Playing a part in preschool documentation A study of how participation is enacted in preschool documentation practices and how it is affected by material agents

Sammanfattning: The aim of the present study is to explore how children’s participation is constructed and enacted in preschool documentation and what kinds of activities evolve between teachers, children and material objects in preschool documentation practices. The study is based on videorecorded observations of teachers and children documenting different preschool activities in two preschool groups. The video observations are analysed using theoretical perspectives on power relations, governmentality, documentality and agentic realism. The results are presented in two research articles. The results show the complexity of children’s participation in preschool documentation practice. In the first article two different documentation methods, with different theoretical underpinnings, were used in the preschool: portfolio and pedagogical documentation. The results show that, regardless of documentation method, children’s participation varied from attendance to involvement and influence, which can be seen as two ends of a power relation. Power relations between teachers and children also varied between situations as well as within individual situations. The result of the second article shows that children’s participation in preschool documentation practices, as well as the documentation itself, was affected and controlled not only by the humans present, but also by different material agents, such as photos and colour-coded labels. Taking material agents into account allows for a broader understanding of documentation practices, which in turn could open up for new forms of children’s participation in preschool documentation.