Assessment and Pedagogical Documentation

Assessment is the process of gathering and interpreting information that accurately reflects the child’s demonstration of learning in relation to the knowledge and skills outlined in the overall expectations of The Kindergarten Program. The primary purpose of assessment is to improve learning and to help children become self-regulating, autonomous learners (Growing Success – The Kindergarten Addendum , 2016, p. 6).

Assessment refers to data collection procedures and efforts to make sense of such data collected. Children yield insight into their understanding through what they report (e.g., saying, discussing, talking, commenting), depict (e.g., illustrate, draw, paint, write), and do (e.g., act, dramatize, exercise, build, move, role-play). Educators who observe, listen, and investigate these learning behaviours through questions, conversations, and reflections pursue a path of inquiry that eventually culminates in the documentation of the students' learning. With such documentation, educators make possible points of contact between text and student and in this relationship the educator springs forth the revelation of further student thinking.

Building knowledge of assessment and its practice in education has gained traction as a source of study in its own right. Imbued in this movement is a historical look at assessment and how data collection has been purposed in different ways and for different reasons dependent on place, time, and ideological context. Dr. Lorna Earl provides fresh perspective on how assessment was practiced throughout specific epochs (e.g., Ancient Greece, Trade Guilds, Industrial Revolution), and then she further adds to the discussion with a focus on the concept of assessment literacy.

Assessment literacy involves comprehension of three distinct but interconnected phases of the assessment cycle: assessment for learning; assessment as learning; and assessment of learning. Given the cyclical nature of assessment the practice is iterative, reflexive, and distillatory - that is, assessment provides the backbone for documentation.

Documenting the evidence of learning is the most important aspect of assessment in Kindergarten and is, indeed, an integral part of all assessment approaches. (Growing Success – The Kindergarten Addendum , 2016, p. 8)

When educators capture student learning and construct it into a source for further reflection, pedagogical decision-making, and student input, such practice is what transitions documentation into pedagogical documentation. Indeed, Krechevsky, Mardell, Rivard, and Wilson (2013) conceive of pedagogical documentation as "the practice of observing, recording, interpreting, and sharing through a variety of media the processes and products of learning in order to deepen and extend learning" (As cited in Ontario Ministry of Education, Pedagogical Documentaiton Revisited, 2015, p. 73). Pedagogical documentation stands as an intermediary pedagogical practice between assessment for learning and assessment as learning, since "these physical traces allow others to revisit, interpret, reinterpret, and even re-create an experience" (Ibid). Students, then, can repurpose their previous knowledge, understanding, and familarity with assessment practice to bring forth new insights, furthering their learning and acquiring a greater degree of autonomy over their own cognitive, emotional, and physical developments. What is revealed at this stage of pedagogical practice informs next steps for educators to guide the learners through the process of building self- and peer assessment practice, and such assessment repertoire reflects efforts at arriving towards a more robust assessment as learning framework.

As a Kindergarten educator, I have purposefully constructed a tight coupling of assessment for learning and assessment as learning through pedagogical documentation practices. Some of the tools used to capture student thinking is listed below.

For tools like transcripts, audio, and records of reading behaviours, I often carry with me a recording device, so that what is shared is persevered for future utility and can be relied upon as a source reflecting what exactly occured during my encounter with students. Pedagogical documentation as an assessment practice emerges when some text - a record of a conference, transcript, product, photo, and others - is used to prompt further student thinking and a response to such an encounter faciliates a transition from more educator-dominated asssessment practice to a more student-centred approach to generating further texts.

In the following photo of a documentation panel my Early Childhood Educator (ECE) partner constructed, students have shared various ways they have helped out the environment. Samples of student writings, art products, pictures with captions, and illustrations serve to communicate a narrative about helping out the environment. To construct pedagogical documentation in this context would be to have students revisit this panel and then participate in a gallery walk. In this galley walk, I would invite students to consider the documentation panel and come up with a design for building the next documentation panel as well as what goals they might develop for themselves to build their abilities in writing, illustrating, or presenting.

This relationships embodies triangulation of assessment data, as pedagogical documentation positions each pillar of assessment around a common framework of interpretation while at the same time prompting a motive for making student thinking become latent or visible.

As a pedagogical leader, I look forward to sharing my accumulative insights gained from teaching practice and reflections on research and best practices on the subject of assessment and pedagogical documentation. Some links to further consider and to build a more refined relationship between assessment and pedagogical documentation can be sourced below:

• Kashin, D. (2015). Pedagogical documentation: Why? when? who? what? where? how?

• Kashin, D. (2013). Leading the Reggio way: The profile of a pedagogical leader.

• Ontario Ministry of Education. (2012). Pedagogical documentation. Capacity Building Series.

• Ontario Ministry of Education. (2019). Professional Learning Resources.