The debates on the initial training of teachers continue to question what Schön (2016) already enunciated as the paradigm of technical rationality or, in other words, the perpetuation of “an abyss between logical thinking as something abstract and remote, and the specific and concrete demands of everyday events” (Dewey, 1997, p. 50-51). It is in this scenario that it is still relevant to welcome other visions that propose a more organic relationship between the eternal theory-practice binomial. Practical thinking comes into play here as the process by which future teachers can “reconstruct their beliefs, images and intuitive Gestalt, developed in the long process of socialization as a student in the school system, to transform them into Gestalt informed by the most relevant theories and experiences of others” (Pérez Gómez, 2010, p. 96). It is this same author who proposes that the way for this reconstruction is the design of proposals that include research and permanent reflection in and on practice (Pérez Gómez, 2012).

Thus, landing on the initial training of Early Childhood Education teachers, wanting to stimulate practical thinking would mean thinking about methodological opportunities that promote research in everyday contexts. However, what is the nature of the research that is normally carried out in Early Childhood Education classrooms? Olsson, Dahlberg, & Theorell (2016) point out that the usual ways of investigating children's actions fall into the risk of “speaking for the other” by making descriptions with objectivist presumption of what happens in the classroom. Something similar point out Wien et al. (2011) in his research in a North American context, that tendency to the "exhibition" of what happened becomes tangible". This, in addition, connects with the idea of "teacher who observes children" granting them a place of passivity when "being observed", which appears in different investigations carried out in Finland (Alasuutari & Karila, 2010; Rintakorpi, 2016). Faced with this possibility, we embrace the idea of research as an “art” (Rinaldi, 2006) that moves through a constant search for meaning and that, at the same time, also goes through what happens to us during that experience (Vilanova Buendía, 2014). The nuance that we propose then is to demonstrate and give rise to the role that teachers have as researchers in the research itself, blurring the position of "external researcher investigates a researched person".

Starting from this point in Early Childhood Education invites us, from the words of Moss (2006), to think that the tool that can bring into play a "professional, reflective and dialogical researcher" is pedagogical documentation. This term indicates the ethical, aesthetic and political way of investigating with the stories that children live from a perspective that embraces complexity and intersubjectivity as fundamental principles (Lenz Taguchi, 2010). This tool also allows us to do research full of opportunities for self-reflexivity (which reconnects us with the idea of practical thinking previously exposed). It also proposes to show the “dominant regimes” (Dahlberg et al., 2002) that have constituted our “automatic pilot” (or practical knowledge, Pérez Gómez, 2017).

In this way, the work we present (in collaboration with the University of Malaga and the Government of Spain; FPU 17/03577) aims to explore how the practical thinking of a group of Early Childhood pre-service teachers develops, evidenced in their way of investigating everyday reality through pedagogical documentation.

To get closer to our purpose, we decided to develop an investigation with a qualitative approach (Becker, 1996) that, through the case study modality, provides us with ways to think about the unique experience of a specific group of students. This group (6 students) was studying their last year of the Early Childhood Education degree at an Ecuadorian university whose pedagogical project is characterized by assuming the relevance of experience, the potential of reflection and mentoring as axes. The aforementioned sample was developing its last apprenticeship period in schools at the same time that, through a Lesson Study process (cooperative action research), they designed their final degree projects. This entire process was fed back by the same academic mentor, whose relevant practice (characterized by the frequent use of pedagogical documentation) is what leads us to select it through theoretical sampling. To get closer to the complexity of the cited case, we have used a variety of qualitative instruments that, combined with the moments in which they have been used, have ensured the triangulation of the information and the agents involved. That said, if we assume research as an opportunity to “create crisis” (Rinaldi, 2006), we also consider transferring that “tension” to the usual ways of qualitative research. In tune with this, assuming the epistemological principles that we explained at the beginning, we take pedagogical documentation as an instrument for collecting information. In addition, 14 semi-structured interviews (Rubin & Rubin, 2005) were also conducted with all the participants mentioned at different times of the experience; documentary analysis (800 pages approx.) both of the written productions of the students as well as those of the academic mentor and those of the university itself; and systematic participant observations (100 hours approx.) in the practice centers and in all the mentor's meetings with the pre-service teachers. The information thrown from these places was being analyzed through the qualitative data analysis software Nvivo at the time in which the empirical study was developed to open the possibility of the emergency of the investigation (Charmaz, 2006). Thus, throughout the analysis, various categories were organized (some previously arisen in the theoretical deepening and others later) that, with relations of subordination to each other, compose a cartography that gives us a complex image of the purpose that this paper set out.

As this was the second semester in which they worked under the teacher's mentorship, the aforementioned group already contemplated research as the way to evaluate how the activities they designed were developed. However, as a first moment, in the majority there was a certain "enrapture" (Cabanellas, 2005) with the children's actions, which led them to collect them to "make visible" their power. This, although it is one of the principles of pedagogical documentation in Reggian schools (Rinaldi, 2006), runs the risk of placing them as mere vehicles of information transmission. From this previous scenario, the majority of the group experienced events that made it easier for them to go through an investigation that questioned their everyday actions: “A child spends a long time looking through a magnifying glass at different objects. This catches the attention of Vivi (pre-service teacher), who looks at him. Suddenly, she takes a magnifying glass and says "I want to try this thing”. This “put to the test” by Vivi captures the attention of that same child, who decides to accompany her and they share observation time together” [Excerpt from pedagogical documentation, 14.05.2019]. Thus, throughout this study we have been able to see how the pedagogical documentation disposes to a process that needs to be lived progressively: go from a surprised rapture with childhoods to being able to “live” the investigation as an experience that transcends the declarative. In relation to this, the previous story exemplifies how the student moves from registering an action that calls her attention to trying to “put herself in her place” (pedagogical attitude) questioned by the interest it provoked. An investigative transit that, in addition, reflects a change in culture (Pérez Gómez, 2012) rooted in the belief that childhood experiences submerge a shared search for knowledge (constituent dimension of practical knowledge).

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