"The Reggio Approach derives its name from its place of origin, Reggio Emilia, a city located in Emilia Romagna in Northern Italy. Shortly after the Second World War, Loris Malaguzzi, a young teacher and the founder of this unique system, joined forces with the parents of this region to provide child care for young children. Originally inspired by the need of women to return to the work force, over the last 50 years, this education system has developed into a unique program that has caught the attention of early childhood educators worldwide.
The Reggio Approach is a complex system that respects and puts into practice many of the fundamental aspects of the work of Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky and many others. It is a system that lends itself to: the role of collaboration among children, teachers and parent, the co-construction of knowledge , the interdependence of individual and social learning and the role of culture in understanding this interdependence. (Baji Rankin 2004).
At the heart of this system is the powerful image of the child. Reggio educators do not see children as empty vessels that require filling with facts. Rather they see children as full of potential, competent and capable of building their own theories. The Rights of Children as written by Loris Malaguzzi best describes how children are viewed.
Children have the right to be recognized as subjects of individual, legal, civil, and social rights; as both source and constructors of their own experience, and thus active participants in the organization of their identities, abilities, and autonomy, through relationships and interaction with their peers, with adults, with ideas, with objects, and with real and imaginary events of intercommunicating worlds. All this while establishing the fundamental premises for creating “better citizens of the world” and improving the quality of human interaction, also credits children, and each individual child, with an extraordinary wealth of inborn abilities and potential, strength and creativity. Irreversible suffering and impoverishment of the child is caused when this fact is not acknowledged.
Project work is a large component of the Reggio Approach but there is much more to this complex system. Each day the teachers reflect on the experiences of the children always mindful to watch for “the ants instead of always waiting for the elephants” (Amelia Gambetti-Reggio Children)
Understanding the Fundamentals of the Reggio Approach
Education based on Inter-relationships
Education based on Inter-relationships
A network of communication exists between the children, parents and teachers of Reggio. These three protagonists work together to create the spirit of co-operation, collaboration, and co-construction of knowledge. They work together interacting toward a common purpose; the building of a culture which respects childhood as a time to explore, create and be joyful. Each of these three protagonists has rights within the school. Those of the children were highlighted earlier.
Lori Malaguzzi defines the rights of parents. It is the right of parents to participate actively, and with voluntary adherence to the basic principles, in the growth, care, and development of their children who were entrusted to the public institution. This means no delegating and no alienation. Instead, it confirms the importance of the presence and the role of the parents, who have always been highly valued in our institutional tradition. First we have the school, which makes strong and concerted efforts to involve the parents, in the awareness of how much can be gained from close collaboration with the families for the greater security and well-being of the children. Parent participation enables a communication network that leads to fuller and more reciprocal knowledge, as well as to a more effective shared search for the best educational methods , content, and values. (Loris Malaguzzi Reggio Emilia 1993)
The Reggio Teacher
The Reggio teacher is unique because she offers herself to the process of co-construction of knowledge, she releases the traditional roles of a teacher and opens doors to new possibilities. She starts with the use of the child’s own theories, promotes disequilibrium, and helps the child to think about their thinking to facilitate new learning. (Seong Bock Hong 1998).
The Reggio teacher allows the children to:
1. Ask their own questions, and generate their own hypotheses and to test them.
2. To explore and generate many possibilities both affirming and contradictory. She welcomes contradictions as a venue for exploring, discussing and debating.
3. She provides opportunity to use symbolic languages to represent thoughts and hypothesis.
4. She provides opportunity for the children to communicate their ideas to others.
5. She offers children, through the process of revisiting the opportunity to reorganize concepts, ideas, thoughts and theories to construct new meaning.
6. She is a keen observer, documenter, and partner in the learning process.
The teacher, like the parents and children also has rights within this unique system. It is the right of the teachers and workers of each school to contribute to the study and preparation of the conceptual models that define educational content, objectives, and practices. This takes place through open discussion among the staff, with the pedagogical coordinators and parent advisory committees, in harmony with the right of children and families; through cooperation on the choices of methods, didactics, research and observation projects; through a definition of the fields of experience, ongoing teacher self-training and general staff development, cultural initiatives and the tasks of community management. This cooperation also extends to the organization of the environment and the daily workings of the school. (Loris Malaguzzi, Reggio Emilia 1993)
The Environment as the Third Teacher
The educators of Reggio Emilia view the school as a living organism. A place of shared relationships among the children, the teachers, and the parents. The school produces for the adults, but above all for the children, a feeling of belonging in a world that is alive, welcoming and authentic. (Malaguzzi, 1994, p.58)
The layout of the physical space in the schools encourages encounters, communication, and relationships. The arrangement of structures, objects and activities encourages choices, problem solving, and discoveries in the process of learning. In preparing the space, teachers offer the possibility for children to be with the teachers and many of the other children, or with just a few of the children, or even alone. Teachers are aware, however, that children also learn from their peers, especially when they can interact in small groups. Gandini (1993 p.6)
Long Term Projects as Vehicles of Learning
One of the highlights that often first attract educators to the Reggio Approach is its complex long term exploration of projects. Unlike North American predetermined thematic projects, the projects undertaken by Reggio educators may derive from both children’s and teacher’s ideas and interests, thoughts and theories in things worth knowing about. Teachers often work on projects with a small group of children while the rest of the classroom continues to involve itself in other self -selected activities and explorations.
The Importance of Documentation
Documentation is a key element in the Reggio Approach. Documentation serves many purposes but most of all it is used as a research tool for studying children’s learning processes. Documentation is about what children are doing, learning and grasping, and the product of documentation is a reflection of interactions between teachers and children and among children. Documentation, because it is done on a daily basis, is a medium through which teachers discuss curriculum, keep it fluid and emergent, and develop a rational for its course. It provides a growing theory for daily practice. (Seong Bock Hong 1998 pg 51).
Documenting children’s daily experiences and ongoing projects gives meaning and identity to all that the children do. It is through the documentation that the teachers are able to gain insight into the thoughts of the children, determine further investigation for working on topics, create a history of the work and generate further interest.
Reggio teachers are skilled observers of children. If a teacher observes closely she can see the intelligence on a child’s face. On a daily basis, they collect data via notes, recordings of conversations between children and through video taping of events and activities whether related to project work or just during classroom time. She watches what children are doing and saying and how materials are being used. The documentation is then used to analyze children’s understanding and thoughts-it is revisited by the teachers and children together. This revisiting process provides children with the opportunity to discover their own questions and problems and to determine, together, what the next steps could be. In the process of revisiting, children theories and understanding grows. Also, in the revisiting process they collect more data and information which enhances the work. Documentation of work in progress is made visible on large panels throughout the classroom, thereby keeping the memory of the work vivid and alive.
Seong Bock Hong (p 50-51) summarizes the purpose of documentation as:
1. The process by which teachers gather information about children’s ideas and their thinking process.
2. Is done daily so teachers can discuss their curriculum, keep it fluid and emergent and develop rational for its course.
3. Is data for study.
4. Facilitates continuity across a given activity, because new activities evolve from earlier experiences.
5. Offers a research orientation to instruction.
6. Allows teachers to revisit with children.
7. Is concrete, active and reflective.
8. Provides the right amount of support to enable children to perform a task.
9. Is at the heart of each project or experience.
10. It serves as a lesson planner.
11. It defines the teacher as a facilitator."
- taken from reggiokids.com
The North American Reggio Alliance has a great FAQ page that offers details about the Reggio Emilia Approach
