Knowledge as process or product? : A qualitative study of documentation in preschool

According to the curriculum for the Swedish preschool system, children’s development and learning should be documented and analyzed in order to evaluate and develop the preschool quality. Social criticism is directed to some of the methods of documentation for assessing the children´s individual knowledge development. The purpose of this study was to examine how, what and why some teachers use documentation in preschool. I wanted to examine which methods preschool teachers used when they documented the children and what they focused on. I also wanted to examine why the teachers chose the methods they used. I have used a qualitative method with interviews and contacted four teachers from different preschools in order to get diverse information for my study. All teachers were educated preschool teachers and all of them had worked in the preschool system for at least ten years. The information given in the interviews has been analyzed by the use of socio-cultural theories and previous research. The interviews with the teachers showed the use of different methods to document the children. The most frequently used method was to photograph the children. The purpose of it was to visualize the children’s development of knowledge or to show different parts of some projects the children participated in. The purposes of the teacher’s documentation were various and I discovered three main reasons for documentation: In order to give information to the parents about their children. For the use of discussions with the children and serve as inspiration for them. For the use of discussions between the teachers in order to develop the preschool quality. My conclusion is that the teacher’s view of the children’s knowledge development, is critical for what the teachers chose to focus on in their documentation, knowledge as process or product