Pedagogical documentation and the refusal of method: troubling dogmas and inviting collective obligations

Abstract

This article explores how pedagogical documentation, as the refusal of method, can be aligned with post qualitative inquiry, opening up possibilities for refuting dogmas and methods in early childhood pedagogy, theory, practice, and research. It delineates understandings of pedagogical documentation in the educational project of Reggio Emilia, and describes dogmatic (or unthought) practices which influence perceptions and uses of pedagogical documentation elsewhere: the dogma of children’s interests; the dogma of implementation; and the dogma of method. The article draws on the experience of a collective of academic-researchers and teacher-researchers working with pedagogical documentation in the context of an investigation into children’s relations with waste. Excerpts from interviews illuminate ‘voices troubling dogmas’, proposing an invitation to move forward from dogmas to imagining our collective obligations. Pedagogical documentation is thus conceived as a catalyst for helping us think collectively with the hope of making the dogmatic impossible.