Role of the Teacher
According to the Bank Street approach, “We think of curriculum not as a series of recipes for activities, but rather as the opportunities for experience you offer children that help them deepen their understanding of the world. The curriculum is the sum of those opportunities and it is created through a dynamic process of planning and decision making” (Mitchell & David, 1992, p. 121). Teachers plan activities and choose materials to match children’s abilities and interests (Figure 2.5); arrange opportunities for direct interaction with the physical and social world; and help children to represent their questions and ideas through writing, speaking, and visual representation. Finally, teachers use the information they have gleaned to drive future planning. Bank Street gave birth to the concept of a theme-based, inquiry-oriented curriculum.
Reggio Emilia
Shortly after World War II, a teacher named Loris Malaguzzi (19201994) founded a series of municipal preschools in Reggio Emilia, Italy. When they were designated the best in the world by Newsweek in 1991, (Kantrowitz & Wingert, p. 50) these schools became widely known in America. Early childhood educators began to visit the Reggio Emilia preschools in Italy, and were much impressed; they began to think about adapting the Reggio Emilia principles to American classrooms (Bredekamp, 1993; Hertzog, 2001; Hewett, 2001; Linn, 2001).
Basic Principles
The Reggio Emilia philosophy is a continually evolving dynamic process defined and refined by its primary stakeholdersteachers, children, parents, and the community. It is grounded in an image of children as innately competent and powerful with the right to a stake in decision making about their learning. Malaguzzi drew from the ideas of John Dewey about active and meaningful learning and from the constructivist theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky in particular, as well as Montessori, Bronfenbrenner, and the social psychologists.
According to Malaguzzi, education for young children is built on relationships (1993). The concept of reciprocity is a key element to building, maintaining, and transforming relationships between teachers, children, the environment, and the community (Gandini, 1993). Reciprocity can be likened to a game of catchcommunications and interactions are tossed like a ball between adults and children in a gentle, playful exchange that creates meaning (Rankin, 1992). Reggio Emilia teachers are never in a hurry to push children through exploration and conversation about their ideas.
Communication is essential to the reciprocal process of relationship building. In the eyes of Reggio Emilia teachers, it takes many forms from which children should be free to choose at any time to convey their ideas and express themselves. This idea gave root to the phrase “100 languages of children,” which became the title of the first book published about the Reggio Emilia approach (Edwards, Gandini, & Forman, 1998). It is also the title of a continually changing exhibit of children’s work sponsored by the Reggio Emilia Children organization that has been traveling the world since 1981.
The Reggio Emilia curriculum is an emergent curriculum, meaning that topics of study and time frames are fluid and not predetermined. They are driven instead by the interests, questions, and reflections of children and teachers as they interact with each other and the environment.
Ideas for long-term inquiries (projects) come from three sources: children’s personal experiences, school experiences, and “provocations”events structured by teachers to generate interest and curiosity. Teachers establish general goals; they then plan by predicting what might happen next and prepare accordingly.
The Reggio Emilia Classroom
More From the Field
Critical Thinking Question
- Consider Meredith’s statement that Reggio teachers consider the environment a “third teacher.” What does that mean to you and why might it apply to a Reggio classroom?
Malaguzzi stated that the goal of the Reggio Emilia system was to create, “an amiable schoolthat is, a school that is active, inventive, livable, documentable, and communicative. . . . a place of research, learning, revisiting, reconsideration, reflection.” (Malaguzzi, 1993, p. 9). Toward these ends, the preschool Reggio Emilia classrooms in Italy and those inspired by them in the United States are aesthetically beautiful and filled with details that are intended to intrigue, delight, and surprise children as they encounter and interact with the environment. The environment is considered part of the curriculum and even referred to as the “third teacher.”
Each Reggio classroom is unique because it is intended to reflect those who inhabit the space. Teachers carefully design space for individuals, social interactions, and “marginal” community areas like kitchens and bathrooms (Gandini, 1993). Reggio Emilia schools usually also include an “atelier”a studio space that includes art materials of all kinds, so that children can express and represent their ideas. Here children work to master techniques and media that add to their repertoire of “languages” and teachers come to broaden their understanding of how children are thinking. The atelier also serves as an archive for present and past work (Gandini, 1993). When American teachers using a Reggio Emilia approach do not have access to an entire room for the atelier, they create a “miniatelier” space within the classroom.