Documentation as professional learning
- Documentation inviting a relationship between theory and practice.
- Providing opportunities for collaborative, critical reflection – highlighting the value of collaborative research as a professional learning opportunity.
- Documentation supporting co-participative research between children and educators; between children and atelieriste; between educational leaders and their teams; between classroom-based educators and academics.
Young children making kin with the more than human world: Transforming perspectives on community through pedagogical documentation.
Dr Stefania Giamminuti is a bilingual Italian/Australian Senior Lecturer in Early Childhood Education, Curtin University, Western Australia.
Sally Polson is Educational Leader at Methodist Ladies’ College, a K-12 Independent school in Melbourne.
This presentation conveys insights from a collaborative research project co-led by Dr Stefania Giamminuti and the community of MLC Kindle (Melbourne, VIC). It highlights the value of teachers as researchers and engages with the principle of pedagogical documentation as research. The project is premised on reciprocal dialogue between academic-researchers and teacher-researchers, and decision-making with children and community members, over the space of a year in pursuit of a research question determined collectively.
Extraordinary in the ordinary: Complexities of belonging in the city
The Early Childhood Education team from the College of Arts and Education at Victoria University, (Mary-Rose McLaren, Jessica Grimes, Sarah Jobson and Anna Munari) recently completed a 12 week pop-up loose parts play community playspace in the heart of Footscray.
This presentation explores the image of the child with rights to belong and participate in their community. Between March and June, 2021, Early Childhood Education pre-service teachers, mentors and academics at Victoria University, in conjunction with Public Realm Lab and Maribyrnong Council established a pop-up play space in a small pocket of land in a very urbanised environment. We hope to convey some of the complexities of documentation when working with diverse groups, as well as some of the small, extraordinary connections that occurred when children were trusted to be citizens of their community.
Documentation: An Active Agent
Dr Jane Merewether is a Senior Lecturer at Murdoch University, Western Australia.
Drawing on several research projects that have deployed understandings of what is sometimes called ‘pedagogical documentation’ as conceptualised and practised by the educational project of Reggio Emilia, the presentation will illuminate how the doings of documentation can provoke particular ethical considerations which have social and environmental implications. Understanding documentation as performative can alert educators to what it and the tools of documentation might produce beyond human intentions, and open them up to more-than-human relations within research and educational assemblages.
Pivoting on a palimpsest
Dr Karen Szydlik and Lamyae Kwan are lecturer and student in the Bachelor of Education at Melbourne Polytechnic. They met in 2020 when they were both involved in a transformational experience in the first year subject ‘Arts in the Curriculum’, the timing of which coincided with the onset of COVID-19 in Victoria and the subsequent effects on the tertiary sector.
In this presentation Karen and Lamyae share their perspectives and the perspectives of other students through the documentation of their palimpsests and reflections. They hope to show the transformation and surprises they experienced, in this intersection of the principles of the educational project of Reggio Emilia, Therapeutic Arts Practice and undergraduate studies in arts for preservice teachers.
Synergies between Aboriginal ways of knowing and being and the principles of Reggio Emilia
As we reflect on new ways of being with children and new ways of ‘doing’ school, this open dialogue between Professor Mark Rose and REAIE Committee member, Leanne Mits, invites us to reflect on the potential of seeing ourselves as agents of change, where a focus on cultural intelligence supports the evolution of a new teacher identity.
