Monitoring and documenting children's achievements and progress in preschool

Manca Peternelj (2017) Monitoring and documenting children's achievements and progress in preschool. Diploma thesis.

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Abstract

The purpose of this diploma thesis was to research the opinions of preschool teachers on monitoring and documenting a child’s attainments, and determine the current practice in the field by analysing their documentation. The theoretical part of the diploma thesis focuses on the known observation types and techniques, the mistakes that can be made in the process, the aims of monitoring a child’s attainments and progress, and the usefulness of their notes for parents, the child and preschool teachers. Afterwards, it presents the portfolio in greater detail as a form of monitoring a child’s development. The final chapter is dedicated to monitoring and documenting a child’s attainments in the Reggio Emilia kindergartens. The theoretical findings were then linked to the empirical findings, and corroborated with examples from the materials of preschool teachers. The results show that preschool teachers are aware of the importance of monitoring a child’s attainments and progress, but that for various reasons (lack of time or knowledge, etc.) they still use diary and anecdotal entries the most. Only a few preschool teachers use the portfolio to monitor a child’s attainments. There is a noticeable gap between the practice of Slovenian kindergartens and that of the Reggio Emilia kindergartens. For the majority of Slovenian preschool teachers, the main purpose of observing children is to assess a child’s progress in accordance with the predetermined categories or characteristics of a “normal” or average child of a certain age, while the preschool institution serves as a producer of results, i.e. of the attainment of pre-envisaged goals. The Reggio Emilia kindergartens, on the other hand, are distancing themselves from such a notion, for they believe that the purpose of documenting is to make learning visible (Batistič Zorec and Prosen, 2015: 29). To them, documenting is a tool used to visualise the learning processes of children, their search for meaning, and their paths toward constructing knowledge (Hočevar and Kovač Šebart, 2010: 95).

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