1 Introduction: An Action-Research and Its Context

This chapter presents the reflections of an Early Years professional and researcher on the results of a small-scale action research project that was carried out during a period of 12 weeks in a workplace day nursery situated in the premises of a University Campus in London.

This project consists of an experimentation around a shift in practice from documenting children’s learning using still photography to sharing video vignettes through an on line learning app and sending it securely to parents. The aim of this pedagogical innovation was to strengthen relationships with families by developing trust, sharing perspectives and acquiring vital aspects of personal knowledge held by parents to develop further understanding of the often complex thought and decoding involved in children’s plays (Cochran et al. 1989; Desforges and Abouchaar 2003; Eccles and Harrold 1993; Tait 2010; Ward 2009; Whalley 1997, 2010; Whalley et al. 2013; Whalley and Arnold 1997).

Underpinning the project was the intention to develop the most effective, efficient and successful ways to plan for young children and how these could be shared with parents to attempt to understand the individual needs of each young child, as suggested by mainstream research on Early Years practice (Sylva et al. 2004, 2010) To reflect on the quality of care and education provided in the nursery it was explored if video vignettes could become a useful tool to allow reflection on practice, providing professionals with opportunities to view them repeatedly with colleagues, parents and children in order to inform our practice and deepen our understanding of children’s inherent disposition to learn and how we can support this Considering Marion and Crowder (2013:68) suggestion that ‘video allows us a small window into lived realities that no other medium can provide. It shows process and captures actions and words as they naturally occur in the flow of experience’, it was decided to experiment with the replacement of still photographs to video vignettes as a tool to document children’s play in the nursery.

The video vignette was used to make assessments and planning for the children, in line with statutory requirements (Department for Education 2008, 2012, 2013, 2014; Ofsted 2014). The use of video vignettes was used to document children’s play and interactions they aimed to provide practitioners at the nursery with an opportunity to visually share and analyse children’s play with both children, parents and colleagues to gain a greater insight and understanding into children’s thinking. Video documentation, therefore, was intended as a methodological innovation for the assessment of children’s development.

However, unintended consequences happened: besides the assessment of children’s learning and how this was recorded, the use of video allowed appreciation and reflection on children’s creative and autonomous understanding, interpretation and ownership of their everyday experiences to unfold.

With the support of a case-study, this piece of work discusses how the possibility to review sequences of children’s play offers the opportunity to capture how play becomes a medium for the expression of children’s cultural worlds.

The nursery caters for 47 places for University staff, student and community children aged between 6 weeks and 5 years of age. The team is made up of 14 Early Years Practitioners, a Head of Childcare and a Nursery Manager, with a working experience ranging between 5 and 24 years.

2 Methodology: Video as a Tool for Research

Over the past few decades video has been used to document pedagogical interactions and children’s activity in a vast range of educational settings (Pink 2010; Poslawsky et al. 2014). A wealth of research (Carr 1998; Carr et al. 2002; Goldman et al. 2006; Flewitt 2014; Marion and Crowder 2013; Thompson 2008) has demonstrated that video sequences offers a more comprehensive documentation than notes, and the possibility to share with others the observations, adding more depth to reflection on practices by including others’ perspectives (Goldman et al. 2006), offering recognition of different perspectives and values (Braun and Clarke 2013; Denzin 1989; Elliot 1991; Foreman 1999; Foreman and Hall 2005).

From a methodological perspective, an important advantage of video documentation over written notes is the support to participatory approaches (Flewitt 2005, 2006; Parker 2013), based on the epistemological premise that reality, and knowledge of reality, are co-created from mutual understanding that arises from lived experiences (Carr and Kemmis 1986; Carr and May 1993; Costly and Dikerdem 2011).

A participatory (Drummond 1993; Elliot 1991) constructivist (Laevers 1997) and dialogical (Mc Niff and Whitehead 2011) philosophy constitutes the epistemology of the project. Underpinning the research-action question, how can we deepen our understanding of children’s learning by sharing video vignettes with parents, was the understanding of the assessments of children’s learning as collaborative (Edgington 2008; O’Reilly et al. 2013), and the intention to involve colleagues and parents to gain a more complex and dynamic perspective on children’s actions, interests and learning (Lawrence 2010; Page et al. 2013).

The use of video to document children’s actions and the interaction between adults and peers can be understood as a form of ethnographic research (Parker 2013). O’ Reilly and colleagues describe ethnography as literally meaning ‘to write about people’ (O’Really et al. 2006, p.214). During this small-scale project, the researcher analysed 400 and 26 video vignettes, 71 children and 14 practitioners. Weisner (1996) describes ethnography in research with children as important as it considers how the cultural context of the child and family are incorporated into understanding the child. This idea, which greatly inspired the project, resulted in the involvement of 70 relatives of the children, who participated in the analysis of the video vignettes.

The use of video entails a careful consideration of ethical issues (Shavelson and Towne 2002), which was carried on in the context of the research under the guidance of the ethical principles described by O’ Reilly and colleagues (2013) and Price (1996). With respect to the principle of autonomy, all participants, parents, practitioners and children were given the opportunity to decide if they wanted to be involved in this research project. Practitioners and parents were invited to participate through dedicated and separate meetings, and provided a letter summarising the aims and methods of the research, informing them about the right to withdraw and about the procedure to secure anonymity and data protection.

Parents were asked to give consent for their children to take part in the research; however, children were directly invited to participate as well giving their assent to engage in the study. Throughout the research process, the researcher was continuously monitoring if children were showing any signs of discomfort, which would have been taken as expression of withdrawal (Wellings and Branigan 2000).

The aim of the project was to gain a deeper perspective on the child as the result of a cooperative reflection (Whalley and Pen Green Centre 2010). Whilst this aim was achieved, the present chapter focuses on an unintended consequence of purposive action: the use of video vignette became the medium for the perspective of the child, and a support for adults to understand it.

In the following section of the chapter, a case-study taken from the research will be illustrated to support the main argument of this work. It is believed that the discussion of a case is the most effective strategy to disseminate the reflection and insights developed during the research (Yin 1993, 2004). The main point that the discussion of the case aims to support is that video documentation facilitates the adult observer in appreciating, valuing and learning from the voice of the child. All names were changed to preserve the privacy of the people involved in the observations.

3 A Case Study. Kia and the Trains

3.1 Introduction to the Case Study

Kia is 3 years and 10 months old. His mother, Alice, works on the Campus where the nursery is based. Kia has attended nursery since he was 9 months old, and travels to nursery every day by train. This has probably been the catalyst for his passion and knowledge about the London Underground and the Docklands Light Railway (DLR) train system. At the weekends his father regularly takes him on the DLR when he goes to visit his grandma. Kia is always keen to share his experiences at nursery either in conversation, model making or through play. It is known that Kia is able to retell his daily commute, telling staff at the nursery that he travels to Camden Town, Moorgate, and Chorleywood, and building up scenarios in his narrative. Kia Key person, Sandra, has worked with him for over 2 years

We have always shared our observations with Kia parents and have been able to support his interest in trains. This has enhanced other areas of learning and development. His hand-eye coordination and fine motor skills are exceptional and he has a good spatial awareness, making the most complex tracks. He is developing imaginative play and often introduces duplo people to stand on the platforms and wait for their train. Kia is keen to find solutions to overcome problems in his play, as indicated when he realised his people were too big to sit on his Lego-link train he made another train, using the mobilo, which enabled him to sit the people on his train. Together we practise counting the people who are waiting on the platform and those who are sitting on the train, extending his mathematical development. Kia brings his train to nursery every day; it is a replica of the Dockland Light Railway Train Carriage. Kia made a pin board picture of his train. He matched the same coloured shapes to make his train

Kia enjoys role-play and sometimes will pretend to be the guard, saying, “This train terminates at Camden Town”. Kia made a bench from blocks. He sat on them and looked a newspaper. Sandra asked him what he is doing he replied, “reading the paper like the man at the station”. (November 2014).

A photograph of a bench made from blocks and a kid sitting on it. He is pretending to read a newspaper.

Whilst Athey (2007) reminds us that if knowledge is to be successfully assimilated, it must fit in with learners lived experience, it can be argued that communication of knowledge and its validation in interaction is equally important. The question for the adults is whether the voice of the child is recognised and valued as the medium of autonomous knowledge and enlightened experiences (Reggio Children 2001), rather than the expression of a tentative exploration in the dark. The argument of this chapter is that the use of video, combined with dialogical reflection on the observations documented by the video involving educational professionals, families and children, is a powerful tool to amplify the voice of children’s knowledge to reach sometimes deaf ears.

3.2 A Digression: Kane Under a Cone

Karen captured a short video of Kane playing outside under an upturned red cone. Karen was quite amazed and amused by Kane’s play and wanted to share this with Alison and the nursery team.

Kane was moving very slowly under the red cone; at the same time he looked very determined in being enclosed under the cone and moving the cone along the floor intently even when faced with interruption and difficulties. This determination to be enclosed and move along the floor seemed important to him in his play.

The use of video and dialogical reflection involving Allison gave room to Kane’s voice, as expressed in the play. Was he really playing hide and seek? By replaying the video I could hear another child saying “we need to hide from the monsters don’t we?”. Was this his objective?

The next day the video was shared and discussed with Alison, who was adamant in dismissing the possibility that Kia was playing hide and seek. “He’s not playing hide and seek, he does that at home, that’s not how he plays it”. This comment of the mother, combined with Flewitt’s suggestion (2006) that the combinations of visual, audio and written data permit multilevel analysis allowing the researcher to literally and metaphorically zoom in on children, led me to re-examine the video.

By re-viewing the video I was aware of more detail than I had first noticed. The use of video in this observation provided an opportunity to see more than just the visual image but provided audio commentary. I became aware of the sound that the cone made on the floor as he pushed it along and shared with the nursery team. We reconsidered previous thoughts and discussed the symbolic representation in Kia play.

In occasion of previous discussions, Alison told me that Kia experiences trains going through tunnels on his way to nursery and that he also enjoys watching trains from the platform as they come through tunnels. The next time I stood on an underground platform I closely observed the train and imagined I was a young child. I felt a feeling of excitement and wonder as the train suddenly appeared out of the black hole at the end of the platform. The train came through the dark hole with speed. It brought with it a huge gust of warm air and a loud noise. The feeling of wonder could be mixed with feelings of anxiety and fear. I tried to imagine the thoughts a child may have and wondered what would happen if the train did not stop? What would happen if you fell onto the track? Where was the train taking us? I frequently travel on the underground. It was not until the reflection supported by the video documentation that I realised the complexity of Kia play and the intricacy of the re-enactment of his experiences coming through the tunnel onto the platform station and how extraordinary it was.

Kia was not playing hide and seek; he was not hiding from some imaginary monsters. He was re-enacting his experiences, and at the same he was presenting himself as an autonomous producer of knowledge. Kia playing was claiming epistemic status and individual access to knowledge, the video made those claims heard and recognised.

Following the review of the cones playing, it was noticed that Kia uses or makes tunnels in most of his model making or play. He often uses nursery furniture to push trains underneath and out of the other side. Our observations have shown us that in schema theory terms ‘going through’ (Arnold 2003, 2010) holds importance to Kia re-enacting his experiences of being in a tunnel and moving the cone along the floor provided ‘functional dependency’ relationships. The cone was ‘functionally dependent’ (Nutbrown 2011) on him moving it. Athey discusses the important shift from action to thought. She states ‘one of the functions of symbolic representation is to re-activate original experiences, thus leading to stability of knowledge’ (2007:139). Athey states that ‘Internalized actions lead to transformations on material and persons’ (2007:34).

Whilst the above interpretation is believed to offer an account of the learning process in and through a circular relationship between experience, reflection and representation; it was felt that someone was missing from the picture: Kia was not just learning: he was communicating his knowledge, he was teaching.

3.3 Kane at Canary Wharf

A few days after the ‘cone reflection’, Kia arrived at nursery and found Kane had independently made a model out of mobilo blocks and planks of wood. He declared it was ‘Canary Warf.’

A photograph of a nursery where a kid is playing with blocks. An adult is in the background.

Kia visual account of Canary Wharf was splendid. Observing Kia as a producer and a communicator of knowledge, I wondered what picture Kane held in his mind when he built it, this structure what knowledge was he was sharing to listening ears. I asked Alice if she could take a photo of Canary Warf so that we could have a glimpse of what Kia was holding in his mind and representing in his model. Alice shared the picture of Kia model with her sister, who commented, “I know exactly what part of Canary Wharf Kane has made”. Alice brought in photographs to share and discuss.

A photograph of a railway station and people waiting on the platform. A train is visible in the last platform.

Supported by the video documentation and enhanced by discussion, adults’ acknowledgement of Kia cognitive ability to contain and reflect a mental image and then reproduce this in his model making went beyond the practice of assessing cognitive development. Model-making was being approached not as a demonstration of skill for the observing adults, but as a medium of communication. One of the hundred languages of children, captured using video and dialogical reflection.

Kia knowledge of Canary Warf has been captured and recreated in his model making it a symbolic representation. At the same time, the model is a medium of a communicative intention entailing the claim of autonomous access to knowledge.

Kia captures the curves and the tracks he has observed on his journey to nursery. The trains he makes represent his own experiences. Athey, described this knowledge as having internal constructions that have ‘form’. She explains that ‘the content of the experience ‘feeds’ the forms of thought’ (2007:55). Piaget (1962:67) states ‘representation in the narrow sense allows for the symbolic evocation of absent realities by way of the mental or memory images, and it is based on schemata as ‘coordinated systems of movement and perceptions, which constitute any elementary behaviours capable of being repeated and applied to new situations’ (Piaget 1962:274).

At the same time, however, Athey (2007:5) notes that: ‘without professional understandings, the adult-child relationship is simply custodial’. I now understand that an important component of ‘professional understanding’ consists in acknowledging not only the development of the child towards the future adult, but also the child in the present. Kane’s Kia repeated interest in ‘connection’ and ‘going through’ within his play with tracks and trains, and interest in tunnels are not just a display of cognitive competence, but also sharing knowledge in of his environments.

4 The Affordance of Video

Gibson (1979) first coined the phrase ‘affordance.’ Haggerty (2011:386) describes the notion of ‘affordance’ as ‘a useful way of denoting the particular meaning- making or semiotic capacities of different modes and media’. The affordance of replaying this video vignette allowed the researcher to observe the multimodal aspects of Kia play (Cowan 2014), capturing his voice whether it was expressed verbally, through gestures, body language and the same artefacts he manufactures and shares.

A photograph of a kid building a train track, tunnels, and a row of houses.

Kia had already built the train track, tunnels and a row of houses. I asked Kia if I could video his play, Kia gave his consent with a nod and a smile whilst continuing with his play. When re-viewing this piece of video I wondered what Kia was communicating though his role-modelling. He seemed to ponder, fiddle and shuffle ever so slightly as he re-connected his Lego pieces. Sharing this video with Alice allowed us to review with amazement other observations we had made of Kia This information allowed us to view Kia’s play with a more informed wider and clearer lens, finding his voice in it.

Alice and I watched the video of Kia playing with a train track he had built. As we watched the video I noticed that Kia seemed particularly attentive in the way he put the Lego bricks together in order to make adjustments to the train he had previously made. His gestures and body movement seemed intent on the bricks being in the right place. I asked Alice if the Lego bricks Kia was adjusting meant anything to her. Alice replied

I know what he is doing, those colours represent the underground lines. The yellow represents the Circle Line. The green represents the District Line. The blue represents the Piccadilly Line. The red is the Central Line, that’s his favourite. It goes really fast through the tunnel we only get on it occasionally but he loves it. We go on it to go to his Grandmas work, it goes in and out of tunnels so it’s very dark when we go through the tunnel. When we are at Stratford station the central line runs through there, we are on the over ground, which is much slower. The Central Line comes through really fast every couple of minutes

This vast amount of information suddenly changed my understanding of what Kia was doing and deepened my understanding of the complexity of his play, as a form of learning and a medium to communicate learning. Alice and I watched the rest of the video together. I asked her if the houses were similar to those he sees during his daily commute. She confirmed that the railway line ran alongside the row of houses and a high street so she could understand exactly what Kia was reproducing in his models and play. She commented “This represents his journey to work and is an accumulation of what he sees. I know this because I am with him. I see it too”.

The combination of written observations and photographs are an index of the activity that leaves the reader to re-construct the content and meaning of the activity. On the contrary, video documentation celebrates the active role to the child, and functions as a secondary medium fixing and amplifying the primary medium, play. Subsequently, we looked at some other videos of his play. We noticed that he was very specific about the colours he chose to make his trains. Kia used the red, blue, green, and yellow trays to make carriages. His friend had wanted to play but had turned the boxes upside down. Kia did not want them that way and put them in the proper position. Sandra commented: “he would have needed them to be upright so that you could get into them”; this is what the meticulous re-arrangement of the boxes was doing: teaching about trains. Teaching about trains not only for the benefit of his peers, but also to adults, using knowledge developed by moving in and across his social worlds.

5 Conclusion

By sharing the video vignettes with Sandra and the team, it was possible to develop a deeper understanding of Kia and his thinking. The observation of video-documents allowed us to learn from Kia by giving him agency we learn on reflection how much can be missed of the voice of the child in ordinary practice.

After seeing the photographs of Canary Warf, as a team we reviewed our previous observations of Kia It was already known that kia was very interested in arches and tunnels and incorporated them within the majority of his play. Nevertheless, something new was gained, that is, the understanding that Kia playing is a powerful medium to communicate knowledge and to claim the status of a knowledgeable participant in interactions with adults and peers.

We were aware Kia was interested in the underground train lines and he could name many of them. We were astonished to consider that these were so significantly represented and communicated in his play. Reviewing previous observations with a wider more informed lens, we could see that coloured blocks repeatedly appeared in his model making and now understood the significance of them in his play. Thomson (2008:10) observes:

Images can be read in multiple ways. Despite the intention of the maker, an image, like any other text, is presented to people who bring their own cultural understandings as well as their life trajectories to the act of interpretation. Researchers using visual research thus take on board the understandings that their intentions about what images mean will not necessarily be how they are translated, and thus the way in which their images will be read may not be what they anticipate.

Haggerty (2011: 385) discusses the multiple ways in which children make sense of the world and share their own worlds, and reminds us to look at ‘semiotic multimodality’ ‘Semiotic multimodality’ means that we need to consider that communication happens through multiple modes. These may include, gaze, gesture, movement, sounds, actions and artefacts. The ability to review and share the video vignettes with Sandra and colleagues from the nursery team has been transformational in deepening not only the understanding of Kia thinking, but also the understanding of his communicative intentions. Video observations not only support understanding, they generate the utterances in the observer’s world. By considering and identifying semiotic multimodality and the nuances of Kia gestures in his play with Sandra we have been able to discover more about Kia understanding of the world around him and, more importantly, of his determined will to communicate the worlds he masters.

Our journey began with us deciding to use video vignettes to record children in order to support the assessments we made and shared with parents. We believed video would have more benefits than previously used still photographs as it could record language and capture children’s interactions. We discovered that the use of video provided us with far more than we had first anticipated.

As an experienced established team we took it upon ourselves to inform parents about their children’s development and share the observations we had made at nursery. We asked parents about their child’s interests outside the nursery and always attempted to engage in conversations with parents when they arrived at nursery and collected their children. With some parents conversations flowed but with many the greetings were often quite hurried as parents had work or lectures to get to. Parents often seemed under a lot of pressure with work and study. Reflecting on the term ‘working in partnership with parents’ we realised that this often consisted of us informing parents about what we knew about their children. As professional Early Years practitioners we felt it was our role to share our professional knowledge concerning theory, characteristics of learning, and developmental assessments with parents.

This has now changed. Observation of skills and learning are now combined with an understanding of play as a medium of communication. Consequently, assessment has now become an occasion of conversation with children.

The use of video made the team sceptical about the overuse of the assessment criteria. Assessment implies claiming superior knowledge, and this hinders the ability to listen to children, as it makes adults deaf and blind to children’s utterances, to their self-description as knowledgeable communicators and to their will to have that status validated.

Rumsfield (2003) discusses the notion of the ‘unknown unknowns’. These refer to the things that we don’t know we didn’t know. We soon realised the power of the moving image. This became an exciting and often daunting journey as we watched children in self-initiated play and pondered on the tiny nuances of their body movements or a shift of gaze or facial expression. Capturing these nuances digitally suggested further considerations were necessary to make the ‘unknowns’ knowns. We realised as demonstrated in Kia case study that parents hold personal knowledge. When we provide opportunities to share this knowledge it can deepen our awareness of children’s motivations in play and the complexity of children’s thinking and cognitive development. Deepening our understanding of children’s learning and their determination, motivation and potential to tell their own stories.

On completion of her chapter, Sarah Vipond proposes the following questions to provoke further reflection, research and dialogue

  • What consideration do we give to children’s journeys/transitions to and from nursery?

  • Do iIpads (as recording devices) disrupt our relationships?

  • Through an observational lens what assessments are we making about children and who are they for?