Documentation and professional development

Finally it is privileged terrain for adults for observation, for reflection, for knowledge of strategy and evaluation of the ways children produce and construct their conduct and evolutionary forms of knowing: for the possibilities [it offers] for adults to self-evaluate and self-adjust their expectations, their hypotheses, their capacity for predicting and reflecting on the acts and choices they realise with the children.
Therefore it is terrain that, through reciprocal maturations, reinforces knowledge of children and adults, produces professional learning, and improves the quality of their relations and interactions.
Loris Malaguzzi, Draft for a talk on research action probes

The educational experience that takes place in infant-toddler centres and preschools acquires its fullest meaning when documentation made in progress is revisited, reconstructed, re-signified, and evaluated, that is to say it is interpreted through the exchange and contribution of different points of view, in this way becoming a fundamental opportunity of development and self-development for every teacher. 

The diffused practice of documentation also becomes essential for informing and disseminating professional knowledge constructed in educational contexts with protagonist teachers and children.