Emancipation och motstånd dokumentation och kooperativa läroprocesser i förskolan

Sammanfattning: Observation and documentation has been used in Sweden during all of the past century, with many different purposes. The dominant purpose has been to determine the child’s development in relation to paediatrics and different theories of developmental and psychodynamic psychology. In the genealogical readings made in this study, these practices are understood as disciplinary and normalising practices. In a feminist reading of the same practices, they are understood as important tools in the constructions of a public sphere of professionalization for women. In this construction, essentialist notions of femininity and motherhood have been made to coincide with the liberation and needs of the Child as Nature in the modern society. Today the tools are used foremost as a part of evaluation processes, but also as a means to make visible children’s competence and learning-processes, within the new dominant constructivist framework. This study sets out to theoretically, historically as well as practically, investigate if it is possible to understand the practice of what we today call ‘pedagogical documentation’ as a practice which empowers children as well as teachers in their respective as well as co-operative learning-processes.In this project the researchers own learning-processes in relation to the research has also been investigated. A theoretical displacement is illustrated from a modernist understanding of the practices of observation and documentation, to a feminist poststructural position. Documented practice from Åkervägens pre-school was co-operatively researched together with three pre-school teachers. What started as a participant ethnographic study, transformed into what is conceived as a feminist poststructural research study. In the cooperative learning-processes the possibilities of understanding the tool of pedagogical documentation as a practice of continuos ’resistance’, against taken for granted or dominant meaning making and practices, was investigated. Deconstructive talks as well as collective biography work and storyline deconstructions were used with the teachers. Values and ethical notions of children as equal citizens, with rights to a pedagogical practice with possibilities to investigate their surrounding world together with other children and adults, formed the platform for this co-operative work. The study reveals the possibilities and difficulties with pedagogical documentation as a practice of ’resistance’, but also shows the obvious ‘emancipative’ effects for children and teachers. Conceiving themselves as meaning-making and knowledge-producing subjects, in processes of challenging and continuous change, had certain and important empowering effects.