Documentation and Accountability: The Shift From Numbers to Indexed Narratives

摘要

As currently written, early childhood learning standards have little discriminative power and create a mindset that children have skills, rather than minds. In order for behaviors to be compared across different programs, the behavioral indicators necessarily are written as often-cited skills rather than unique appropriations of intelligent strategies. This article proposes that program evaluators could embrace unique demonstrations of intelligent behavior if all interested parties could see that behavior on demand. Video can record those specific behaviors but cannot be reviewed efficiently. However, indexed digital video clips present a convergence of summary and context. Each video clip of children at play or work can be tagged with an index, be it unique or common. Programs become accountable based on the quality of the indexes. Interested parties can check the validity of unique tags by viewing the video data on demand. Additionally, such a system would create a national video database useful for professional development.