A normative demand placed on early childhood centres by political actors and education theorists is that they should promote participation by children. Numerous publications have set out recommendations for early childhood teachers on how to promote participation in their day-to-day activities. The present study considers the role of the…

Pedagogical documentation is practised in early childhood centres all over the world as a means to gauge the learning and development of children. From the point of view of teachers, however, documentation must compete with numerous other tasks. This paper explores the strategies teachers employ in order to integrate documentation into their…

The aim of the study presented in this article is to find out whether the documentation practices in German early childhood education and care (ECEC) centres are compatible with the notion of participation by children. Children's participation has to be seen as a general educational issue in the context of democratic and inclusive education, but…

Over the past 200 years, early childhood provision in Germany has primarily been oriented towards the goal of work-care reconciliation. Even though there is a long tradition in Germany of education-oriented approaches, the primary goal has always been care. The extensive development of early childhood centres for children under three years of age…

The pedagogical documentation of educational processes in Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) centres is an important concern of early childhood education. Its purpose is to make learning visible and to stimulate discussion between educators and parents. In the academic discourse, however, pedagogical documentation is subject to differing…