Encountering Pedagogical Documentation in Early Childhood Education Through a Theory/Practice Lens

Pedagogical documentation is understood as a long-established practice in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC), which serves multiple functions for children, parents, educators, and policy makers. It is simultaneously a saturated field, with a robust body of research and literature; a wicked problem, which presents multiple challenges in practice; and a phenomenal tool, which enables the visibility of pedagogy and learning. This study set out to see documentation differently, shifting the gaze from positioning documentation ‘as’ and instead to understand what it ‘does’. To understand documentation differently and to materialise its effects in practice, the study draws on posthumanism (Ferrando, 2020), new materialism (Lenz Taguchi, 2010) and the agential realism of Karen Barad (2007), which acknowledges the agency of all matter and the performativity of pedagogical documentation. A post qualitative methodology (St. Pierre, 2011) or form of inquiry allows the familiar topic of documentation be explored using intra-views as method with two separate sessional-based settings, re-conceptualising the scope of what constitutes data, and thinking with theory as a process of analysis. This study exemplifies documentation as a material-discursive apparatus, arguing that it has greater performativity than is currently suggested in the literature. It has demonstrated that in putting theory to work, new perspectives on curriculum and pedagogy, children’s positioning and learning, and team working can and have emerged. The study contributes to new understandings of documentation, unfolding the ways in which practice is materialised through theory and offering possibilities for transformative pedagogies in early childhood. Ultimately, it follows in the footsteps of new materialist thinkers to evidence how documentation matters, and how new connectivities emerge when the theory/practice divide is minimised.