Pedagogical documentation and Initial Training: Moving, stirring and touching teachers' practical knowledge

Abstract

The research that we present seeks to know the educational potentialities of pedagogical documentation as a tool to develop practical teacher thinking in Initial Early Childhood Education Teachers Training. In the first place, and within the framework of the current needs of Initial Training, we stop at the definition of the complex image of teachers' practical knowledge. A multidimensional and fundamentally unconscious system that has the potential for transformation through two key processes: the theorization of the practice and experimentation of the theory that we can develop, among other didactic strategies, through pedagogical documentation (a tool originated in the schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy). To understand the nuances involved in incorporating this tool into Initial Teacher Training, we conducted a case study with a group of 26 pre-service teachers in an Ecuadorian higher education institution. Among the results obtained, we can find the importance of designing a coherent methodological and tutorial structure that accompanies the documenting process. A design that, to provoke the transformation of practical knowledge, facilitates a bodily, temporal, spatial and biographical encounter with a different way of being a teacher and of entering into a relationship with Theory.