Pedagogical documentation as a shared experience of understanding childhood

Pedagogical documentation is a key theme within the debate on early childhood education. It is widely defined in the literature as all documentation about education. Pedagogical documentation may be viewed as a medium through which adults can encounter children – and not only theoretical and rhetorical ideas of childhood – at the level of personal experience. This chapter explores the cultural and collective value of a hermeneutically-informed pedagogical documentation strategy in developing a shared understanding of children’s lived educational experiences. Pedagogical documentation may be viewed as an authentic medium for embodying, and bringing to the light, the lived experience of education that characterizes early childhood education services, and which involves all the actors in these services: children, teachers, families, institutions and local community. The chapter reviews pedagogical documentation as a knowledge-construction process that involves developing a hermeneutic understanding of educational processes and practices.