Systematisk dokumentation av barns utveckling och lärande inom pedagogisk omsorg i Sverige och Finland : En vetenskaplig essä om två grannländers sätt att sammanställa barns lärprocesser

Sammanfattning: The preschool curriculum obliges us working at preschool to systematically document the development and learning of children. Our premier policy document does not in detail explain how one should do the documentation. The purpose with my essay has been, starting at our neighbour country Finland and its early childhood education and care, to deepen my understanding for the intentions of the curriculum and to find new ways to document children´s learning processes at preschool. In Finland I have examined The child´s individual early childhood education and care plan which is a legislated individual development plan for children at preschool age. I have also looked at the kindergarten teacher´s practical knowledge, which I have reflected against my own experiences in my profession as a preschool teacher. My research questions are about how the child´s individual early childhood education and care plan is used in practice in Finland, the role of administration at the documentation in Sweden and Finland, how the child´s individual early childhood education and care plan effects the documentation process in Finland and vice versa how the lack of an individual plan in Sweden is effecting the documentation, the child´s individual early childhood education and care plan in relation to educational documentation and finally how Sweden and Finland relate to individual or group documentation. The research is written in an essay form. My self-experienced story together with field observations and theory have provoked insights and answers. The general terms in the swedish curriculum opens up space for the practical knowledge and the local cognizance in the process of documentation. Educational documentation as a method and the working team´s unity regarding to knowledge and ”child view” has shown to be important parts in documentation work. As a way of documentation, educational documentation concentrates on group documentation, in opposite to what the swedish curriculum is demanding about systematic documentation of the individual child. In Finland the child´s individual early childhood education and care plan has come to focus on the needs of support of the single solid child though these represent only a part of the plan. Finland has some years ago instituted educational documentation in preschool curriculum and my research has shown similar duration in time to change the working ways of the Finnish educators as I have experienced in Sweden. Administration that comes from documenting children´s learning processes has shown to be burdening on both sides of the Baltic sea, but mostly in Finland.