To Analyze and Examine The Four Main Principles of a Reggio Emilia Inspired Practice
The Image of The Child
The Competent Child
In conversation with Gabrielle Kelly, Carla discusses the 'competent child'.
Press play or click on the link below
Viewing the Child as a Protagonist, Collaborator, Teacher
Reggio educators' stress that schools should be student centred, that the child should be the central protagonist in the pedagogical relationship. Children in Reggio Emilia schools are treated like capable young human beings in their first years of education. The Reggio approach is rooted in beliefs that everyone's rights are equal, even children’s, and human capacity will grow at any age due to the challenges encountered. Children are given the opportunity to explore the world first hand and experience everything that the world has to offer.
Unlike schools in North America, children in Italy are treated the same way as adults. Even the supplies or materials in schools are the same supplies adults would use. In North America some kindergartens only have fat pencils that cannot sharpen to a point, most use plastic instead of glass, and supply blunt-bladed scissors. Such resources are limiting. Schools in North America believe they are protecting children, but actually are delivering that message that they don't trust them, and they need protection. Ultimately, children in Reggio schools are treated maturely so that children are constantly challenging themselves and trying to do new things.
Another unique characteristic of Reggio educators' view of children is that they are never viewed in isolation from the world, which can be referred to as, the child as collaborator. Teachers in Italy also stress that an educator must see the whole child not just the child at school. We can never think about the child in the abstract. When we think about a child, that the child is already connected and a reflection to a certain reality of the world, as the child has relationships and experiences that have shaped who they have become. When children enter the school they have certain pieces of their home lives that they carry with them. A teacher in a Reggio school does not ask children to leave pieces of themselves at the door, instead, a teacher encourages children to connect all aspects of their lives in their education through their project work and expression of languages.
Reggio Emilia educators view children as teachers. This ideology is apparent in the Reggio practice of co-collaboration in the classroom. When children and teachers work together, Reggio educators call it co-collaboration, which is both a social value and a learning strategy. Co-collaboration can involve planning and anticipation, but can also occur spontaneously. In the Reggio Emilia schools, adults believe that children have the potential to teach adults as well as take on the role of facilitator in their own education. Reggio classrooms do not dictate lessons to students, rather teachers provide opportunities for children to explore and learn about the world themselves.
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CLICK ON THE IMAGE to view the blow, Reggio Inspired Teacher to read the blog post, Image of The Child.
http://reggioinspiredteacher.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/image-of-child.html
This blog outline the image of the child and family by using elements pertaining to the classroom environment.
Family Boards
Parents can add hopes and goals for their child though out the year. This centre created family boards which are placed by their safe zone so that when a child needs to have a picture of their family it is readily available. They created the family board using old picture frames. The pictures were hung using clothes pins, allowing for the child to get their picture when they want it.
Identity Boards: Image of the Child
They took the children's photos and cut them in half and then they draw the other half of their face. The children wrote their names and the top half is their photo and self portrait and the bottom has their name that they wrote. On the other side their family photos. Reggio has documentation that explains the process and importance of identity panels.
Reconstructing: Seeing the child as (believing the child to be) a competent person and learner.
What Do We Mean By "Image of The Child"?
The image of children that the educators and families in Reggio Emilia, Italy hold is quite profound. Children are whole people, that they are protagonists of their own lives, that they can be in control of their own learning. If you go to a local playground, watch parents and their children, and try to gather what they believe about children, you'll find that most of us act as though we think children are out of control, that without adult reinforcement they will not behave, in danger or that they won't know what or how to play. One way we can see what a centre believes about children is to look at how spaces are designed and materials are stored.
Example in the classrooms:
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Three year-olds have a range of art materials available to them at all times.
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Two year-olds use porcelain pitchers to pour milk at snack.
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One year-olds carry around framed family portraits and have access to musical instruments.
Our classrooms embodies our image of children. As teachers, we often find that we are unobservant. We’re so focused on our own tasks, our own classrooms, that it may be a few days or weeks before we notice the documentation or new climber down the hall. If we are missing the focus and observations like these, we are missing the opportunities for learning that children demonstrate through their work.
Your Image of The Child
There are hundreds of different images of the child. Each one of us has our own image of the child that guides us when we begin to relate to a child. This theory guides our behaviour, communication with the child, how we listen to the child, and observe the child. It is hard to act contrary to this internal image. The environment you construct reflects this image you have about the child. There’s a difference between the environment that you are able to build based on a preconceived image of the child and the environment that you can build that is based on the child you see in front of you. An environment that grows out of your relationship with the child is unique. The quality and quantity of relationships among you as adults and educators also reflects your image of the child. Children are very sensitive and can see and sense very quickly the spirit of what is going on among the adults in their world.
http://www.miracosta.edu/instruction/childdevelopmentcenter/downloads/6.4InspiringPractices.pdf
Considering Each Child’s Reality
We can never think of the child in an abstract was. When we think about a child, that child is already tightly connected and linked to a certain reality of the world, as they have relationships and experiences. We cannot separate the child from a particular reality. They bring these experiences, feelings, and relationships into school with her.
http://www.miracosta.edu/instruction/childdevelopmentcenter/downloads/6.4InspiringPractices.pdf
Enjoying Relationships
The ability to enjoy relationships and work together is very important. Children need to enjoy being in school, they need to love their school and the interactions that take place there. Their expectations of these interactions is critical. It is also important for the teachers to enjoy being with the other teachers, to enjoy seeing the children stretch their capacities and use their intelligences, to enjoy interactions with the children. Both parts are essential. Both children and adults need to feel active and important, to be rewarded by their own efforts, their own intelligences, their own activity and energy. When a child feels these things are valued, they become a fountain of strength for themselves. He feels the joy of working with adults who value his work and this is one of the bases for learning. However, overactivity on the part of the adult is a risk factor. The adult does too much because he cares about the child, but this creates a passive role for the child in her own learning.
http://www.miracosta.edu/instruction/childdevelopmentcenter/downloads/6.4InspiringPractices.pdf
The Image of The Teacher
Researchers, Students, & Orchestrators
“Children construct their own intelligence. The adult must provide activities and context, but most of all must be able to listen. Children need proof that adults believe in them. Their three great desires are to be listened to, to understand, and to demonstrate that they are exactly what we expect”
-Loris Malaguzzi
The role of a teacher in a Reggio classroom is more of a learner than a dictator of knowledge. Teachers learn at the same time as students learn about new concepts. Loris Malaguzzi explains that teachers are observers and that this approach to pedagogy offers enormous advantages. This requires a shift in the role of the teacher from an emphasis of teaching to an emphasis on learning; teachers learning about themselves as teachers, as well as teachers learning about children. Teachers in a Reggio classroom are life-long learners, researchers, and students, and this notion makes pedagogy a correlating relationship between student and teacher.
Teachers in a Reggio classroom are facilitators of learning. Loris Malaguzzi explains that the role of teacher as on observer is more active than just standing at the front of the class and dictating ideas to students. Teachers need to know how to recognize a new presence, and how to wait for the child in a Reggio environment. This is something that is learnt, it's not automatic. This may seem to be passive, as there has been many critiques stating that this role outlined by the Regiio Emilia approach is seen to be passive, but it is not. Many Reggio educators stress that when a teacher takes a seemingly more passive role in the classroom, it makes children's learning more active. Teachers who are observers are also encouragers in the classroom. When a teacher encourages a child, the child feels empowered by their efforts, and feels compelled to learn more about something for their own benefit.
In a Reggio school, team teaching is essentials and necessary. There are always two teachers in every class and both teachers play an equal role. Essentially, all types of teacher collaboration is encouraged in a Reggio classroom. Schools in Italy have a pedagogist who supports and encourages collaboration in schools between teachers, parents, community, and city administrators. Through collaboration with colleagues, teachers are constantly given opportunities for ongoing professional development and the teachers feel that they benefit from sharing ideas. Also, Reggio educators feel that a teacher can really encourage students to reach their maximum potential if they work with the same group of students for three consecutive years.
The Teacher as a Researcher
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The teacher's role within the Reggio Emilia approach is complex. Working as co-teachers, the role of the teacher is first and foremost to be that of a learner alongside the children. The teacher is a teacher-researcher, a resource and guide to children.
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Within such a teacher-researcher role, educators carefully listen, observe, and document children's work and the growth of community in their classroom, and are to motive and stimulate thinking
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Teachers are committed to reflection about their own teaching and learning.
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Classroom teachers working in pairs and collaboration, sharing information and mentoring between personnel.
Click on image to view the article The Teacher as a Researcher written Carlina Rinaldia to view the indepth philosophy and concept pertaining to therole of the teacher in a Reggio Inspired classroom,or click on the link below.
http://www.reggioalliance.org/downloads/researcher:rinaldi.pdf
What It What Teacher Is Not
The teachers role in this not to provide answers or to fill in mysterious holes about these finds. Rather, our role is to help children to articulate ideas and create new theories. These theories will cross over various aspects of their prior knowledge Children will work together to decide what these items actually are, and create new knowledge about what forces have generated in the environment.
NO!
The Teacher as Partner, Nurturer, Guide, & Researcher
Reggio Emilia-inspired educators are viewed as partners, nurturers, guide, and researcher. As stressed by Loris Malaguzzi, teachers must have a positive image of children and their vast capabilities. The teacher's role derives from, and cannot be separated from, the image of the child. It is essential that teachers see themselves as partners in the co-construction of knowledge with the children. Teachers do not view themselves as leaders who are in front of the children, but as being by, near, beside, or close to the children. Rather, they are with the children, exploring, discovering, and learning together. This makes children more powerful contributors to their own education. Teachers are also researchers who must constantly readjust their image of children and learning. Educators decide what to facilitate by listening, observing, asking questions, reflecting on the responses, and then introducing materials and ideas children can use to expand their understanding. As researchers into children's skills and abilities, teachers create learning environments that encourage both reflection and examination of their own personal beliefs about what children can and should be doing within educational settings.
http://earlychildhood.educ.ubc.ca/community/research-practice-reggio-emilia
The Role of The Teacher As An Observer
The role of the teacher as an observer is extended to documenter and researcher. Observation is an important skill for most early childhood teachers, but the educators in Reggio Emilia have taken observation a step further. Observation, for them, is only the first step in collecting the data that are used to develop pedagogical documentation that captures the story of the children's experiences in the classroom, as well as the progression of the teachers' own developing understandings. Documentation becomes a tool for teacher research, reflection, collaboration, and decision-making. The documentation process has great potential for improving previous work of the teacher. An effective documentation process provides a chance to examine the role of the teacher, because the purpose of the process is to help teachers reflect on an experience, and then summarize and organize the experience for further learning. By documenting children's words and their own questions, and by photographing learning encounters and revisiting the learning experiences, teachers become aware of how the teaching and learning process occurs, and questioning their strategies to create responses to the children. Therefore, they will make a conscious effort to ask questions that make the children think. Creating documentation panels gives teachers the advantage of revisiting their observations of children's learning, as well as their own teaching skills. As documenting children's learning processes, analyzing the documentation, revisiting, and creating a documentation panel enhances reflective thinking for teachers.
http://earlychildhood.educ.ubc.ca/community/research-practice-reggio-emilia
Teachers as Learners
Although initial teacher education in Italy was meagre until 1998, with pre-school and elementary teachers needing only the minimum of qualifications, recent national legislation now requires all new pre-school and primary school teachers to be qualified to degree level, although this is not yet the case for educators in the infant-toddler centres. The development of the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia in the centre of town in recent years has included the establishment of the Faculty of Education, which fosters direct links with the municipal preschool establishments and infant-toddler centres. Indeed, Carlina Rinaldi, former pedagogista and consultant for Reggio Children, now has teaching commitments with the Faculty of Education. While Reggio educators have long demonstrated their belief in the central place of research in the pre-school setting, Italian university research has been a lot slower in recognizing the work that is done in these schools.
The municipal education system 0–6 has long been recognized for its outstanding and exemplary approach to the continuing professional development of all educators. Continuing professional development is not about developing teachers’ understanding of how to teach, but about developing their understanding of how children learn. Teachers are encouraged to understand children’s learning processes rather than acquiring skills and knowledge that they then expect children to learn. Research is a fundamental learning strategy for children in the Reggio schools and this is mirrored in the approach to the role of the educator in the learning process and to professional development. Teachers are seen as learners first and foremost. Professional development in Reggio is considered to be a continuing evolutionary process that is an essential part of the teacher’s day. At its heart is the belief in staff development as change, and staff development as promoting participation and interaction.
The role of the teacher in the learning–teaching relationship known as the progettazione, can be summarized as:
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The teacher seeks to know each child as an individual person and to create a trusting relationship in which learning can take place.
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The teacher supports and encourages the child on the learning journey, encouraging them to reflect and to ask question. The role of the teacher is not to dispense information or simply to correct. Rather, the teacher is like a tool that the children use when most needed. They may challenge or provoke ideas through the use of open-ended questions. A fundamental stage in progettazione is knowing how to reintroduce an idea or concept with the children in a way which provokes them into taking their understanding and experience to the next level.
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Teachers respect children’s own theories and hypotheses to allow children to make mistakes in their quest to solve problems is considered fundamental to the learning process. Teachers are not quick to intervene at every problem the children face. • The teacher is also a researcher into the ways in which children learn.
http://www.educationscotland.gov.uk/images/ReggioAug06_tcm4-393250.pdf
Environtment as The Third Teacher
The environment is acknowledged for its potential to inspire children. The learning space should be filled with natural light, order and beauty, with open spaces free from clutter, where every material is displayed for its purpose, every corner encourages children to search deeper into their interests. The environment and space encourages collaboration, communication and exploration. The space respects children as capable by providing them with authentic materials and tools.
The environment demonstrates the way time is structured and the roles we are expected to play. It conditions how we feel, think, and behave. The atelier, or art studio, is a workshop or studio that supplies a variety of resources and materials, used by all the children and adults in a school. A vital part of every Reggio Emilia school, the atelier contains a wide range of media and materials to promote creativity and learning through projects. The atelier provides a place for children to use a variety of techniques, assisting the adults in understanding processes of how children learn, as well as providing workshop for documentation. Some equipment provided in this space is, easels, paints, markers, small objects for collage, shells, leaves, nuts, twigs, a light table to view the transparency of things, clay, wire, transparent containers for viewing, and many other materials.
Atelier and Piazza
Weather, rainbows, sunlight, city life – everyday subjects, rather than remote or academic ones, providing opportunity for discovery in the long-term projects. Exploration is facilitated by the environment. Every centre includes an atelier, and often mini-ateliers, art corners, connecting the individual classrooms. An atelierista, which is a professional artist, is apart of the staff, working along side the teachers by helping children communicate in their hundred languages, as children may express themselves through art, music, or shadow play.
Extensive and continual documentation of children’s activities by staff, handwritten notes, photographs, videotapes, is the basis of the Reggio programme and serves multiple functions. It guides children forward, informs staff on children’s progress and helps them reflect on their own practice, and informs parents and the community of the work of the school. Documentation panels are posted on the walls, illustrating projects that the centre has done over time, therefore communicating and evolving its own history from year to year. In addition, a pedagogista is assigned to working with a group of schools, building a unified approach between settings, encouraging and mentoring staff, and heightening awareness of the theory underpinning practice.
Besides encouraging research and exploration, the Reggio environment communicates other messages to children. The layout of a typical school is reflective of the city, with a central, indoor piazza or common area representing the traditional Italian town square, where friends pass the time of day, bands march, marketers sell their goods, or families stroll of an evening. As in the city, the school’s piazza serves as a place where children can mingle or get together in larger groups. Also, smaller ares are interspersed to value the children’s need for personal space. The classrooms and dining area opens directly off the piazza, with no connecting hallways to interrupt continuity. The children can observe the cooks at work, and frequently help with meal preparation and cleanup. There is great freedom of movement between areas, including out side. By design, the centre itself becomes part of the city, and the children can see its activities unfolding around them.
http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/articles/reggio-emilia
Reggio Environments
If the Reggio environment plays an important role as the third teacher. The first teacher, the parent, and the second, the classroom teacher, are even more important. Parents are involved in school decision-making, kept informed on their child’s progress, and they communicate information about their child’s home experience. They also join in regularly with children’s activities and help on their projects. As for staff, the tasks of each is considered equal and there is no administrative hierarchy or payment scale. The credentials prerequisite to a pre-primary teaching post in Italy are comparatively few. Therefore, co-teaching is seen as a necessary part of every young Reggio teacher’s training.
One might view the children as the fourth teacher in the Reggio programme, for they are valued as teachers in their own right, to be learned from, listened to, and respected. Children are seen as being born complete with the ability to discover the world they have entered. The teacher’s role is never a dominating role, but of listening and guidance. Strong bonds form between teachers and children, who stay together through a three year extent.
http://www.communityplaythings.co.uk/learning-library/articles/reggio-emilia
How is Your Third Teacher Teaching?
The educators of Reggio Emilia view the setting as an intregal part of the learning process, a place of interactions with the children, the teachers, and the parents. The third teacher lets the children know about how they can use the room. The preschool needs to feel welcoming so that the children and adults feel a part of the preschool community. Being beautiful is not enough. It has to meet practical needs of both children and adults, there has to be space for play in all its forms, there has to be space for the educators to create and to store and to be a part of the process and for the adults who drop off and pick up their children. If children feel they are welcome they will feel safe. Children who feel safe can get on with their play. Children who are playing are learning and discovering.
If we are to make everyone feel welcome then we also need to communicate the importance of acceptance and tolerance. By including cultural elements in the setting layout we allow opportunities for the children to take pride in their own sense of identity. A sense of identity leads to a greater self-esteem which is essential for learning, not only about themselves and where they are, but about others, allowing the children to develop understanding, empathy, respect and acceptance.
http://interactionimagination.blogspot.se/2013/08/how-is-your-third-teacher-teaching.html
A Growing Body of Research
A growing body of brain science and education research that describes learning as social, situational and experiential has renewed interest in constructivist pedagogies and inspired a shift in mainstream education away from traditional methods of transmitting information towards collaborative and experience-based learning. Less attention has been paid on the influence of interior design in schools. Now school communities are beginning to collaborate with interior design professionals because research exploring the interrelationship between pedagogy and space has identified the importance of the physical environment in providing multiple settings for learning.
In school architecture and interior design, education reform is being expressed as a rejection of teacher-centred conventional classrooms in favour of physically complex learner-centred environments, encouraging a large student community and a team of teachers.
http://architectureau.com/articles/profile-mary-featherston/
Woorana Park Primary School example.
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Reggio-inspired materials are typically:
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Aesthetically pleasing
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Sensory
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Open-ended
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Authentic (real rather than plastic, or a child's version)
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Natural
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Interesting
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Inviting
They are selected to:
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Respond to children's interests
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Stimulate thinking
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Revisit prior learning
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Support creativity
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Ignite curiosity
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Encourage exploration
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Empower
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Engage
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Test theories
http://www.letthechildrenplay.net/2013/03/be-reggio-inspired-play-materials.html
Reading the Environment
Classroom environments are public statements about the educational values of the facility and the teacher. Arrangement of space, including desks, tables, and materials available, and what is displayed on the walls,conveys messages about the relationship between teaching and learning, the image of the child held by the teacher, and the expectations for behaviour and learning within that setting. More specifically, there is the question of the value of commercially produced materials on classroom walls and whether educators understand the messages they convey.
Purpose of Display
The challenge for early childhood educators is to think beyond decorating to consider how walls can be used effectively as part of an educational environment. In Reggio Emilia the walls display documentation panels of projects that children are engaged in. These become the basis of ongoing research and dialogue between the children, teachers, and families. Panels of photos, artifacts, and text make learning visible to participants and to outsiders.
Aesthetics
One of the ways that educators could enhance the aesthetic education of young children is through the design of the environment. This idea has been taken up more recently in literature, that looks closely at educational environments that support children’s learning through conscious use of design elements of light, colour, texture, sound, and smell. While much of the early childhood literature suggests that rooms for young children be colourful, colour is too often used for its own sake rather than chosen to enhance a particular area or to create a sense of unity throughout the room. Walls painted in neutral colours create a sense of calmness and allow other features in the room to stand out. Children’s work usually shows and stand out on neutral walls or against backgrounds that do not compete with the work. Brightly coloured borders or picture frames often detract from children’s work.
Inspiring Spaces for Young Children
Press play or click on the link below
Children and the Learning Environment
Click on image to view the blog The Third Teacher: Changing Spaces for an example of the change and transformation of a classroom using the Reggio Emilia Approach, or click on the link below
http://thethirdteacher.wordpress.com/2010/07/23/changing-the-space/
Environment as The Third Teacher
The layout of physical space, in addition to welcoming whoever enters the schools, fosters encounters, communication, and relationships. The arrangement of structures, objects, and activities encourages choices, problem-solving, and discoveries in the process of learning. The spaces are intended to be beautiful by conveying a message about children and teachers engaged together in the pleasure of learning. There is attention to detail everywhere, in the colour of the walls, the shape of the furniture, the arrangement of simple objects on shelves and tables. Light from the windows and doors shines through transparent collages and weaving made by children.
But the environment is not just beautiful, it is highly personal. The space is full of children’s work. Everywhere there are paintings, drawings, paper sculptures, wire constructions, transparent collages colouring the light, and mobiles moving over their head. It turns up even in unexpected spaces like stairways and bathrooms. The reflections of the teachers, the photographs of the children, and their dialogues are part of the displays to help the viewer understand the process of children’s thoughts and explorations. It is about making children’s thinking visible. The work thoughtfully selected by the teachers, literally surround the people in the school.
Documentation
What is Documentation?
Documentation typically includes samples of a child’s work at several different stages of completion such as photographs showing work in progress, comments written by the teacher or other adults working with the children, transcriptions of children’s discussions, comments, and explanations of intentions about the activity, and comments made by parents.
Effective Communication
An effective piece of documentation tells the story and the purpose of an event, experience, or development. It is a product that draws others into the experience by showing evidence or artifacts that describe a situation, telling a story, and help the viewer to understand the purpose of the action. When used effectively, consistently, and thoughtfully, documentation can also drive curriculum and collaboration in the early childhood classroom setting.
Documentation Artifacts and Evidence
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Teacher’s description and overview of an event/experience/skill development, such as photographs and descriptions of a field trip
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Photographs of children at work
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Samples of children’s work
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Children’s comments
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Teacher or parent comments about a classroom event
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Teacher transcriptions of conversations during small group time when children are exploring a new topic, such as why snow melts indoors
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Important items or observations relating to an event/ experience/development
What should we document?
A variety of experiences and topics are appropriate to document, but documentation should always tell a complete story. Select one topic and explore it to the fullest rather than trying to do a little of everything.
Choosing a focus
The teacher might choose to document only the children’s study of plant parts, and could start by providing a learning spark, such as a new plant in the classroom. As children comment on the plant parts, the teacher can create a web to record what they know and to help them formulate questions. The children might also draw and label the various plant parts.
CLICK ON THE IMAGE to view the Branches blog about project-based learning and documentation, or click on the link below.
Documentation: Looking at Our Schools
Documentation of students' learning is an important element of Reggio Emilia. As students explore different ideas Reggio teachers take the time to capture moments of discovery through photographs and tape recordings. While observing the learning process, teachers also take notes about what the children say, or how they react when they first experience something new. Teachers document students in the classroom for a variety of reasons. Documentation has several functions, to make parents aware of their children's experience and maintain parental involvement, to allow teachers to understand children better and to evaluate the teachers' own work, therefore promoting their professional growth, to facilitate communication and exchange of ideas among educators, to make children aware that their effort is valued, and to create an archive that traces the history of the school and of learning by many children and their teachers. Ultimately, documentation makes learning visible to many different people.
The goal of documentation is to capture a moment in time when a student makes a discovery about the world. Many Reggio educators use photographs to help children think about their learning. Making photographs available to children, letting them handle, sort, and talk about them, places children in the role of doing something with their experience. Documentation is another language of communication in the Reggio classroom. Careful consideration and attention is given to the presentation of the thinking of the children and the adults who work with them. Documentation is a way for adults to communicate with both the children and others in the community about what is being learned in the classroom. In the end, the practice of documentation highlights what is unique to the Reggio approach, observing, communicating, and revisiting.
Transforming Our Perspective
This short documentary, created as an introduction to the Documentation Studio at Wheelock College, is a conversation with several leaders of Reggio Children and the municipal infant-toddler and preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy about the practice of documentation and its role in teaching and learning.
Documentation of Learning
ranscriptions of children’s remarks and discussions, photographs of their activity, and representations of their thinking and learning using many media are carefully arranged by the teachers to document the work and the process of learning.
Documentation has several functions. Among these are to make parents aware of their children’s experience and maintain their involvement; to allow teachers to understand children better and to evaluate the teachers’ own work, therefore promoting their professional growth to facilitate communication and exchange of ideas among educators, making children aware that their effort is valued, as well as to create and document that traces the history of the school and the pleasure of learning by many children and their teachers.
Documentation for Advocacy
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Documenting and displaying the children's project work, which is necessary for children to express, revisit, and construct and reconstruct their feelings, ideas and understandings.
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Documentation of children's work in progress is viewed as an important tool in the learning process for children, teachers, and parents.
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Pictures of children engaged in experiences, their words as they discuss what they are doing, feeling and thinking, and the children's interpretation of experience through the visual media are displayed as a graphic presentation of the dynamics of learning.
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Teachers act as recorders for the children, helping them trace and revisit their words and actions and thereby making the learning visible.
Schools as A Loci For Ethical Practice
The Rich Child and Children's Spaces: Other Discourse
It is important to try and resist replacing one dominant discourse, one narrative of necessity with another. That possibility starts from an image of the child: as an active subject, a multi-lingual creator of knowledge and identity from birth, connected in relations of interdependency with other children and adults, a citizen with rights, overall what Malaguzzi termed a rich child. The possibility continues with the image of a worker who is a learner, a researcher, a critical thinker, and a reflexive, as well a dialogic practitioner. This child and this worker come together in an institution viewed as a children's space, a public place of collective responsibility and encounter between citizens in a community from which many possibilities can flow--cultural, aesthetic, political, social, ethical, and economic. Some of these possibilities may be predetermined, but many are not.
Ethics and Politics as First Practice in Early Childhood
Institutions understood as children's spaces create possibilities for individuals to think for themselves through creating knowledge, identity, and values by challenging dominant discourses. Children's spaces are also distinguished by replacing the current methods and technical practice, which can be referred to as the dominant discourse, by making ethics and politics first practice. This reconceptualization transforms our understanding of children's institutions from enclosures for the application of technical practice to forums, spaces, or loci for ethical and political practice.
Early Childhood Institutions and Democratic Politics
If we view the idea of early childhood institutions as places of neutral, scientifically-legitimated technical practice, then we can move to other possibilities that allows for fluent spaces where different perspectives and forms of expression encounter each other. In such a place there can be room for dialogue, confrontation, and critical thinking. Early childhood institutions understood in this way provide possibilities for democratic political practice through the exercise of what Rose (1999) calls 'minor' or 'minority' politics:
“These minor engagements do not have the arrogance of programmatic politics-perhaps even refuse their designation as politics at all. They are cautious, modest, pragmatic, experimental, stuttering,tentative. They are concerned with the here and now, not with some fantasized future, with small concerns, petty details, the everyday and not the transcendental. They frequently arise in ’cramped spaces' ... [and] in relation to these little territories of the everyday, they seek to engender a small reworking of their own spaces of action”
Pedagogical documentation can be used to question the necessity of dominant discourses and to enable evaluation as a process of collective critical thinking. Parent involvement can be redefined as an opportunity to enhance democratic politics rather than a means to improve communication and govern behaviour. A process of collective critical thinking needs to include argumentation around the many issues of difference and diversity that arise in the everyday lives of early childhood institutions.
Knowledge
The image of knowledge becomes the rhizome, a term that has been defined by Malaguzzi. Thought and concepts can be seen as a consequence of the provocation of an encounter with difference. The rhizome goes in all directions with no beginning and no end, but always in between, and with openings towards other directions and places. It is multiplicity functioning as it utilizes connections and heterogeneity (related to uniformity), which is constructed and developed. The rhizomatic challenges the dominant idea of knowledge investment that remains important in education. Mainstream knowledge acquisition is viewed as a form of a linear progression, where you have to take the first step before you move to the next in order. In a rhizomatic approach, there is no hierarchy or stages to be followed.
Click on image to view the blog Technology Rich Inquiry Based Reaserch to view Political influences and Pedagogical Documentation: Grasping for the “Other”, or click on the link below.
Carlina Rinaldi speaks about Teaching and Learning. Press play and click the link below
Follow the link to take you and article written by Loris Malaguzzi, titled, For an Education Based on Relationships, translated by Lella Gandini.
http://www.reggioalliance.org/downloads/malaguzziyoungchildren.pdf
Click on the title (It's) to open a new document to view the reflection question.
