance arrangements, with the overall goal of ensuring a more coherent and transparent system, that is proportionate to the governance needs and ethical risks in research with users of children’s services." - Page iii

Mapping training and development provision for early years practitioners

Final report for Creativity, Culture and Educatio

Including children's voices in a multiple stakeholder study on a community-wide approach to improving quality in early years settings

This article will explore the use of visual participatory research methods with young children. These methods have been utilized to add young children's voices to research on the impact of a quality improvement strategy in an early years’ settings involved in a community-based prevention and early intervention programme. The main objective of the intervention programme is to measurably improve the lives of children (pre-birth to six years) and families through universal and targeted services in an urban community which experiences high levels of socio-economic deprivation. Children were offered the opportunity to share their views with the researchers through a variety of participatory rights-based approaches including drawing, photo-elicitation, photography, and conversations. Adding children's voices to the programme evaluation can help us to understand children's experiences and produces better policy and better services and also to interrogate the adult-centric quantitative data and adult perspectives generated in the ongoing project evaluation