Reggio is a network of more
than 30 centers and schools for young children from a few months old up to 6
years (and soon expanding) in the municipal schools of Reggio Emilia in northern
Italy. Reggio is also a body of
evolving pedagogical thought and practice infused with cultural values that
take preschool into a public square.
 |
| Reggio Children |
I
was going to write about documentation,
a Reggio-inspired practice that is attracting greater interest in school and
museum settings in the US and world-wide. A spiraling, iterative, reflective
process of following children, documentation involves gathering and
interpreting traces of children’s work and words to give visibility to their
thinking and discoveries that are present but we are not yet seeing. Using dialogue and collaboration, documentation is
a tool to make us think again and deepen our consideration of what children
are thinking and how they make meaning. I intended to place documentation in a museum
context and explore its potential for giving visibility to children’s thinking, look at
what’s working, and consider ways to support and extend their explorations.
The
writing process, however, has been messier and more of a tangle than
usual. Tromping through the tangle to investigate has uncovered some important missing
pieces. For starters, documentation is hard to encapsulate briefly. Note, for instance,
the density of the “quick” overview in the previous paragraph; while long
and involved, it barely unpacks what is significant about documentation. It is precisely
the complexity of documentation that makes this rich, layered, generative cycle
of observing, reflecting, interpreting, and revisiting a powerful tool for
learning for children, teachers, and parents. A tool that “brings to light what
usually escapes the eye,” according to Carlina Rinaldi is unlikely to be summed
up in 5 or 10 words.
Adapting
documentation to museum settings is also a challenge; fortunately an attractive one. But at the core of this tangle is making the connection between the
Reggio-inspired approach and museums and their practices. Documentation is a
set of practices embedded in a tightly connected pedagogy that is integrated in
a system of public schools that have emerged from a community in a region in
Italy over the last 60 years. Work to unpack those elements has to precede exploring
documentation.
Country,
Culture, and Context
Adapting the Reggio approach from a northern Italian region to another country
is less of a stretch than it
might first appear. These schools have evolved within
their own historical and cultural context and are responsive to changing social
needs. While internationally known and admired and an inspiration and source of
energy for educators and parents in schools, childcare, homes, nature centers,
community centers, and museums worldwide, the Municipal Infant Toddler Centers
and Preschools of Reggio Emilia can
only
be in Reggio. They are rooted in a particular time and place; they cannot be replicated and cannot be transplanted wholesale to
another city, Italian or otherwise.
Museums likewise value the rich web of local community and cultural
references, relationships, and traditions and are grounded in their communities.
Local context and priorities are expressed in missions, content, collections,
and community engagement strategies. Occupying a public space with some
prominence, museums are increasingly pursuing opportunities that grow their public value
and are responsive to their community’s assets and needs.
A Tightly
Connected Pedagogy
Reggio’s philosophical underpinnings are not new to museums familiar with Dewey,
Piaget, Vygotsky, and Bruner. Early on, educators in Reggio Emilia read these
same theorists and philosophers whose views are an inspiration for
understanding learning as an active process, one in which learners construct
knowledge through participation in activities, and one that occurs in a
socio-cultural context.
While museums share these underpinnings, there are differences. Teachers
in Reggio have not been bound by these theories but instead have used them to
construct their own perspectives. They have, for instance, widened the idea of
“language” stressed by Vygotsky to what they call the hundred languages of
children, multiple symbolic and expressive forms of conveying thoughts and
feeling. Significantly, the ideas of these philosophers and theorists are
more fully embodied and made visible in Reggio practice than in museums and
schools in the US and most countries. Practice with a high correspondence to
theory is a function of, among other things, implementing the pedagogy and
practices over 60 years with rigor and depth.
Image
of the Child
 |
| Reggio Children |
Reggio pedagogy also reflects a whole-hearted trust and confidence in
children, their capabilities and potential. An image of the child as competent,
rich in abilities, and motivated to engage with the world right from birth is
at the very heart of the Reggio philosophy. The schools reflect and support the child’s
curiosity and interests in developing relationships and investigating everything
they encounter. Teachers prepare the environment, frame projects and support
extended explorations where they are also partners in learning. So primary is the
view of children as capable that it extends readily to an image of teachers and
parents as competent. Children, parents, and teachers are partners in a community
of learners.
Museums play out related ideas. Visitor-centered museums value the experiences,
interests, and expectations of visitors and learners. Participatory museums view their audience and community as collaborators, experimenting with participatory
design and exploring innovative uses of social media. In fact, many museums are
exploring and experiencing a shift from viewing visitors, learners, and community members as consumers
to co-creators of content and experiences.
The
Environment
 |
| Reggio Children |
In Reggio pedagogy a belief in the powerful influence of surrounding space
is expressed as the environment as the
third teacher. Children create meaning and make sense of their world in
the context of the physical setting and through their constant interactions
with it. Thoughtful
preparation of spaces considers arrangement, the presence of natural
light, use of color, objects, and materials, and attention to beauty to invite and
support unhurried exploration, sustained engagement, communication, and changing
relationships between people, ideas and the many possibilities for expressing novel connections.
Museum environments are valued as rich, dynamic environments full of
information from objects, media, and people, released through social and
physical interactions. At their best, they are convivial spaces as described by Kathleen McLean and Wendy Pollock that welcome and make
people comfortable, foster relationships and inspire action. The contextual model of learning proposes that the individual’s museum learning experience depends on the
physical and temporal as well as personal and social contexts.
Relationships
Relationships in Reggio are integral to the
dynamic of learning and to the pedagogy itself. Relationships among children,
between teachers and children, between home and school, between school and
community form a system of connections that is dynamic and allows complexity.
Reggio educators are quick to point out that the value of relationships is not
limited to a warm and protective wrap. Instead, relationships operate
actively, robustly, throughout the system, and towards a common purpose.
For museums, relationships are an important and basic
although less visible element of the dynamic. The powerful relationship
between people and objects is often recognized
as distinguishing museums from other settings. Museums also cultivate relationships with
stakeholders and partners deliberately and effectively. Few museums, however, explicitly
consider deep and sustained relationships as central to their purpose.
Likewise, many museums focus on family learning, yet few view the relationships between family members as
an object of engagement or support.
Reggio schools value
creativity as a characteristic of
thinking, knowing, and making choices. Confident in children’s curiosity and motivation
to explore and in the role of a supportive and engaging environment, Reggio
educators view creativity as constructing new connections between thoughts and objects.
Emerging
from daily experience, creativity happens all the time and is not relegated to a creative
hour of art. Creativity is more about the
art of thinking than about art.
Interest in creativity in museums
is also strong although with perhaps another emphasis. Creativity in museums appears
to be more closely associated with art and less with learning. For children,
creativity in museums is more likely viewed as art education or making art rather
than as part of learning in a broader sense. Play often involves creativity but
is typically viewed as imaginative play rather than as the construction of
meaning.
Expressions
of the tightly connected pedagogical philosophy and the interplay of ideas come
through in countless other ways such as the atelier
or studio spaces; projects that are extended explorations of themes and
ideas; display of children’s work and words; and the power of documentation.
Where Differences Emerge
Overall,
the alignment and resonance between Reggio pedagogy and museums is strong, from
foundational theories to specific practices. There are, however, structural
differences between the schools in Reggio, in fact any schools, and museums that affect how fully and in what ways this
body of pedagogical thought can be adapted.
Schools
are places children go everyday, usually 5 days a week for 9 months of the year.
Museums are places children and adults visit occasionally, or if frequently, then
irregularly. In a context where social and physical relationships are paramount
as sources of encounter, connections, and communication among children, with
the environment, between children and teachers, and between school and home,
lively, regular, deep, and sustained engagement is limited. There is, as the
Italian educators say, little or no continuity.
Many practices such as projects and documentation rely on or significantly
benefit from the continuity of daily relationships.
At
the same time, museums offer another type of continuity–families visiting
together. The parent-child relationship valued in the Reggio schools is well
represented in museums. In many museums, 50% of visitors come in family groups.
Many are members returning multiple times each year. For families visiting
together, the web of relationships connects family members–often including
grandparents–and the museum experience with home.
This structural difference is not insignificant nor is it insurmountable. The
Reggio approach can be and is valued and implemented in museums. The spirit of
the pedagogy can and does inspire practices across a variety of settings.
- There
are also networks like the Reggio-Inspired Network of Minnesota, a community
of educators, parents and citizens who share an interest in the philosophy of
the
municipal preschools and infant-toddler centers of Reggio Emilia, Italy that is focused on growing the
community of learners in schools, homes, and throughout the community.
This
is a rich and generous pedagogy. It is rich in its thinking, in examples of
constructing new perspectives from existing theories, and as a model of rigor
and depth in its practice. It is generous to its learners viewed as strong,
competent, and full of potential, whether they are children, teachers, parents,
or the community. This community of educators in Reggio Emilia is open in sharing the unfolding
educational project and in inviting others to join.
Other
Resources
