Provocations for pedagogical documentation: finding the desire paths

Documentation in early learning settings remains a widely discussed and critically examined practice, discussed endlessly in staff rooms, team meetings, and professional learning settings.

We ask:

• How do we do it?
• When can we fit it in?
• What should it look like?
• Why aren’t we doing more? 

At times, documentation can feel more like a compliance driven task rather than the opportunity for an authentic engagement with children’s learning. But what if we reimagined it? What if documentation wasn’t a tick-the-box task, but a powerful pedagogical practice shaped by curiosity and the courage to think differently?

The weight of well-worn paths

We can fall into “path dependency”, the habitual way of doing things simply because it’s how they’ve always been done.  Over time, these routines deepen like ski tracks on a snowy slope.

The trail is comforting, predictable. But it can also limit our view and our capacity to imagine alternatives.

The challenge is not in the familiarity itself, but in how it narrows our thinking, specifically “The deeper the track, the harder it becomes to venture away from it.”

Fresh snow: resetting our thinking

To truly transform documentation, we must seek fresh snow moments to pause, reflect, and create new pathways.

Pedagogical documentation is more than just observing or recording. It’s a reflective, collaborative act that invites us to question our assumptions and respond with depth.  It asks us to see learning as something fluid and evolving, always open to reinterpretation.

Desire paths: following the child’s lead

I introduce a useful metaphor, desire paths, informal trails worn over time by people going where they want to go, not necessarily where they were told. We’ve all seen them, a shortcut across a park, a well-worn track through a hedge.

Children make desired paths every day. Their questions, their silence, their spontaneous play, these are expressions of agency and can cut across the pre-established park of prepackaged curriculum approaches and templates. Children move through learning in ways we can’t always predict. 

Peter Pan and the path to imagination

In J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, the author speaks of these “paths that have made themselves.” They are whimsical, mysterious, and very real. I use this imagery to ask: What if we followed those invisible trails? The ones that emerge only when we’re paying close attention, or when we’re willing to believe in the unseen?

The heart of documentation

Seen this way, pedagogical documentation becomes a quiet act of resistance. It’s about refusing to follow only the inherited templates or standardised formats. It’s about giving ourselves and the children permission to take another path.

It’s pausing before we interpret. It’s asking different questions. It’s believing that something else might be possible.

Your invitation: document differently

So what might your desired paths look like in your setting? What new ways of documenting could emerge if you stepped off the well-worn track?

Time is available to challenge us all to reimagine pedagogical documentation as a deeply intentional act, one that honours children’s ways of knowing, educators’ professional judgement, and the infinite possibilities of learning.

Reflective prompt for teams

• What desire paths have children shown you this week?
• What assumptions shape your current documentation practices?
• Where could “fresh snow” allow a different perspective to emerge?

Karen has a background in teaching, academic research, and consultancy, Karen’s work centres on pedagogy, ethics, and reflective practice inviting educators to engage with complexity rather than shy away from it.