To explore the history of Reggio Emilia, and the influences that guided the development of the Reggio Emilia approach.
HISTORY OF REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY
The Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education originated in the city of Reggio Emilia that is located in Northern Italy. Reggio Emilia is a flourishing town in the hills of northern Italy, that is rich in culture. It is the birth place to a programme of early childhood education that has gained recognition worldwide in the last twenty-five years.
http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/articles/reggio-emilia
Reggio Emilia
BEAUTIFUL REGGIO EMILIA, ITALY
Reggio Emilia is a very thriving town, fostering a strong cultural heritage, and a historic architecture of beautiful spaces. The citizens of Reggio Emilia have access to various, efficent public services. The town has a strong sense of co-operation and inclusion that is spread across social and economic boundaries, as the people continue to show their support for the Socialist Parties in the politcal aspect. Increased immigration, however, has undoubtedly created new challenges for Reggio Emilia, as the town is experiencing a period of transition and modifications in terms of cultural awareness. The number of non-European immigrants taking residency in Reggio Emilia has risen from 5090 in 1997 to 15,052 in 2005. While the local government remains committed to the development of social policies to actively support families and children, there is an increasing sense of uncertainty pertaining to early childhood services because of national government legislation. As always, educators, parents and citizens in Reggio Emilia have been vocal in challenging such economic cuts and reduction of staff in child care facilities.
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/images/ReggioAug06_tcm4-393250.pdf
Reggio Movement
The Reggio Approach originated as a movement towards progressive and co-operative early childhood education. It is unique to Reggio Emilia, it is not a method. There is no training programs or schools to train individuals to be a Reggio Emilia teacher.
Outside of the town of Reggio Emilia, all schools and preschools are referred to as Reggio-inspired, using an adaption and moditifcation of the approach specific to the needs of their community. This is important to remember as each student, teacher, parent, community, and town are different and unique. No two Reggio-inspired communities look a like, as the needs and interests of the children within a specified community will be different.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
After World War II, local initiatives began to take place in the country that founded parent-run schools, which was the beginnings of Reggio Emilia Preschools. In the 1950’s, educators and parents came together, crceating partnerships, deciding to petition political parties for a more progressive type of education for their children. Although the community in Reggio Emilia started to seek out a better educational system after World War II, there has been a long history of efforts throughout Italy to provide support services for children and their families through private, provincial, and federal means, which began as early as the 1820’s.
World War II
The first Reggio schools were established by parents in 1945 as an alternative to the "srait-laced, church-monopolized institutions" that dominated and influenced Italian early education at the time. The number of parent-ran centers steadily increased, that in 1967, the municipality took overe their adminstration and financing of these Reggio schools. The Reggio Infant-Toddler centres and Preschools were publicly mandated in the 1970s, and were built to support children birth to six years of age, regardless of abilities and economic circumstance, and continue to be a success still to this day.
Goals of Reggio Emilia Parents
After World War II, the society rose from nothing, developing preschools that would exceed services of provision normally offered at this time, under Mussolini's government. According to Loris Malaguzzi, "War, in its tragic absurdity, is the kind of experience that pushes a person towards the job of educating, as a way to start a new lives and work for the future. This desire strikes a person, as the war finally ends and the symbols of life reappear with a violence equal to that of the time of destruction."
In addition, a group of individuals sold trucks, several horses, and damaged remains of the retreating German army, to gain a small capital that was used to start up the first Reggio school. The women collected bricks from broken down buildings, the men worked weekends and nights, and the children helped where they could.
http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/articles/reggio-emilia
REGGIO EMILIA APPROACH
The Reggio Emilia Approach is an innovative and inspiring approach to early childhood education that values the child as strong, capable and resilient human beings, rich with wonder and knowledge. Every child brings with them deep curiosity and potential, that and drives their interest in understanding their world and their place within it.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
Family involvement in children's education is a central element of the Reggio Emilia approach, so it should come to no surprise that families initiated the more progressive style of education in Italy. In the 1950’s, families and educators stressed the importance of the view of education as being "liberate" and free to all children to reach their fullest potential, as well as strive to create a connected home and school life for all children.
http://people.ucalgary.ca/~egallery/volume12/macdonald.htm
The Reggio Way
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Values the child as protagonists in their own learning, being able to pursue their own interests and build thier own ideas and ideologies at their own pace, not as empty vesseles waiting to be filled with knowledge from an adult
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Recognises that relationships with other children and adults are of most importance pertaining to how a child learns; involving and engaging parental support as a result of this
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Values early childhood as a significant part of ones life, as the brain matures within the first five years of life
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Values creativity, imaginative skills and expressive arts, and dedicates space, resources and teachers for these purposes listed
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Follows an emergent curriculum base, valuing knowldge of the children's individual interests and abilities, due to a close teacher-child relationship, and observations of their play
http://theimaginationtree.com/2013/09/exploring-reggio-an-introduction-philosophies-and-ideas.html
THE REGGIO WAY
Carlina Rinaldi is the President of Reggio Children and Director of the Loris Malaguzzi International Center in Reggio Emilia, Italy. She is also a professor at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. She worked side-by-side with Loris Malaguzzi from 1970 until 1994 in the municipal infant toddler and preschool system of Reggio Emilia, where she was the first pedagogical coordinator. She lectures regularly on the Reggio Emilia experience in several countries around the world.
http://www.pademelonpress.com.au/authors/carlina-rinaldi.html
Click on the image to take you to a slide show with images and text pertaining to the Reggio Emilia Appraoch, or click on the link below.
Influences
The Reggio Emilia approach is a socio-constructivist model. It is influenced by the theory of Lev Vygotsky, which states that children and adults are partners in learning and co-construct their theories and knowledge through the relationships that they build with other people and the surrounding environment. It also draws on the work of others such as Jean Piaget, Howard Gardner and Jerome Bruner. It promotes an image of the child as a strong, capable protagonist in his or her own learning, and, importantly, as a subject of rights.
Reggio Emilia is well-known for their deeply embedded commitment to the role of research in learning and teaching. It is an approach where the expressive arts take on a primary role in learning, and there is a unique reciprocal learning relationship between the educators and the children.
There is a great focus on observations and documentations of learning, and the learning process takes priority over the final outcomes. This model values the importance of a strong relationship between educational establishment and the community, as well as provides an astonishing programme for professional development.
All aspects of the Reggio Emilia approach, such as learning and teaching, and building relationships and professional development, stems from the key term and principle - the image of the child. Reggio educators highly believe that a child has unlimited potential, who is eager to interact with and contribute to the world. They believe that the child has a fundamental right to “realize and expand their potential”.
Children are driven by curiosity and imagination. They are capable and enjoy taking responsibility for his or her own learning. This is a child who listens and is listened to, a child with an immense need to love and to be loved, a child who is valued.
Children are subjects of rights. This is highlighted in the creation and development of a Charter of Rights, which is a manifesto of the rights of parents, practitioners and children, that is evident in every school.
Listen and valuing the many strengths and abilities of children is the fundamental approach. International practitioners often generate more focus, and concentrate on the graphic and visual aspects of children’s work, there needs to be more attention put on the words and conversations of the children, to demonstrate the capacities of reflections, to create hypotheses on very complex and often abstract thoughts and ideas.
Fundamental Principles
Children are capable of constructing their own learning. They are driven by their interests to understand and know more. Through their experiences, children form an understanding of themselves and their place in society based on their interactions with others. There is a huge focus on social collaboration, working in groups, where each child is given the equal opportunity to participant, sharing their thoughts and questions, as well as having them valued. The adult is not seen as the giver of knowledge. Children search, research and generate their own knowledge through their own investigations and inquiries.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
The Reggio Emilia Approach is based on a comprehensive philosophy, driven by several fundamental, guiding principles. To generate an understanding of these principles, they are outlines individually, however, they should actually be considered as a tightly woven, integrated, systemic philosophy, in which each principle influences, and is influenced, by all the other guiding principles.
Children are Communicators
Communication is a process, a way of discovering things, asking questions, using language as play. Playing with sounds and rhythm and rhyme, contributes to the process of communicating. Children are encouraged to use language to investigate and explore, and to reflect on their experiences. They are listened to with respect, believing that their questions and observations are an opportunity to learn and search together. It is a collaborative process, oppose to the child asking a question and the adult offering the answers. The search for answers and knowledge is sought out together.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
Reggio Emilia schools believe that children are strong, powerful, and competent from birth. Carlina Rinaldi describes the foundation of the Reggio experience, based on practice, theory, and research, as "the image of the child as rich in resources, strong, and competent. The emphasis is placed on seeing the children as unique individuals with rights rather than simply needs.” Children are protagonists in their learning, with the right to collaborate and communicate with others. Their rights are presented in their curiosity, wonderment, exploration, discovery, social construction, and representations of their knowledge. Children are about to construct knowledge based on their experiences and interactions with others.
Children are seen as communicators, developing intellectually through the use of symbolic representations such as words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, collage, dramatic play, and music, all of which lead children to surprising levels of communication, symbolic skills, and creativity. These multiple forms of representation have come to be known as the Hundred Languages of Children, which is in reference to Loris Malaguzzi's poem, The Child has A Hundred Languages, and A Hundred, Hundred, Hundred More.
http://earlychildhood.educ.ubc.ca/community/research-practice-reggio-emilia
The Adult is a Mentor
Our role as adults is to observe children, listen to their questions and their stories, find what interests them, and then provide them with opportunities to explore these interests further. Reggio Emilia takes a child-led project approach. The projects aren’t planned in advanced, they emerge based on the child’s interests.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
The Parents as Partners
Children, teachers, and parents are three equally important components in the philosophy's educational process. Parents are encouraged to be active contributors to children's activities in the classroom and in the school. Especially in Italy, parental participation is demonstrated in daily interactions during school hours, discussions regarding educational and psychological issues, and in special events, field trips, and celebrations. Curricular and administrative decisions involve parent-teacher collaboration, and parents also serve as advocates for the schools in community politics.
http://earlychildhood.educ.ubc.ca/community/research-practice-reggio-emilia
Documenting Children's Thoughts
In Reggio and Reggio-inspired settings, there is an emphasis on displaying and documenting children’s thoughts and progression of thinking, making their thoughts visible in many different ways, either through photographs, transcripts of children’s thoughts and explanations, visual representations, and many more. All designs show the child’s learning process.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
Documentation serves many functions and is an important tool in Reggio Emilia-inspired programmes. Practitioners routinely take notes and pictures, and record group discussions and children's play. Documentation of the children's projects is carefully arranged, using transcriptions of children's conversations and remarks, images of ongoing work and activities, and the products that have been produced by the children to represent their thinking and learning. An educators narrations on the purposes of a project, along with transcriptions of children's verbal language, images, and representations of their thinking, all come together on a panel and designed to present the children's learning processes. The documentation shows children that their work is valued, makes parents aware of class learning experiences, and allows teachers to assess their teaching and the children's learning.
http://earlychildhood.educ.ubc.ca/community/research-practice-reggio-emilia
The Hundred Languages of Children
This is probably the most well-known aspect of the Reggio Emilia Approach. The belief that children use many different ways to show their understandings, and express their thoughts and creativity. There is “A hundred different ways of thinking, of discovering, of learning.” Through drawing and sculpting, dance and movement, painting and pretend play, modelling and music, all contributes to each one of the Hundred Languages. Learning and play are not separated. The Reggio Emilia Approach emphasizes hands-on discovery learning that allows the child to use all their senses and all their languages to learn.
http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
Knowledge as Socially Constructed
Within the Reggio Emilia Approach knowledge is viewed not as a static list of skills and facts to be transmitted from adult to child, as, according to Rinaldi, “The potential of children is stunted when the endpoint of their learning is formulated in advance.” Knowledge is perceived as dynamic in that it is constructed within the context of child and child relationships, and child and adult relationships. Reggio educators believe that communication and the sharing of ideas bring meaning to knowledge and an understandings of their social context pertaining to the individual or group.
Social relationships, and the construction of knowledge within, often involve debate, opposition, and conflict. In some cultures these emotions are frequently avoided and frowned upon. However, in Reggio Emilia schools, conflict is desired and valued as a means to advance higher-level thinking. According to Loris Malaguzzi, “Even when cognitive conflicts do not produce immediate cognitive growth, they can be advantageous because by produc- ing cognitive dissonance, they can in time produce progress”. This idea is influenced by Piaget’s theory outlining the value of cognitive conflict and disequalibrium as a method to gain higher mental functioning.
Multiple Forms of Knowing
Since knowledge is perceived within the Reggio Emilia Approach as socially constructed and dynamic; no ultimate truth exists, but rather multiple forms of knowing. This notion is consistent with the constructivist view of knowledge. Within the schools of Reggio Emilia, the goal is not to pass information along or duplicate thinking, but rather to advance thinking. Within the Reggio Emilia schools there are no planned curriculums or standards identifying what is to be learned as it is believed that this method would force our schools towards teaching without learning. Instead, it is up to the children, in collaboration with teachers and one another, to determine the course of their investigations and learning.
Cooperation as The Foundation of Education
Reggio-inspired teachers are partners with their colleagues. Cooperation among staff members is an important principle pertaining to the Reggio Emilia philosophy, and collaboration at all levels is a powerful tool in achieving educational goals.
http://earlychildhood.educ.ubc.ca/community/research-practice-reggio-emilia
Click on image to view the blog Technology Rich Inquiry Based Reaserch to view various aspects of the Reggio Emilia Approach, or click on the link below.
Jan Millikan of the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange describes her experience of Reggio Emilia.
She states that when first hearing about an educational program in Reggio Emilia, it did not interest her. She participated in a lecture about other individuals sharing their experience working with Reggio children. At that time, Jan was lecturing on developmentally appropriate practice, ans dhe admits, that these children were not the children shes been lecturing about.
"Reflecting on that very first experince of Reggio, I was reminded that I have become more and more aware, and drew from my experience of Reggio Emilia, and that is how all of us respond to a new experince, or a new idea, and it depends very much on the place pur hearts and minds are at in that moment of encounter."
Click on the video or link below:
Infant-Toddler Centers and Preschools
The new preschools grew at great personal sacrifice, as well as the demand for these facilities. In the early 1950s, when television became a common area for gatherings in Italian households, many individuals from the poorer south migrated to the semi-industrial north. As women left their homes to work, they wanted quality care for their children. Family is important in the Italian culture. Due to this factor, it was natural that the preschools should be cooperative spaces, characterized by parental involvement.
From the start, the Reggio early childhood programmes reflected and responded to new ideas, emphasizing an emergent curriculum that was controversial to the non-flexible approach of the public schools. As Malaguzzi states after leaving his job as a middle school teacher, “The work with the children had been rewarding, but the state-run school continued to pursue its own course, sticking to its stupid and intolerable indifference toward children, its opportunistic and obsequious attention toward authority, and its self-serving cleverness, pushing pre-packaged knowledge.” In the new school, they would embrace the element of surprise, of not-too-much-certainty, an acknowledgement that as life itself is unpredictable, so therefore, education must be too.
Children need support from adults in order to fight the increasing pressures to make them grow up; is a sign of deep insecurity and a loss of perspective.
http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/articles/reggio-emilia
Municipal Infant Toddler Centers
The Reggio Emilia approach has been a dominant teaching approach in Italy since the 1950s. In Italy both municipal and national programs for education have been in place for about twenty five years, since the establishment of the law pertaining to free education for children between the ages of three and six. Since education is free for young children in Italy, today thirty-eight percent of children start their education at three months old in infant-toddler centres, and ninety-five percent of children continue or start their education at three years old in preschools. After the establishment of the Reggio Emilia schools, people around the world started talking about this excellent program in Italy, that has over the years, become a point of reference and a guide of many educators. Since the establishment of the Reggio schools in the 1950s, educators across Europe have been visiting Reggio Emilia to experience this progressive style of education. It has only been in the last twenty years that educators from North America have started to do the same.
Schools as a System of Interactions
Only competent and highly qualified schools will be able to confront the challenges faced by the global society. Thanks to the intelligence and work of Loris Malaguzzi, the municipal infant-toddler centres and preschools of Reggio Emilia follows a way of educating that defends and promotes the rights and potential of children, teachers, and parents, having them become an important point of reference for educators and researchers all over the world.
Distinctive Traits Include:
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Collegial and relational-based provocative experiences
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The importance accredited to environments and spaces
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Intense co-participation of families
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Affirmation of competencies in children and adults
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Educational documentation
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Listening
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Progettazione
The work of Reggio Children comes from the vision of Loris Malaguzzi, founder of the philosophy and experiences of the municipal system of infant-toddler centres and preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Following his death in 1994, Reggio Children was founded in Reggio Emilia as a public-private company to promote and defend the rights of children.
Reggio Children organizes pedagogical and cultural exchanges between the infant-toddler centres and preschools of Reggio Emilia and teachers, artists, academics, researchers, and policy-makers from around the world, and also includes the management of the Loris Malaguzzi International Center and related projects.
A National Revolution In Schools
Press play or click on the link below
The Reggio Timeline
Click on the image (timeline) to take you to an overview of the Reggio timeline or click on the link below:
http://www.timetoast.com/timelines/history-of-reggio-emilia-approach
Conclusion
The Reggio Emilia Approach to early childhood education draws from the ideas and theories of many great thinkers. However, the fundamental philosophy guiding this approach is more than just a mix of theories. The ideas from which it draws have, for over thirty years, been reflected upon, expanded, and adapted within the context of the unique culture of Reggio Emilia, Italy, resulting in the creation of a singular, cohesive theory.
The Reggio Emilia Approach to educating young children is strongly influenced by a unique image of the child and guided by the surrounding culture. It is not a model with a set of guidelines and procedures to be followed, therefore, one cannot and should not attempt to simply take it and use it to another location. Instead, it must be redefined according to one’s own culture in order to for this approach to be a successful practice in another place.
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