Objective observation

When you're observing what a child is doing you need to be objective. This means that you need to describe exactly what is happening without making assumptions about why they are occurring.

To be an objective observer, you need to be unbiased and avoid stereotypes. You must also avoid labelling children. So what does all that mean?

Bias and stereotypes

A bias is a stereotyped attitude towards people of different racial, cultural, religious or social class backgrounds. Stereotyped attitudes involve personal values and prejudices that affect our ability to be objective.

Sometimes it is difficult to recognise our own biases, but it is crucial to become aware of them and try to make sure we use language and attitudes that are not affected by them. As a professional, you must not let your personal views affect your caregiving.

Lets explore the idea of bias by looking at the example below.

Mandy was an experienced caregiver, but unfortunately had a lot of biases. She let her biases affect her caregiving and this showed up in the observations she made of the children in her care.

She would often make detailed observations about children she liked and only a few observations about the others in her care.

She would record more information about a child's difficult behaviour, and fail to record positive aspects about the child.

She sometimes applied a racist attitude to describe a child's behaviour.

Negative labelling

Negative labelling involves labelling a child in a particular way. To avoid doing this, you should simply describe actions and behaviours.

If you call a child 'naughty', 'grumpy' or 'noisy' they will begin to be seen that way by others. A child is not 'noisy' - they are participating in noisy play. If you call them 'noisy' in a negative way, they will begin to think from your negative labelling that making noise is a bad thing.