earticle

영어

The importance of observing and documenting children’s play is more emphasized in the field of early childhood education and care, before and after the revision of the ｢4th standard childcare curriculum｣, pursuing for a child-and-play-centered. This study aims to explore how childcare teachers conceptualized the purpose of observation and documentation of play, and what difficulties they experienced while observing and documenting play. The data are collected from 189 childcare teachers through distance interviews via e-mail, and the thematic analysis is conducted. The results show that the core purpose of observation and documentation of play is ‘understanding of child development’; and the main difficulty is ‘the realistic limit of childcare environments.’ This study critically discusses the tensions and contradictions in the dominant discourses of ‘development’ and ‘objectivity’ within observation and documentation, and it suggests the expansion of the policy and academic horizons for observation and documentation in which children’s play is alive.