Provocation to Reflect: An Educator’s Exploration of Engaging Students Through Documentation

Abstract

This article is a personal narrative of how the author struggled to articulate her own philosophy of education while incorporating Reggio Emilia ideas into her teaching practice. The author found pedagogical documentation, an important component of the Reggio Emilia approach, to facilitate student self-assessment and intellectual engagement in Calgary schools. Her independent inquiry drew from her master’s research, her re ections on her teaching philosophy, and her examination of the links between the Reggio approach and her school board’s pedagogical goals. She identi es some challenges in using pedagogical documentation, and looks forward to future provocations that will deepen her understanding of what it means to be an educator.