Reggio Emilia approach
At the core of this philosophy is an assumption that children form their own personality during the early years of development and that they are endowed with "a hundred languages", through which they can express their ideas.
During the post-World War II era in Italy, the country was overcome with a “…desire to bring change and create anew",[2] brought on by significant economic and social development, including in education.
[7] In November 2002, during the annual conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children in Chicago, the North American Reggio Emilia Alliance was formally established.
[3] In 2003, the municipality of Reggio Emilia chose to manage the system and the network of school services and toddler centres by forming the Istituzione Scuole e Nidi d'Infanzia.
[9] The foundation of the Reggio Emilia approach lies in its unique view of the child: to foster education in the youngest learners to promote the best possible integration among children’s "100 languages".
Much of the instruction at Reggio Emilia schools takes place in the form of projects where they have opportunities to explore, observe, hypothesize, question, and discuss to clarify their understanding.
The Reggio Emilia approach to early education reflects a theoretical kinship with John Dewey, Jean Piaget, Lev Vygotsky and Jerome Bruner, among others.
For example, teachers in Reggio Emilia assert the importance of being confused as a contributor to learning; thus a major teaching strategy is purposely to allow mistakes to happen, or to begin a project with no clear sense of where it might end.
Community involvement is also apparent in citizen membership in La Consulta, a school committee that exerts significant influence over local government policy.
[15] The lack of externally imposed mandates is joined by the imperative that teachers become skilled observers of children in order to inform their curriculum planning and implementation.
By making learning visible, the student's thinking and feeling can be studied while the documentation serves to help with evaluation of the educators' work and refinement of the curriculum.
[18] Malaguzzi believed the physical environment to be of fundamental importance to the early childhood program; he referred to it as the "third teacher", alongside adults and other students.
The single dress-up area is in the center piazza; classrooms are connected with telephones, passageways or windows; and lunchrooms and bathrooms are designed to encourage community.
The curriculum is characterized by many features advocated by contemporary research on young children, including real-life problem-solving among peers, with numerous opportunities for creative thinking and exploration.
Teachers often work on projects with small groups of children, while the rest of the class engages in a wide variety of self-selected activities typical of preschool classrooms.
Regardless of their origins, successful projects are those that generate a sufficient amount of interest and uncertainty to provoke children's creative thinking and problem-solving and are open to different avenues of exploration.
Because curriculum decisions are based on developmental and sociocultural concerns, small groups of children of varying abilities and interests, including those with special needs, work together on projects.
Reggio teachers provide children different avenues for thinking, revising, constructing, negotiating, developing and symbolically expressing their thoughts and feelings.
[3] As children proceed in an investigation, generating and testing their hypotheses, they are encouraged to depict their understanding through one of many symbolic languages, including drawing, sculpture, dramatic play, and writing.
Revision of drawings (and ideas) is encouraged, and teachers allow children to repeat activities and modify each other's work in the collective aim of better understanding the topic.
