Contextualising Reggio Emilia
About Early Childhood Hub
Early Childhood Hub is a small consultancy business in Australia whose mission is to advocate for quality and authenticity in early childhood services. Their vision is for children to experience authentic childhoods in respectful environments with dedicated and quality educators. www.earlychildhoodhub.com.au
About the series
This series of books can be used to support the teaching and learning of the Certificate III in Early Childhood Education and Care or the Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care, and aligns with the national training package requirements of the Australian Skills Quality Authority (ASQA). This series of books draw on the educational project of Reggio Emilia as a catalyst for thinking about early childhood education and care in Australia with more than one ‘lens’ or ‘gaze’.
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About the author
Kerrie O’Neill
Kerrie’s experience with the early childhood sector spans over 35 years.
She has worked as a kindergarten teacher, a director of an early learning centre, a trainer and assessor delivering the Certificate III and the Diploma of Early Childhood Education and Care and as a tertiary level lecturer at Melbourne Polytechnic (formerly NMIT). Kerrie has worked for the Department of Education and Training in Victoria as both an Authorised Officer and as a Senior Policy Officer.
Kerrie was a founding member of the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange in 2000 and was a committee member for 23 years. Kerrie’s work in the early childhood sector has been profoundly influenced by the educational project of Reggio Emilia, Italy, since her first study tour to the city in 1996.
Acknowledgments
We would like to acknowledge the many colleagues and friends who have supported this work through the peer review process. Their perspectives, wisdom and advice have been enormously appreciated.
We would also like to acknowledge and thank the many educators, services and schools who have so willingly shared their amazing work and photographs to enable the reader to appreciate and understand the ideas of this series from many different perspectives.
Acknowledgment of Country
Early Childhood Hub acknowledges the traditional owners of Country throughout Australia and their continuing connection to land and community. We pay our respect to them and their cultures, and to the Elders both past and present.
Cover image: Dirty Legs and Feet of Children Sitting on a Bench #7379578 ©iStockphoto.com/Rosemarie Gearhart
Contextualising Reggio Emilia
THIS RESOURCE WAS DEVELOPED TO SUPPORT EDUCATORS WHO STUDY FOR A CERTIFICATE III (CHC30113) AND DIPLOMA (CHC50113) EARLY CHILDHOOD EDUCATION AND CARE QUALIFICATIONS IN AUSTRALIA. IT WAS DEVELOPED OUT OF AN ASPIRATION TO SUPPORT HIGH-QUALITY TRAINING MATERIALS, INSPIRED BY REGGIO EMILIA, FOR STUDENTS WHO WORK IN THE EARLY CHILDHOOD SECTOR IN AUSTRALIA. IT CAN ALSO BE USED TO SUPPORT STUDENTS STUDYING OTHER QUALIFICATIONS OR BY EDUCATORS THROUGHOUT AUSTRALIA, TO SUPPORT THEIR PEDAGOGY.
I would like to acknowledge that this text would not have been made possible without the educational project of Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia, Italy. I would also like to recognise and thank the past and present theorists and thinkers, educators, families and children who live and work in that place.
This resource draws on the educational project of Reggio Emilia as a catalyst for thinking about the education of young children in Australian educational contexts, with more than one lens or gaze. High-quality provocations and practice improve the educational outcomes for children attending education and care services.
I would also like to acknowledge and thank my colleagues and friends, Lucrezia Mecca and Jan Millikan for reviewing this text with care, challenging my thinking and providing wise counsel that allowed me to consider the book with fresh perspectives and depth.
A special thank you to Jan Millikan (OAM) for her ongoing relationships with educators from the city of Reggio Emilia and her continued advocacy for young children and education in Australia.
This symbol will appear when an idea makes a connection to the Early Years Learning Framework (EYLF), the National Quality Standard, a quote from a theorist, or the ideas from Reggio Emilia.
About Reggio Emilia
Reggio Emilia is a city in northern Italy. It’s early childhood educational project has evolved over many years and was led and developed by educational theorist Loris Malaguzzi. The city and schools of Reggio Emilia are of great interest to many educators around the world and Reggio Children have hosted many study tours and visitors, especially since the declaration by Newsweek that their centres were amongst the ‘best in the world’ (Newsweek, 1991).
(Reggio Children was founded in 1994 to promote and defend children’s rights and to organise the pedagogical and cultural exchanges already taking place between Reggio Emilia’s municipal early childhood centres and teachers, academics and researchers from around the world)
History of Reggio Emilia
The story of the schools (early childhood centres) in Reggio Emilia began with a culture and community within a particular context. The context was an Italian town called Reggio Emilia, recently ravaged and recovering from World War II.
Everyone wondered how to ease every trace of this dark past from our conscience and from our institutions; the answer was democracy, to be built from the ground up, along with the houses and the demolished cities, with the families which were split up or mutilated (Barazzoni, 2000, p. 17).
The history of our approach and of my place in it starts 6 days after the end of the Second World War. It is spring 1945 … I hear that in a small village called Villa Cella, a few miles from the town of Reggio Emilia, People decided to build and run a school for young children. That idea seemed incredible to me! I rush there on my bike and I discover that it is all quite true. I find women intent upon salvaging and washing pieces of bricks. The people had gotten
together and had decided that the money to begin the construction would come from the sale of an abandoned war tank, a few trucks and some horses left behind by the retreating Germans. ‘The rest will come,’ they say to me (Malaguzzi, 1989-1991, cited in Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1998, pp. 49–50).
Here in Loris Malaguzzi’s words, we catch some insight into the history and the origins of the educational project that exists today in Reggio Emilia. The educational project was driven by a desire to learn from the past and to try and change what happens in the future within a democratic community. Initially centres were expressly designed for young children aged from three to six years of age, but eventually were also developed for children three months to three years of age. The aspirational answer for this community was education, and it was quite simple: if children had rights, they should also be given opportunities to express their intelligence and achieve success.
Figure 1. Railway station in Reggio Emilia, Italy.
An Australian perspective
I am not going to tell you the things I have heard in Reggio Emilia; I am going to tell you how I contextualised (made sense of) them in an Australian context.
This thought is very important in thinking about what is to follow. The interpretation of the ideas from Reggio Emilia are from the writer’s perspective. Everything an individual learns is subjective. That is, individuals process information and interpret it in their own way. The following explanation of the philosophies from Reggio Emilia may not be the same explanation that another educator may give. It is an Australian interpretation developed from many years of thinking and reflecting on these ideas and what they might mean for the Australian early childhood education context. This interpretation is contestable and may challenge the reader to think beyond dominant discourses of some early childhood practices in Australia. This interpretation does not seek to be ‘right’ but is offered in the spirit of critical thinking and hopes to bring about change in Australian early childhood contexts by encouraging critical reflection in practice.
Many educators talk about their ‘journey’ with the ideas from Reggio Emilia. They speak optimistically about how their thinking has changed when considering these concepts in their own educational contexts, and perhaps the word ‘journey’ suggests that this process of new and creative thinking is not yet finished. These ideas from Reggio Emilia are complex and require educators to make thoughtful and intelligent choices about their work with children. Therefore, to support the idea of a ‘journey’, the metaphor of ‘landscapes’ will be adopted in this document. Jan Millikan wrote ‘I think that the word landscapes has the connotation of the hundred languages, but also journeys, containing emotions of light and shadow and the need to research’ (personal communication, 25 June, 2015).
Teachers are like explorers using maps and compasses, they know the directions but they also know that every year the terrain, the climate, the seasons, the children can add new directions and that the order of times and problems can change. Destinations are important and must not be lost from sight but more importantly is how and why we reach them (Malaguzzi, 2015).
This document will use the metaphor of the ‘terrain of pedagogy and practice’, to provide the reader with an alternative way to think about these ideas and process the information they will read.
Dominant discursive régimes exercise particular influence. They organise our everyday experience of the world, exercising power over our thought, by directing or governing what we see as the ‘truth’ and how we construct the world, and hence over our actions too (Miller & Rose, 1993, cited in, Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p. 141).
The pedagogy of educators in Reggio Emilia may challenge the many ‘truths’ that educators have been taught in their training. ‘Truths’ such as, ‘you shouldn’t give a three- or four-year-old a slim pencil or pen, only fat crayons’, or ‘never show a child how to draw something or you are suppressing their creativity’. These ‘truths’ can be like mountains, fixed, immovable and solid. The challenge for educators is to continuously undertake reflective practice processes to grow, learn and challenge these ‘truths’.
Educators should not become prisoners of certainty but should be encouraged to become more reflective, to open their minds to new possibilities for themselves and the children with whom they work. Many years ago Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio approach, challenged the educators of Reggio Emilia to reflect on and re-examine their practice. Their starting point was the children. If you were asked to re-examine your pedagogy and practice where would you start? Would you start with the child or would you start somewhere else?
Ask yourself:
• Who is the child?
• How do I see the child in front of me?
• What is early childhood education for?
• Do I believe that a child is a citizen?
• Does a child have rights as a citizen regardless of needs? If they have both, which is more important?
• Do I see a child who learns through transmission or do I see a child that is a co-constructor of learning and culture?
• Do I see a child as active and as a protagonist of their own learning with enormous potential?
• Are the environments that we create for children important?
• How do children learn?
This document will contend that reading, thinking and reflecting on the system of education in Reggio Emilia and may challenge some of the ideas that are promoted in Australian contexts about children and early childhood. Your understanding of the role of teacher might be challenged and reconsidered from one of transmission to one of a protagonist for learning. Perhaps the teacher’s role is to create a context in which children’s curiosity, theories and research are legitimated and listened to, a context in which children feel confident and comfortable? At the same time, is it possible for teachers to extend children’s horizons by creating complexity in their environment, by introducing new ‘languages of expression’ and materials for children’s theorising and meaning making? To achieve any change through the process of critical reflection, educators must make a personal and pedagogical commitment to transform the culture of teaching and learning with their community and their context.
This document will address many of the principles that have been included in the list below. This document is not exhaustive and should be supported by further reading such as The hundred languages of children (Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 2012). Each principle will be explained succinctly and is given from the perspective of an Australian educator who has worked with the ideas and inspirations from Reggio Emilia for some years.
The principles that will be contextualised in this document are:
• The hundred languages of children
• the image of the child
• pedagogical documentation
• pedagogy of relationships
• pedagogy of listening
• projects and progettazione
• environments, spaces and relations
• a child as a citizen with rights.
‘Reggio is not a blueprint. It is an inspiration to be yourself, to find your own excellence and perfect it’ (Jerome Bruner, 2000 cited in, Thornton & Brunton, 2015, p. 5).
The principles that are not included separately or explicitly in the resource referenced in Indications: Preschoolsand infant–toddlercentresofthemunicipalityofReggioEmilia (Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, 2010) are:
• children are active protagonists of their growth and development processes
• participation
• learning as a process of individual and group construction
• organisation
• professional development
• assessment.
The schools for young children in the city of Reggio Emilia do not provide a model, rather a provocation, ‘What is education for?’ There is no recipe for ‘how to do it’. And schools that advertise themselves as ‘doing Reggio’ or ‘we are running a Reggio program’ or even call themselves a ‘Reggio Emilia Centre’ have missed the provocation to reinterpret the experience in their own context. ‘Different centres play different music because they have different orchestras’ (Spaggiari, personal notes, 24 January, 1997). The challenge of Reggio Emilia is to compose and play your own music with your own children, parents, staff and community.
While the vision of children and human nature embodied in the Reggio schools is undoubtedly the right one, it can be a threatening one as well. It means that you trust children, you trust teachers, you trust the powers of the imagination. It means that you abandon an approach to life that is purely instrumental, purely financial, purely Darwinian if you will, in favour of one that recognises the rights of children and the obligations of humanity (Gardner, 2004).
Figure 2. A central piazza in the city of Reggio Emilia, Italy.
No way, the hundred is there
The child is made of one hundred.
The child Is made of one hundred
The child has a hundred languages a hundred hands a hundred thoughts a hundred ways of thinking of playing, of speaking.
A hundred, always a hundred ways of listening of marveling of loving a hundred joys for singing and understanding a hundred worlds to discover a hundred worlds to invent a hundred worlds to dream.
The child has a hundred languages (and a hundred hundred hundred more) but they steal ninety-nine
the school and the culture separate the head from the body.
They tell the child: to think without hands to do without head to listen and not speak to understand without joy to love and marvel only at Easter and Christmas. They tell the child to discover the world already there and of the hundred they steal ninety-nine.
They tell the child that work and play reality and fantasy science and imagination sky and earth reason and dream are things that do not belong together. And thus they tell the child that the hundred is not there.
The child says: No way. The hundred is there!
(Malaguzzi, n.d., cited in, Edwards, Gandini & Forman, 1993, p. vi).
Figure 3. A child in nature.
‘As human beings, children possess a hundred languages, a hundred ways of thinking, of expressing themselves, of understanding and of encountering others, with a way of thinking that creates connections between the various dimensions of experience rather than separating them. The hundred languages are a metaphor for the extraordinary potentials of children, their knowledge building and creative processes, the myriad forms with which life is manifested and knowledge is constructed’ (Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, 2010, p. 10).
The words of Loris Malaguzzi speak of the hundred languages of children, and a hundred, hundred more. When we acknowledge the many different ways that children express themselves, we afford children a ‘hundred ways’ to make sense of the world. This concept can be an important one for educators as it may open their eyes to new opportunities to think about how to foster creativity, collaboration, imagination and learning.
Typically when we think of a language, we think of a verbal language, but when we consider this word in this sense as a metaphor, we see that there are many languages of expression and communication. Educators in Australia provide children with learning experiences for them to encounter the creative, collaborative and expressive languages of dance, music, paint, clay, wire, play and drawing just to name a few. But in Reggio, they extend this concept further and challenge us to think about the meaning of the word languages. The metaphor of the hundred languages is not limited to the obvious; there are many other languages of expression and communication; humour, spirituality, gesture, discovery and creativity are all vital intelligences that children use to develop and extend their knowledge, understanding and theories.
The hundred languages of children acknowledges the many different ways that children express themselves but it is important here to extend the concept of the ‘hundred languages’ and to move beyond just thinking about a language as a mode of expression. This can limit educators’ ideas and narrow their intrepretations into an understanding that languages are ‘art’. In Reggio the metaphor of the word languages is an important intent for children to construct and co-construct knowledge in collaboration with others in a process that generates new thoughts and ideas and transforms theories and knowledge. ‘Collaboration enables us to rejoice in subjectivity, it provides the opportuntity to bring different
realities together, enabling us to share wisdoms and create richer possibilities’ (Millikan, 2003, p. 124). The idea of the ‘hundred languages’ was originally only used in reference to children, but now it is used in reference to adults as well and is visible in the many languages that educators choose in documenting children’s experiences.
The ‘hundred languages’ of children can be shared through documentation and is undertaken in many ways. Many ways of documenting are necessary when children have ‘different languages’. To document children’s hundred languages requires the educator to use documentation techniques such as written notes, observation charts, diaries, weekly journals, recordings, photographs, slides and video, to make visible the children’s learning processes and ways of constructing knowledge. These documents can then be shared through a process of collaboration and should be interpreted and re-interpreted to be fully understood.
The presence of an artist or atelierista in each of the preschools in Reggio Emilia is a continuing possibility for collaborations and children’s expression. The atelierista’s knowledge and expertise allow for a multiplicity of experiences and modes of expression. The different materials presented to children not only allow them to express their ideas but create a relationship and a familiarity with the material and its affordances. The ‘hundred languages’ of children do not exist on their own; rather they are intertwined and transformed as children weave these experiences together.
It has been suggested by many of my colleagues in Australia, that the work of Loris Malaguzzi is parallel to the work of Howard Gardner and his theory of multiple intelligences.
Image of the child
What is your image of a child?
The image of a child and the image of childhood are cultural constructions and the educators in Reggio Emilia question the idea of a universal childhood. They challenge us to think differently about children, their competencies and their capacities beyond the notion of providing them with experiences around their ‘interests’ or ‘needs’.
Is the child a social and public subject, a subject with rights to specific policies and to places where they can express themselves and give visibility to their own culture, or rather is the child a private subject whose care and growth is only a responsibility of the family or of others chosen by the family? (Paola Cagliari, personal notes, 12 October, 2008).
Carla Rinaldi says, ‘Childhood does not exist, we create it as a society, as a political subject. It is a social, political and historical construction’ (Rinaldi, 2006, p. 13).
The way an educator ‘sees’ children, interacts with children, sets up environments for children will ‘tell’ of their image of the child. The way an educator documents children’s learning, the way that children are represented in that documentation will reflect an educator’s image of the child. The way that an educator speaks about children will reflect their image of a child.
Every image embodies a new way of seeing. Even photographs. For photographs are not, as is often assumed, a mechanical record. Every time we look at a photograph, we are aware, however slightly, of the photographer selecting that sight from infinity of other possible sights (Berger, 1972, cited in, Clark, 2010, p. 102).
The idea of perspective is important in understanding your image of the child. Everyone has his or her own image of the child and this can change at different times in one’s life. However, your image of the child if you are an educator is crucially important as it will influence the environment and the experiences that you offer to children in your service. There are many questions to consider when you are trying to understand your own image of the child.
• Which child do you see?
• Which teacher are you?
There is a reciprocal relationship between these two questions as each question is inextricably linked. Each question informs and af fects the other.
Educators in Reggio Emilia do not believe that there is such a thing as a universal childhood.
The cornerstone of our experience, based on practice, theory and research, is the image of the child as rich, strong and powerful. The emphasis is placed on seeing the children as unique subjects with rights rather than simply needs. They have potential, plasticity, the desire to grow, curiosity, the ability to be amazed, and the desire to relate to other people and to communicate (Rinaldi, n.d., cited in Edwards et al., 1993, p. 102).
‘The image of the child, but we could say the image of woman, man, foreigner, able and disabled people, is brought about in a more or less conscious way and is shaped by our own history, beliefs, attitude and theories of others’ (Paola Cagliari, personal notes, 6 July, 2009).
Some common and historical constructions of the image of the child
The child as a sponge
This image of the child assumes that the child starts their life with nothing. No capacities, no intelligences. They ‘absorb’ everything to ‘become’. They ‘suck up the knowledge’. This is the image of a passive learner rather than an active learner and this image does not reflect the image of the child that is seen and embraced in Reggio Emilia.
During the last sixty years, we have taken a deterministic perspective with a determinist point of view. In this perspective, the child is considered a sponge, a container and the child absorbs, as does a sponge, everything from their environment. The focus is on the extent that the child’s surroundings affect their education. The child is still substantially a sort of teddy bear; it is a waiting child, a child that
waits, that hopes to get the necessary stimuli from the environment, provided that he, fortunately arrives at a secure port that will allow him, in one way or another, to take control of his life’s circumstances (Hoyuelos, 2013, p. 78).
Life as a ladder
Dahlberg, Moss and Pence (1999) suggest that there is a predominant image of the child offered by some governments and business leaders. Some are largely uninterested in children but see education as an investment in the future. Childhood is the start of a journey from incompleteness to an economically productive human resource. The child is in the process of becoming an adult. Progress on the journey can be denoted by the acquisition of certain skills, the accomplishment of successive stages or milestones and increasing autonomy: the metaphor is climbing the ladder. Each stage of childhood, therefore, is preparation or readying for the next and more important stage, with early childhood being on the first rung. This image of the child is alive and well and prevalent here in Australia.
It often manifests in the language where people say that children should be ‘well prepared’ for school or denote the importance of ‘school readiness’ and is often promoted by teachers who want children to arrive at the educational service ‘equipped’ so that they can begin to ‘teach’ their curriculum. Perhaps, rather than children being ready for school, schools should be ready for children, in all their diversity?
The child with a backpack
‘This image of the child sees the young child as starting life with and from nothing—as an empty vessel. This image conjures up the metaphorical child in school carrying the weight of a rucksack, which is being filled up by teachers. This image implies that teaching has taken place, but has learning?’ (Dahlberg et al., 1999, p. 44).
This image of the child is based on the assumption again that the child starts their life with nothing. The child’s metaphorical backpack is ‘filled’ on their journey through life.
This image of the child suggests that children learn by remembering what they have been told and then in some way reproduce this knowledge. This image of the child views a child as a lump of clay that needs to be formed. This child has no virtue, nothing to give. This again is the image of a passive learner rather than an active learner. This is a child that you do not listen to, as they have nothing to give. This child is talked to, to fill it with knowledge. This image of the child is based on a belief or understanding of the process of learning as a process of transmission, a process of ‘filling’. This image of the child is often seen in schools where the pedagogy of programmed instruction lives. This pedagogy promotes teacher-directed activity where teachers implement predetermined tasks from a curriculum or framework. This pedagogy is based on a belief that all children learn when the same task is presented to the group at the same time. This decontextualised pedagogy is also based on the assumption that all children have the same cultural and linguistic understandings. The adult usually controls environments that support this pedagogy and this image of the child.
Sergio Spaggieri (Reggio Emilia) notes in deference to this image, that the word ‘educate’ originates from the Latin word ‘educere’ which means to draw or lead. It is the educator’s responsibility to ‘draw out’ the potential and intelligence of children, not just to put things in.
Figure 4. Life as a ladder
The child as a plant
David Elkind (2001, p. xv), in his book The hurried child, writes, ‘I wrote that the once prevalent conceptions of children summarised in the metaphors of the child as a blank slate and a growing plant were already dated in the post-industrial United States’.
This image of the child is still prominent in many educational institutions. This image suggests that learning is akin to planting a seed and seeing the seed bud and grow. The roots are planted, a trunk grows and branches then emerge. This image refers to the child and the process of learning as sequential and hierarchal. Children in this image are in the ‘process’ of becoming an adult. They go through life in a series of stages, where one period
of life is considered to be in preparation for the next. This image is similar to the idea of a ladder or a staircase, where the final quest is at the top.
Perhaps this image of the child can be challenged with the ideas from John Dewey? His message was that education is a social process; education is growth; education is not preparation for life, but it is life itself.
Beginning with our image of the child as a powerful starting point for reflection, we can re-think our philosophies of learning and teaching and re-develop our educational programs to support children’s capacities to construct knowledge in collaboration with others and to build respectful relationships with and between children, educators and families.
‘Our image of the child no longer considers them as isolated and egocentric, does not only see them as engaged in action with objects, does not emphasize only the cognitive aspects, does not belittle feelings or what is not logical and does not consider with ambiguity the role of the affective domain. Instead our image of the child is rich in potential, strong, powerful, competent and most of all connected with adults and other children’ (Malaguzzi, n.d., cited in Edwards et al., 2012, p. 147).
The child as a half glass of water
This image of the child is a metaphor to describe a child who has the potential to give knowledge and also receive and process new information, ideas and theories.
This is an image of the child that is rich. A child rich in resources, in potential and in competence. This is a child that wants to grow, learn and know and has the resources and potential to do so. This is a child who can create his/her own knowledge in collaboration with others. This learning is a process of social construction, of coconstruction. This image of the child acknowledges that children are powerful, and acknowledges that a child has a hundred languages—a rich child. This child also needs an adult; not an adult that will protect or act as a guard, but an adult that they can construct the world together with.
Figure 5. Half glass empty or half glass full?
This image of the child suggests that a child learns through rich experiences that allow them to explore their worlds and co-construct theories about their worlds, in relationship to other children and adults who listen, debate and challenge their theories. Learning and knowledge are not fixed or determined in advance but are co-constructed through thinking and collaboration. Deleuze and Guattari referred to this thinking process as a ‘line of flight’ (2005, cited in, Dahlberg & Moss, 2005, p. 117). The idea of a ‘line of flight’ implies that learning is not linear and could be used by educators as a metaphor of knowledge to describe the many paths that learning can take.
Traveler, your tracks lead the way and nothing else; traveler, there is no path, the path is made while walking. While walking the path is made, by looking backwards we’ll see the route that will never be stepped upon again. Traveler, there is no path, but rather wakes in the sea.
(Antonio & Machado, 1964, cited in, Hoyuelos, 2013, p. 194)
Maria Montessori suggested that educators should: … start always with the child … with the ability to welcome him as he is, freed of the thousand labels with which it is now presumed to identify him (Rinaldi, 2006, p. 98).
If you free a child of all the labels you have assigned them, you will seek to consider a new image of the child in the culture of your centre. The image of the child is a metaphor but also a concept that should be continuously proposed, supported and considered with families and the broader community.
Image of the educator
The following ideas about the image of the educator did not have their genesis in Reggio Emilia. However, the work of Glenda Mac Naughton (2003) is very useful to offer the reader. The reader might find an image of themselves in the following descriptors and be challenged to critically reflect on their role. At the same time, these ‘images’ of educators might provide the reader with an understanding of the image of the competent educator that exists in Reggio Emilia.
One prominent image of the teacher/educator in Australia is the one where the teacher holds all the knowledge and undertakes the role of teaching or transmitting to the child ‘necessary knowledge’. A child in this scenario learns by listening. This child is considered to have some resources, but it is the role of the adult to stimulate the child so that they have the opportunity to grow and learn. Does this image of the educator sound familiar? The child in this scenario is again a passive child that doesn’t yet ‘walk on its own legs’. The child in this scenario does not construct his/her own knowledge. This process is determined and directed by educators. This image requires educators always to be active, planning and directing the curriculum, without collaboration from other educators, children and families. This image of the educator reflects an image of a ‘poor’ child. It also means that the child remains poor, because they are not using all of their own resources. This educator forgets to listen to what the children already knows.
Carla Rinaldi (personal notes, 2010) suggested that there was a reason that educators had one mouth and two ears. Perhaps educators could listen more than they speak?
MacNaughton (2003) suggested that there are three ways that we could define educators. They are: conforming, reforming and transforming. What does this mean?
What is early childhood education for?
A conforming educator is one who complies with existing practices, rules and traditions. These educators often espouse the ideas of developmentally appropriate practice. They accept the status quo of the role of the educator as it has evolved over time. A conforming educator believes that children become a product of their culture. They believe that culture is transmitted, and that early childhood education should achieve the national social goals that have been purported by governments to be important. Governments may focus on the contribution of early childhood education and care to workforce participation or as an investment in a child’s future. A lot of research has been dedicated to education as a deterrent to crime, and the argument is fairly simple. If we want ‘normal’ adults who will conform to society’s expectations, then invest in their education early. A conforming educator has developed a particular image of the child and their approach to their work will reflect their image of the child. Malaguzzi rejected this image of the educator and spoke of children as ‘a citizen of today and not simply as an investment in the future’ (Hoyuelos, 2013, p. 21).
MacNaughton also suggested that educators might be considered to be reforming educators (2003). A reforming educator has moved away from the more traditional and historical role of the teacher/educator and believes that education should give children opportunities to be inter-dependent learners and thinkers in order to achieve their full potential. This educator might be one who sets out provocations for children but is still in control of the content of the information the children are given. This is an educator who is creative and aware of the children’s abilities and potentials but is protecting them from risk. This educator believes that risky play where much knowledge is gained should not be allowed, and this educator does not allow children to argue and solve their own quarrels. This educator is an educator who has a clear image of the path of learning and this path follows the same route as the other groups of children he/she has worked with over the years. This is a teacher who may have taught for seven years but has had one year’s experience seven times. This is an educator that forgets to question him or herself, about what they are doing and why. They do not engage in a process of continuous improvement or critical reflection. A reforming educator has developed a particular image of
the child and their approach to their work will reflect their image of the child.
MacNaughton also suggests that there are transforming educators. These educators believe that education can be transformative and that they work with ‘children and their families to create a better world’ (MacNaughton, 2003, p.182). An educator who believes in transforming society is an educator who believes in challenging injustices, therefore creating possibilities for all people, regardless of culture, race, religion or any other factor that could marginalise them.
This educator listens and observes children, creates responsive and meaningful relationships with them and notes what they are interested in. Once these educators have listened to children and documented these interests and ideas, they create situations for deepening children’s understandings, for challenging their thoughts. A transforming educator constantly questions what they are doing and why they are doing it. This is an educator that does not know the path of the learning without the input of the children. This is an educator who has taught for seven years and has had seven years’ experience, as each year looked different. The children saw different destinations on the learning maps, asked different questions and had different interests. Each year the group of children and the educator took different routes to familiar destinations. If we return to the metaphor of the landscape, the educator can read the maps that the children are creating and can, therefore, guide the children in their learning. This educator will teach the children how to reflect on the process of their learning and to recognise what they have learnt. This educator allows the children to make mistakes as part of their learning process. This educator encourages risk taking and the types of play that are considered risky by some. This educator may allow a child to climb a tree or to use sharp knives to cut up fruit. This educator allows children to fail and fall and know that these very acts will result in a child fulfilling their potential. A transforming educator has developed a particular image of the child and their approach to their work will reflect this image of the child. Hoyuelos (2013) suggests that Malaguzzi saw early childhood education services as places of change and for change. A transformational place that was not persuaded by political forces but rather a desire for democracy and justice. It is important here to mention that the pedagogical work that occurs in Reggio Emilia does not
only eventuate from the interests of the children but also involves major research by the children and educators. These ideas are introduced by educators through topics utilised as vehicles to explore large concepts. Therefore, transformational practice is based on the premise of both an adult and child centred pedagogy or approach; a democratic approach.
Image of the parent/family
This comment was observed on a social media post in Australia in 2013 and perhaps sums up many educators’ attitudes to families.
The major problem I face is not with kids but with parents. Bottom line, parents need to be educated.
Sometimes “first time” parents may need the extra push or open communication to help them to get where we as educator[s] need them to be which will make our jobs better.’
(personal communication, 5 October, 2013).
How do you feel about this image of parents?
Do you think this way of thinking about parents will lead to good partnerships?
Carla Rinaldi describes the importance of the family and how it contributes to the child’s identity, belonging and wellbeing.
There are three main protagonists in the participation and management of the educational project i.e. the child, the family and the staff whose destinies are closely linked. Our objective is their wellbeing; an overall wellbeing that involves everyone in an interconnected way; if one of the parties is unwell, the wellbeing of the others is in jeopardy. This wellbeing is highly dependent on the quality of the communication between the parties, on the knowledge and awareness they have of their mutual needs and enjoyment, and the opportunities for encounter (Rinaldi, 2006, p. 51).
The above social media post portrays parents as a problem, rather than a partner in a child’s learning. This educator demonstrates a poor image of the parent and families and educators who hold this image should critically reflect on the importance of dialogue, partnerships and positive relationships with families. Parents and families should not be considered to be an annoyance, and the chance to communicate should be valued rather than considered to be bothersome. Dialogue and communication should be a two-way process, where both listen, and both contribute.
There is no magical formula for learning. It is a complex journey that comprises of many elements. It begins with respectful relationships with children, families and educators and the active participation of all of these people.
Educators in Reggio Emilia value families for their participation and partnerships.
Pedagogical documentation
How do you tell the story of the child who speaks a hundred languages?
Documentation, as we have developed in Reggio, does not mean to collect documents after the conclusion of experiences with children but during the course of these experiences. Traditionally the recording and reading of memories takes place at the end of an experience and may become part of a collection of archives. For us documentation is part of the daily life in the schools. It is one of the ways in which we create and maintain relationships and the experiences among our colleagues and children. We think of documentation as an act of caring, act of love and interaction (Rinaldi, 2004, p. 1).
One of the first introductions to the educational project in Reggio Emilia is often through the documentation: the images of young children working together; transcripts of children’s conversations; and collections of drawings and sculptures made by children as they express their theories. This documentation can take many forms. The hundred languages of children exhibition, publications, videos or panels can be seen on the walls of the children’s centres in the city of Reggio Emilia. Reading the children’s theories, the intensity of their engagement and their ability to express themselves in so many ways amazes many people. Documentation is a powerful tool for making visible the many capacities and potentials of children.
Pedagogical documentation can be described as a tool or a strategy to make learning visible. Documentation is an important act to make visible and, therefore, interpret and understand the learning processes of the children. Documentation is a record that is made to try and understand and make visible the learning that is happening with a particular group of children and to guide the decisions that are made about educational strategies, resources and organisation. These records may take a variety of forms, for instance, notes, photographs, videos or samples of the children’s work. They are understood to be subjective records as those doing the recording are making personal choices and decisions (both unconsciously and consciously) about what will be recorded and what recording methods will be used.
Documentation is an intentional practice that supports the educator’s relationship with the child.
Dahlberg et al. (1999) differentiate pedagogical documentation from the methods of child observation. They describe it as a process of trying to understand what is happening ‘without any predetermined framework of expectations and norms’ (p. 146), whereas child observation is a process more geared to observing and assessing children in relation to predetermined developmental standards.
Documentation is also used as professional learning, professional development or to facilitate the process of reflective practice. The availability of actual documents makes it possible for both children and adults to reflect on what has gone before. It helps educators to ask themselves, what is a teacher? Documentation is also for the family. Through documentation, families can see another dimension of their child and their child’s learning as they see their child through a different lens.
Documentation creates a relationship between the past, the present and the future. Documentation serves as a history and a celebration of relationships. Hence, documentation remains from year to year to inform and inspire new children, families and educators alike.
Documentation may occur spontaneously, but it is usually the result of intent to research, document and record information that may assist in deciding on how a particular project may proceed. It may record data, or it may be intended as a means of future communication for families on the way their child undertakes learning and processes information. It may also be intended for the documentation to be used as an advocacy strategy and a democratic act for children and their rights, both as citizens and in realising their potential. The reflection that follows documentation ensures an ongoing cycle of continuous learning for educators.
Documentation can also be seen as a process of transformation. Educators who have begun to work with the ideas from Reggio Emilia, who have been influenced by the principle of pedagogical documentation, have suggested that the way that they have begun to document has changed. Their focus has moved from the concrete behaviour they were seeing, to trying to focus on the
process of learning. Educators suggest that documentation is a strategy for transformation of the documenter and this in itself is an element of quality. Documentation reflects the person who documents and as an educator, if documentation doesn’t change your teaching, why are you doing it?
Pedagogy of relationships
What would Australian educators, parents or government suggest is the basis of education? Curriculum? Thinking? Citizenship? Assessment? Children?
One’s answer to these questions reveals values about life, about what is important and what is not. We often hear about early childhood education services being referred to as child-centered, that is, the child is at the centre of the educational process. But are they?
In some places, children are sent to centres and schools, so that they can undertake more ‘formal’ processes of learning. Some parents and families have a very narrow understanding of what learning is, and they believe that children only learn by being ‘taught’. In these places, educators create the circumstances in which the child can learn. These educational places might be called ‘adultcentered’ and can become places where the transmission of knowledge is passed from one person to another. The parent of the child can be involved in varying degrees depending on their own perspective and that of the school.
Education and the experiences that can be offered in different educational places are vast and arrayed. Education is a process based on values and beliefs about the individual. Sharing knowledge may be seen as being of transmission, or conversely, it can be seen as a process that is constantly constructed and reconstructed, and this process is undertaken in a relationship with others.
The educational project of Reggio Emilia is firmly grounded in the relationship between values, politics, theories and practice. This is a result that has developed over time through reflection upon their experiences in their own cultural context. Their practices have developed through ‘reciprocity’. That is the circular nature of looking at theory and how this influences practice and conversely through looking at practice and discovering if any theorists have written about this idea. Perhaps what you see in practice challenges theory?
The term pedagogy of relationships was coined by Loris Malaguzzi and includes the relationships both within and between groups of children, educators and families, but is within the context of the local community and dialogue with the city. The expression of ‘we’, the triad of interrelationships between children, families and educators, underpins every value and practice within the educational
Figure 6. Documentation leaves traces—like footprints in the sand.
process. Loris Malaguzzi talked of suppressing the distance between people through open and democratic exchanges. He invited the exchange of ideas to challenge and contrast the loneliness, separation, indifference and violence that often characterises the modern world. He wrote:
Our goal is to create an amiable school—that is a school that is active, inventive, liveable, documentable and communicative. Our aim is to make a school that is a place of research, learning, revisiting, reconsideration and reflection. We strive to create an amiable school where children, educators and families feel a sense of wellbeing; therefore the organisation of the schools, their contents, functions, procedures, motivations and interests are designed to bring together the three central protagonists; children, teachers and families and to intensify the inter-relationships between them (n.d., cited in, Edwards et al., 2012, p. 43).
Pedagogy of listening
The pedagogy of listening is an important principle of the Reggio Emilia approach and underpins and enables the pedagogy of relationships. The term pedagogy of listening is a strategy that supports the pedagogy of relationships. Listening is essential to building and maintaining relationships.
Each child has the desire and the right to be seen, heard and listened to at their early childhood service. One of the strategies that educators could use to ensure their visibility is to observe and document individual and group learning processes. In Reggio Emilia, this kind of observation and documentation, that is responsive to the children, has proven to be one of the most valuable elements in educators’ professional learning and an invaluable tool for relating and attuning themselves to the children’s emotional and cognitive thinking. It is also a strategy of ongoing research as to how children’s learning might be enhanced.
Pedagogy of listening exemplifies pedagogy in which children, families and the community are welcomed. Listening with an openness that is inclusive, democratic
and ethical. Listening to children legitimises them and recognises their right to be listened to. Listening to children can result in an understanding of deeper and reciprocal relationships, and the act of documenting the children’s thoughts, feelings, ideas and theories can result in strong and positive relationships with families. Listening is an attitude, an ethic and a value.
It is the role of the educator to listen to children. Not just with their ears, but with their eyes, their hearts and their minds. An educator should listen to children with the intention of being changed. They should be open to changing their mind, changing their perspective or changing their understanding through the listening process.
It is the role of the educator to document important moments of learning; what they have listened to, both intentionally and also when unexpected moments of importance occur. These documents can then be shared with the community, other educators, the families and the children themselves as appropriate.
Listening to children and their families with all your senses (as above suggests) creates trust and a sense of value. Children learn that they have something of value to share. Documentation reinforces this. Listening to children’s theories and thinking about the metaphor of the hundred languages enhances the possibility of discovering more about how children think and construct reality. When educators listen to children and document their thought processes, families witness that their children are ‘seen’ and valued. This trust creates strong relationships between families and early childhood services.
Rinaldi offers this advice about listening:
• Slow down. When educators listen to children, they should slow down. Allow children time to pause. Allow time for silence.
• Listen with curiosity, wonder, doubt and uncertainty.
• Suspend your biases, prejudices and judgments. Listen with openness and embrace diversity and difference (Rinaldi [Reggio Emilia], personal notes, 12 April, 1999).
Progettazione and projects
The pedagogy of Reggio Emilia rejoices in questions instead of answers.
Educators in Reggio Emilia believe that both adults and children are teachers and learners, and this is viewed as important in the social construction of knowledge. The environment is created where learning is not seen only as an individual experience but also as a group experience. Children are valued as individuals within the group rather than a focus predominantly on the group of individuals. The importance of the group is reflected through small group projects that every child has the opportunity to be involved in at different times of the year.
Carla Rinaldi writes about project work with children in the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia in the following terms:
It evokes the idea of a dynamic relationship, a journey that involves the uncertainty and chance that always arises in relationships with others. Project work grows in many directions, with no predefined progression, no outcomes decided before the journey begins. It means being sensitive to the unpredicatable results of children’s investigation and research. The course of a project can thus be short, medium or long, continuous or discontinuous, and is always open to modifications and changes of direction (Rinaldi, 2005, p. 19).
In Australia, a project can begin with an interest or a question, from either a child or an educator. A process of investigation and research then begins for children, with teachers themselves becoming researchers as they document and reflect on the children’s learning processes. It is not just the learning that is valued throughout the process of the project but also the relationships both within and between groups of children, teachers and families and also with the community.
Participation by parents is encouraged and valued. Parents are encouraged to take an active part in their children’s learning experiences in any way they feel comfortable. Projects can result in celebrations, which involve the whole community. Parents can be invited back to the school at night where the process of the project is revealed, therefore not just valuing the product of children’s learning
but also the process. Events like these build a strong sense of community and purpose as children become ‘visible’. Parents see the value and significance of a young child’s learning. Children escape from being indistinct and anonymous. Children are seen and applauded and respected.
Although children will be supported to engage in projects eventuating from their own interests, projects are also introduced by educators several times a year. The topic of a project is carefully chosen and recognises that the project is a vehicle, a tool, or a strategy for research. The topic of a project is usually chosen by educators who have collaborated with a hypothesis or prediction of how things could proceed. ‘Research is not aware of all of its routes, but only the itinerary to follow’ (Hoyuelos, 2013, p. 255). The process of planning for children is called Progettazione which is a flexible approach that hypothesises many possible ways to work. This initial work could be considered to be the ‘launching of a project’. Thought processes and planning would include the work with the children in the centre, the staff professional learning and research and the relationship with families. This process would work towards particular intentions or goals that, where possible, were shared by children and educators.
Each project is a context, a setting that gives meaning to what happens within it. A project about shadows is not the same as a project about colour, just as a project about the computer is not the same as a project about the influence of television. Each project dictates its own laws (Hoyuelos, 2013, p. 201).
Projects are usually undertaken in small groups, who in turn share their experiences, ideas and understandings with the larger group. The small group of children undertaking the project may be referred to as the principal researchers. The project should engage the children and allow them to ‘warm’ to the topic.
Environment, spaces and relations
A pleasant school, according to Malaguzzi, is a place which everyone, children, staff and families, knows each other by name. Malaguzzi could not stand anonymity. In his schools, both children and adults were familiar with each other. For the child, Malaguzzi says, it is very important to be called by name (Hoyuelos, 2013, p. 219).
Note: The infant–toddler centres and preschools of Reggio Emilia are called schools in Reggio Emilia.
Critical attention is given to the places and spaces that children inhabit in Reggio Emilia. A step into the doorway of many of the centres speaks of the community that inhabits it. Each centre not only has a name but also a unique identity. Sometimes the history of the school is available and sometimes there are photos of the educators and staff who inhabit the space and work with the children. This
space highlights the importance of communication, with messages and flyers and upcoming events. There may even be some panels of documentation that contain the words of the children who inhabit this space.
Research in neuroscience and social science confirms that our identity develops from our experiences of the environment as well as our genetic history. We develop our sense and cognitive abilities through interaction with our environment. Children are a laboratory for the senses with each sense activating other senses. As a result the child’s environment cannot be seen just as a context for learning or a passive setting for activities, it is an integral part of learning and helps define their identity (Zini, 2005, p.22).
The spaces in the schools in Reggio Emilia are intentional. There is intentionality in the transparency between rooms, in the natural light and the circularity of the design. The provision of a large meeting space called the ‘piazza’
Figure 7. An Australian early childhood education and care environment.Reprinted with permission of Fintona Girls’ School.
represents Italian culture and is used as a space for children and families to come together and talk through the many experiences and opportunities provided in this dedicated space. This is a space for encounters, for exchange and dialogue. There is intentionality in the provision of an ‘atelier’ or, roughly translated, a laboratory. This space is somewhere for children to explore, to discover and combine. It is a place of freedom, a place of autonomy and a place of agency. An atelier can be thought of like a mini supermarket, with small unique stalls. Children can ‘shop’ for the materials that they need and imagine, construct, talk and encounter the materials they have chosen. They can use these materials to create something new, to express an idea or explore a discovery in another way. These ateliers provide children with environments and materials to express themselves in myriad ways.
The physical environment is an amiable place, a place where there is softness and comfort and beauty. It is a space that is intentionally relational. It is set up to foster friendships between children and adults and foster relationships with materials. Each space has an identity and creates an identity for the inhabitants. Spaces offer experiences that tantalise the senses. The quality of an environment is not one dimensional, it is multidimensional and composed of many elements. Materials and resources are carefully chosen and presented in ways that are respectful to the children and respectful to the material.
Perspective is valued, and equipment such as light tables, mirrors and overhead projectors allow children to experiment with materials and see them through different perspectives. The environment should represent the culture of its inhabitants and welcome them to the space.
When we talk about the environment, we do not just refer to the physical environment but also the social environment. The social environment includes the organisation of the space; the way that time is structured and how routines are conducted. The day is structured to move with the rhythms of children; time to choose, time to think and time to play. Time is not used to control the movements of children, it is offered to children to reflect, go back and retrace their steps. The flow of time in the schools is not hurried or rushed and is flexible. The social environment is in part created through the arrangement of the physical environment and is seen as a ‘teacher’ as it supports the learning of children. It is set up intentionally to foster a sense of belonging and to support the wellbeing of those who inhabit it.
The environments in Reggio Emilia are spaces that document children’s learning, spaces that teach and spaces that provide opportunities for children to discover, explore and to be surprised. In Loris Malaguzzi’s words, ‘it is sort of an aquarium that mirrors the ideas, values, attitudes and cultures of the people who live within it’ (Edwards et al., 2012, p. 339).
A child as a citizen with rights
The acknowledgment of the rights of the child is the declaration of their extraordinary wealth that should be valued and not hidden by inadequate education (Malaguzzi, n.d., cited in, Hoyuelos, 2013, p. 288).
Australia was one of the founding members of the United Nations (UN) and was one of eight countries involved in drafting the Universal Declaration on Human Rights. The Universal Declaration on Human Rights was signed in 1948. The United Nations Declaration of the Rights of the Child followed this later, in 1989. It was the first international and legally binding instrument to uphold the rights of all children. Australia ratified this ground breaking treaty in 1990, but unfortunately, this has not yet been incorporated into Australian law.
In Reggio Emilia, children are seen as the subject of rights from birth. Children are seen as citizens now, not just into the future. When they talk about a child with rights, they are referencing a competent and capable image of the child and how that child is seen in their own cultural context.
What is a right?
Can a right live on its own or does it exist in relationship with others?
Article 31 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child states that:
Parties recognize the right of the child to rest and leisure, to engage in play and recreational activities appropriate to the age of the child and to participate freely in cultural life and the arts (OHCHR, 2015).
Elena Giacopini suggested (personal notes, 2011) at the Reggio Emilia Australia Information Exchange conference in Adelaide in 2011 that children have many rights and these include:
The
right to play
Children have the right and freedom to play in a way that they can invent new worlds; experimenting and creating possible realities without losing sight of the boundaries, and being daring. Play enables children to reinvent themselves and innovate their identity. Play allows children to be ‘distant’ from themselves with ease and to generate a sense of belonging, pleasure and passion.
The right to learn
It is important to provide children with tools and strategies to learn rather than just giving them information, treating them as an empty vessel or describing them as ‘sponges’. Children must know how to access information and give meaning to the information they have found. Children have the right to construct and reconstruct new meanings, understandings and knowledge. Reflecting on a newly formulated idea is called metacognition and is important for children to think about their thinking. From this thinking, undoubtedly children will have questions and build a research attitude that includes doubts. Children have the right to investigate and to build provisional theories and ideas. Knowledge is never absolute. Knowledge is a temporary theory, a construction that may be made individually or collectively. Children have the right to ask questions such as, ‘What do you mean?’ They have the right to experience doubt and the incompleteness of knowledge.
The right to be recognised as an individual
Children have a right, not only to be recipients of care but as producers of relationships. They are constantly seeking to make sense of their actions and to search for the meaning of the things that surround them. They have enormous potential and have the right to express their ideas, understanding and potential through many languages of expression.
Services should be laboratories or studios that promote democracy. Children are members of the communities in which they live and their early childhood services should provide opportunities for learning that shares and builds culture by being a place where solidarity and identity are created, but also be a place where culture, dialogue and difference is valued. Children need opportunities to debate, argue and discuss ideas.
The right to a respectful learning context
Learning contexts for children should offer experiences that promote participation, individual and group learning, intelligent materials, amiable environments, respect for time and educators who document, to research and for their own professional learning.
Educators have the responsibility to create contexts where experiences and learning are deepened. Learning should be generated by experimentation and reflection in a continuous process.
Children should have a purpose when they write or draw. Educators must think about the intentional teaching ideas that they have in mind when proposing this experience to children. They have a right to messy and complicated problems and a right to find the answers to these. They have a right to a documented record of their learning. Educators can create a visible memory of the learning of groups and individuals through documentation.
Children have the right not to agree with the words of another child or an adult. They should have opportunities to express their ideas and to listen to the ideas of others.
Children have the right to take their own time. Educators should give children time to understand, to work at their own pace and to be uninterrupted. They have a right to build their competencies and skills in their own time. Time gives children space to imagine, to dream, to get excited and to learn.
The right to a culture of the contemporary
The image of the child as that of a sponge or a blank slate is an image that considers a child as ‘poor’—that is, the child begins with nothing and spends their life being filled with knowledge and culture. Educators who deny ‘popular culture’ in their services for children—who only accept part of the child—do not accept the whole child. An educator who denies children the right to bring in contemporary toys such as the characters from the movie, Frozen, or toys such as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles could be denying children the opportunity to experience identity and belonging with their friends, and at the same time be a critic of parents’ choices.
How do you welcome those parts of the experience of popular culture? Educators must ask themselves:
• What are the qualities of these toys?
• Why do children like them? Are they fascinating?
• Which concepts are interesting to children and what parts can be modified?
Conclusion
The bicycle as a metaphor. In 1943, the National Fascist Party rule in Italy ended when Mussolini was imprisoned. Mussolini and fascism had destroyed the many freedoms and rights that Italians had previously enjoyed, and this system of government was dismantled to prevent another individual assuming this much power ever again. The Italians decided to form the Italian Republic, which is still in place today. This history and a hope for democracy cannot be forgotten or ignored when considering the origins of the development of the Reggio Emilia educational project.
Reggio Emilia is a city where bicycles are still used regularly as a means of transport. In the subway under the railway line, there are hundreds of images of bicycles that have been drawn as a symbol of freedom, along with a troubled Italian fascist history.
The educational project of Reggio Emilia is inspirational, and many visiting international educators come away
from the city wanting to reproduce or replicate these ideas in their context. I do not miss the irony in this desire to replicate an educational project, to imprison oneself in a pedagogy that has been created in the cultural context of an Italian city. There is an irony in the imprisoning of oneself to ideas that were born out of a desire for freedom and democracy. To think of Reggio as a blueprint, or as a method, is to imprison your thinking and ignores the provocation of Reggio Emilia to think of yourself as a researcher, alongside the children, families and communities with whom you work.
Perhaps we should look to the bicycle, as a symbol of freedom, as a strategy or a vehicle to assist us to navigate the educational terrain and landscapes of our cultural contexts and to recreate these ideas and stamp them with our values, beliefs and hopes for children?
This drawing was part of a project by Remida, the Creative Recycling Centre and the City Department for the Historical Centre, City Department for Projects and Special works, The Friends of Reggio Children Association, Italian State Railway, Istitutzione preschools and centres and Reggio Children.
The bicycle is a symbol of progress, of renewal, of promising times ahead. This is not a new concept. Indeed, it has been around since the invention of the bicycle. Many bicycle posters at [the] end of the 19th century featured promised themes like liberation, progress, and freedom (Copenhagenize Design Co., 2014).
Figure 8. Photo of a bike in Reggio Emilia. Reprinted with permission from Catharine Hydon.
Figure 9. A drawing of a bike in the station subway in Reggio Emilia.
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