Documentation can never be neutral: From hermeneutic perspective

Documentation does not belong to traditional child observation. Traditional child observation assumes an objective, external truth that can be recorded and accurately represented. However, documentation stresses on the responsibility of the observer for her or his observation, descriptions, interpretations and explanations. Meaning does not come from seeing or observation alone. It comes from the acts of interpretation. Documentation is not about assessing whether a child is conforming to a set of standards. By contrast, it is mainly about trying to see and understand what is going on in the pedagogical work and what the child is capable of without any predetermined framework of expectations and norms. Processes of observation and documentation are never objective and hence not neutral. Objectivity is a subject's false view that observing can take place without him. We have to realize and admit that documentation always holds our own subjective feelings, wishes and values which should not be seen as something negative but rather as something positive, not something to avoid but rather to understand how these enter into the process of documentation.