THE PRINCIPLES AND PEDAGOGY OF THE REGGIO EMILIA PRESCHOOL FINDINGS ON WHAT PROMOTES SUCCESSFUL LEARNING IN YOUNG CHILDREN
The Reggio Emilia Approach, which originated in northern Italy after WW2, has acquired global recognition and a wide following among educators. The influence has been active in Australia since 1994, when the ‘Hundred Languages Exhibition’ was staged in Melbourne.The Hundred Languages of Children is an international travelling exhibition informing audiences about the Italian-based Reggio Emilia educational pedagogy for more than 25 years.
What makes the Reggio Emilia Approach so compelling?
There are many answers to that question, and indeed, in 1991, Newsweek selected the Reggio Emilia Preschools and Infant-Toddler Centres as the best preschools in the world, reporting that they represented ‘an example of a grass-roots project that has become an international role model’ (Newsweek, 1991).
In this article, I would like to examine the principles of the Reggio Emilia Approach in light of modern neuroscience findings on what supports learning success. Twelve principles are documented and published (Istitiuzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, 2010).
I group the principles into four categories, as you can see below.
The Principles of the Reggio Emilia Preschools and Infant-Toddler Centres
A. Vision
1. Organisation
2. Professional Development
B. Relationships
3. The Image of the Child
4. Participation
C. Methodology
5. Progettazione
6. Research as a Key Activity
7. The Hundred Languages of Expression
8. The Environment as the Third Teacher
9. Learning as an Individual and Group Construction
D. Assessment
10. The Pedagogy of Listening
11. Documentation
12. Assessment
How do the Principles of Reggio Emilia Reflect the Neuroscience of Successful Learning?
In the discussion below, I will discuss the principles concerning brain research on experiences and interactions that support learning. The brain, a miraculous organ, is the only organ created within and beyond the body. What children experience has a profound impact on their identity and self-esteem.
A. Principles that encapsulate the VISION of the schools
1. ORGANISATION
2. PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT
1. Organisation
Organisation creates stability and a sense of belonging
Organisation as a Hologram
Loris Malaguzzi has described the Reggio Emilia educational system as a hologram, an entity in which ‘each small part should reflect the ideas and choices that inspire the whole system and above all should make the wellbeing of the entire organisational system possible’ (Project Zero; Reggio Children, 2001).
The organisation of the whole reflects each part, and each part reflects the whole. The organisation of work, space, and time are based on choices and values that cohere. There is an assumption of shared responsibility. As a vision idea, the organisation brings coherence between the principles and the daily organisational decisions.
How does this organisation link with neuroscience?
A brain is a pattern-seeking machine. Humans develop their sense of self and self-esteem based on their interactions with others (Solomons, 2013). We are more likely to feel significant if we experience continuity, receptiveness and stability. Carla Rinaldi, one of the leading spokespersons for the pedagogy, describes how their role as educators recognises each child as an individual and that the child is ‘taken out of anonymity’ (Rinaldi, 2006). The Reggio Emilia pedagogy is renowned for its innovation, but the way children are regarded and the style of engagement are consistent. A sense of safety and predictability is essential for learning. If children are unsure of how they will be treated or experience uncertainty, they will be anxious and less able to focus on novel, incoming information. Even the school cooks are versed in the philosophy and listen to and work with children accordingly. Children are open to learning When they are safe and feel a sense of belonging.
2. Professional Development
Even the thousand-mile journey starts with one first step
In Reggio Emilia, professional learning is seen as both a right and a responsibility. The pedagogy is complex, but everyone working in the schools is supported to learn how things are done. When educators work together to understand the principles underlying and guiding projects within the centres, they develop a shared language and understanding that brings alignment and clarity of ideas.
For educators, the professional learning is done in-house, and they have access to the two unique professionals who work with them in situ to enhance and facilitate their work. Loris Malaguzzi, the progenitor of philosophy, introduced these revolutionary roles because he believed in collaborative planning and learning. A pedagogista works with and supports educators from several centres bringing an overarching perspective. Meetings are scheduled to conduct a dialogue about current projects to determine the direction they might take to most benefit the students’ interests and research.
The atelieristas were introduced to the centres as a disruptive influence, or ‘sand in the machinery’, to take learning in innovative directions in concert with children’s curiosity and inventiveness. These specialised art educators do not teach the children to create art but work with them to create art to support and extend learning. Besides in-house professional development, Reggio Children partners with networks and organises international study tours. We have Reggio Emilia Australian Information Exchange (REAIE) in Australia. Annual delegations travel to Reggio Emilia each year to attend study tours and advanced courses at the Loris Malaguzzi Centre.
How does this professional learning link with neuroscience?
Because of the concerted mission to educate teachers on the principles, they have a firm understanding of the methods and underpinnings of projects. Professional learning encourages reflective practices, observations and documentation which is shared. It is contextual, not imposed by external influences.
Similarly, children feel secure in a known environment, and so it is with educators. Because of continuous collaborative learning, they are confident in their practices and processes. Both they and students derive a sense of purpose as they work on projects together. A sense of purpose is the antidote to alienation, a shared experience of teachers worldwide (Soza, 2015).
Having a collaborative process gives teachers a sense of inclusiveness. This is the opposite of what multitudes of teachers experience when isolated with their students behind classroom doors.
B. Principles that encapsulate the RELATIONSHIPS within the schools
3. IMAGE OF THE CHILD
4. PARTICIPATION
3. The Image of the Child
IF WE THINK THE CHILD OR ANY HUMAN IS A PROTAGONIST IN THE LEARNING ENTERPRISE, THEN THEY NEED TO BE ACTIVE. EACH TAKES PART IN THE RELATIONSHIPS IN THE LEARNING COMMUNITY AND THE CONTEXT
The child is seen as a strong and capable co-constructor of his or her learning. Children assign meaning and make sense of the world around them. Curious, expressive and motivated, they have a right to be individuals within the group. No matter which projects you read about or observe, the overriding sense is of children being active. They are doing, wondering, thinking and participating. However, we should also be aware of the teacher's presence, not as a director but as a facilitator and provider of resources. These resources appeal to children's intellect, emotions and senses as they interact collaboratively with their peers. The resources may be materials, equipment, technology or action. The learning is mediated but unobtrusively and intelligently, giving children the freedom to think and do things for themselves.
How does this image of the child link with neuroscience?
The brain's neural pathways are the biological captures of thoughts and memories. The pathways are stimulated by sensations from both within and outside the body. By being proactive and using all their faculties,, the children directly impact their neural network. Action and involvement lend the experiences a degree of attention and significance stronger than passive learning. Self-generated thoughts and the habit of thought generation build a network for critical and creative thinking. This is especially true if the activation is repeated strongly and often enough. Networks start to communicate and fire together (Hebb, 1949); (Shore, 2003). Most synapses or neural connections are produced during the early years of life. If they are not used or activated regularly, they are pruned back. When children are not encouraged to develop their thinking or independence or whenneglected, their neural health can be negatively impacted.
An image of a child who co-constructs their thinking is mirrored by healthy neural networks and the development of a superhighway for active rather than passive thinking (Shonkoff, Phillips, & (Eds), 2000).
3. Participation
The interconnectivity of the individual, the group, the community
and the world is taken into account
A system of relationships defines Reggio Emilia's philosophy. The child, educator and family are equal participants. There is a value and a strategy of belonging. A culture of solidarity is the basis of making learning visible to the community. The corner of the triangle representing the child is his or her intellectual, social, and affective identity, which is formed at the interface with others. The corner relating to the teacher is an entry point of the educator’s self and their metacognitive awareness of their role in educating the child. The corner relating to the parent is the entry point for the child’s familial and cultural identity and the broadening relationships with the community beyond the family.
The triangle rests in a space of trust and contribution.
It is customary in the Reggio Emilia preschools and infant-toddler centres to hold meetings with parents to discuss their children's learning. The points of view are sought and taken seriously.
How does participation link with neuroscience?
As mentioned, one of the most essential preconditions for efficient brain development is a feeling of security. If we do not feel comfortable in our environment, we become stressed. Stress restricts our prefrontal cortex resources. Our body responds to stress by raising our heartbeat and introducing adrenalin into our bloodstream. We breathe more quickly, and our hands become sweaty. We focus on fight-or-flight.
In the triangle of relationships conception, the children are so secure that they can give all their attention to the task at hand. They harness all their cognitive functions to identify and optimise learning opportunities. The Reggio Emilia approach views the child holistically. They accept the child on his/her terms, and the sense of belonging and nurturing is the basis of everything else. If this sounds repetitive, it is because the general organisation of the enterprise emphasises this belonging.
In attachment theory, first outlined by John Bowlby, this sense of belonging helps us develop in a healthy and balanced way (Bowlby, 1977). It is important to raise the idea that not only children but educators and families benefit from this sense of attachment.
C. Principles that encapsulate the METHODOLOGY of the schools
5. PROGETTAZIONE
6. RESEARCH AS A KEY ACTIVITY
7. THE HUNDRED LANGUAGES OF EXPRESSION
8. THE ENVIRONMENT AS THE THIRD TEACHER
9. LEARNING AS INDIVIDUAL AND GROUP CONSTRUCTION
5. Progettazione
The plan commences with a provocation in the direction of the learning. it is not prescriptive but invitational. There is a strategy of thought that can be modified
Planning is not made towards a fixed goal. Planning is a projection of well-researched possibilities. It is a map with topography that may or may not be explored but is ready to be. It allows for side paths and divergence, The pedagogy is project-based but flexible. The process of planning is serious and is characterised by intellectual rigour. Departure points beyond education are explored. In Reggio Emilia, educators look for inspiration from various sources. They reference the work of engineers, architects, poets, artists, designers and more. They do not plan to enact the project within the walls of the centre but regularly take children out. Both so children can see the world and the world can see the children.
What to Teach?
The emphasis on children’s interests and the role of the teacher as a facilitator has sometimes been misinterpreted and confused. The term ‘emergent curriculum’ was commonly used when talking about the Reggio Emilia pedagogy. An emergent curriculum assumes that the children and their interests are the curriculum's driving force and that the teacher's role is to follow their lead. This is not completely true.
Project-based learning
The teachers select an area of study. This may be suggested by what the children are interested in, what the teachers are interested in, or a combination of both. A period of research, resourcing, planning, and development ensues before a project is launched using a form of provocation. The provocation might be an object, an experience, an image, a display, a visitor, or anything at all that stimulates thinking and wonder.
The teachers generate learning pathways and prepare themselves in advance for many possibilities. They then offer initial experiences, which may be a provocation. They stand back to observe, act, and plan new resources in response to what occurs as children interact with the provocation. They are careful to preserve the children’s agency while following the knowledge. This view of curriculum ensures that the children remain engaged and motivated in their learning. They are the progenitors of parts of the action and will have a personal interest in the group action.
The wonderful saying from Reggio Emilia that encapsulates this is, ‘Nothing without Joy’.
How is progettazione linked with neuroscience?
In neuroscience, we see that doing and thinking about things yourself is much more effective than watching others do it. Imitation is one level of thinking. But when children enact the learning, they deepen, personalise, and gain new competencies.
When children plan their actions, they develop a sense of agency that is not present if everything is prepared or done for them. When they are actively engaged, their emotional tone is positive. They may even enter a state of flow, where they become rather than do the task (Steven, 2021).
The agency is affected by emotions. When there is an emotion of enjoyment or excitement, the impulse is strong and prone to firing neurons to make connections and send things into long-term memory. Individual agency, intrinsic motivation, and personal action are excellent new learning drivers.
According to Barry and Tony Buzan, some circumstances encourage learning and memory:
· We learn through all our senses
· We remember well what happened at the beginning (primacy)
· We remember well what happened at the end (recency)
· We remember what we are interested in
· We remember new things we can connect to what is already known
· We remember things that engage our emotions (Buzan & Buzan, 1993)
When children are doing things for themselves and planning the next steps based on what has already motivated them, we can see these ideas come into play. Rima Shore, in her excellent book, Rethinking the Brain, discusses how when children experience rich, stimulating learning environments, their cortex increases in size. The actual number of dendrites in each neuron rises, and they, in turn, connect with other neurons, forming dendrite trees. Science has shown that the effect of this growth is maintained into adulthood (Shore, 2003).
What Progettazione doesis provide a well-thought-out learning landscape, rich in prior planning, and a well-resourced environment to launch children’s learning and agency without being directive.
5. Research as an essential activity
Listening with all your senses, learning is a journey of mutual discovery
Each day is a new encounter best met with an open curiosity. In Reggio Emilia, children are seen as researchers. The educators do not see themselves as ‘the sage on the stage' with all the knowledge. To quote Melbourne musicians, Cat Empire offers children' the light with no lime’. The teachers stay out of the limelight. At the same time, they don’t hand it over to the children. The research is in partnership. Research means that you don’t know the answers. The innovative projects that have emerged from Reggio Emilia commence in places no one else is looking. They often work in liminal spaces, the borders between things. ‘Nature and the Digital’, is one example where educators put together elements frequently seen in opposition. Rather than reducing nature in this digital world, digital technology gave children a macro view barely available to the human eye. And then there is a microscope to play with!
Research in partnership with others is a collaborative act of gathering knowledge and information. Research is going beyond the boundaries of the known. In Reggio Emilia, this is not about searchingon Google and repeating information; itt is a genuine interaction with the real world, an authentic search for relationships, meanings, creations and correlation.Seldom, if ever, is the first response or idea accepted when children are researching they often return to the same place, at different times and in different circumstances to deepen their understanding of their content.
How is research as a critical activity linked with neuroscience?
If you cast your mind back to the conditions for learning proposed by the Buzan brothers, you will remember that ‘we remember new things we can connect to what is already known.’The critical partof this research condition for successful learning is that new information, is connected to what has gone before. Regularly in our classrooms across the world, teachers introduce new unrelated content. It is external to children’s current knowledge base. Jean Piaget’s concepts of assimilation and accommodation help explain why linking the unknown to the known is beneficial. Children make meaning from their experiences and build a schema of related information in their memories. When encountering something new and related, they assess the incoming data in light of what they already have in mind. If things do not match up exactly, their thinking is alerted, and they re-examine assimilated information and accommodate and update it (Piaget & Inhelder, 2008).
The research in Reggio Emilia is never extraneous but is grounded in what the children and educators are doing. It is real-life and contextual. This is an essential principle of design methodology, and the best innovation arrives when the focus is on fundamental issues, tangible goals, and real action (Leifert, Lewrick, & Link, 2020). When knowledge is not pre-packaged but explored personally and collaboratively, it will have more significance and fire vital neural messages. Hands-on action and self-generated thought are more memorable. The brain is naturally curious. It is always on the lookout for what is novel. Anything that has become routine or predictable has been submerged into automation. Resourcing children to be curious and inventive keeps the brain awake and active.
7. The Hundred Languages of Expression
The Child
is made of one hundred
The child has
a hundred languages
a hundred hands
a hundred thoughts
a hundred ways of thinking
From the poem by Loris Malaguzzi
(Translated by Lella Gandini)
We do not experience the world in one dimension or one modality. Loris Malaguzzi’s internationally famous poem is a call to recognise how children and adults interact with the world. The poem emphasises the multi-modal nature of communication. Communication is internal, in the mind and the emotions, and external, expressed with the voice and the body. The educators in Reggio Emilia talk about ‘the expressive, the communicative and the cognitive languages’. These languages include music, mathematics, dance, painting, drama, puppetry, science, conversation, dialogue, sculpture, construction and many more! Because of the awareness and openness to using techniques from all these areas, the role of the teacher was transformed from being in control of learning to facilitating collaborative learning. They plan and resource with others to encourage the students to be autonomous learners as they interact with concepts and materials. Children express their knowledge using ‘words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, collage, dramatic play, or music’ (Edwards, Gandini, & Foreman, 1998).
The hundred languages are a collection of all the ways that children and human beings have the potential to internalise knowledge and express it. The languages work synergistically to create connections between and amongst our experiences, giving us a deep understanding of the relationships between things, not grasped episodically. As educators, we talk about developing students’ literacy, which usually refers to verbal communication (speaking, reading, and writing). But children can become literate in all modes of communication.
There is great diversity in the modes we use to communicate information and meaning: concrete manipulative, photographic, pictorial, graphic, tabular, schematic, symbolic, verbal written, verbally spoken, gestural, postural, locomotor and digital. You are likely to add even more. Students thrive when they learn to decode and encode the structure and elements of each. If we harness many languages, the level of understanding is increased, and it is the teachers' responsibility to keep the languages accessible to all the students.
The addition of ateliers and atelieristas supports this aspect of the philosophy, again highlighting the importance of the schools' overarching organisation.
How do the hundred languages of expression link with neuroscience?
Every sense provides qualitatively different information along dedicated pathways in the brain. Despite the more significant proportion of the population being visual learners, a huge amount of information in schools is provided in the verbal modality, speaking and writing. The concept of a hundred languages ensures that children approach content in various ways. Often, when children go from telling their ideas to drawing them, they make new connections and develop entirely new understandings about what is being explored. The more areas of the brain engaged in learning, the more successful it will be. The different sensory areas communicate and connect across the brain to build schemata of understanding that are more complex than if children only watch or listen to content (Victoria Department of Education and Training, 2018).
In Reggio Emilia's classrooms, children can often experiment with and explore ideas by manipulating materials. Each material has embedded concepts that are latent for learning. For example, the force of magnetism may surprise children and arouse curiosity. As they explore, they make meaning of their experiences. There is a learning interface between what is sensed, observed and interpreted. Multiply this experience by 1,000, which is the number out of 6,000 hours children typically spend at school, and you can start to imagine the density of communicating networks, synapses, in the child’s brain.
8. The Environment as the Third Teacher
WE VALUE SPACE TO CREATE A HANDSOME ENVIRONMENT AND ITS POTENTIAL TO INSPIRE SOCIAL, AFFECTIVE AND COGNITIVE LEARNING. THE SPACE IS AN AQUARIUM THAT MIRRORS THE IDEAS AND VALUES OF THE PEOPLE WHO LIVE IN IT
– LORIS MALAGUZZI –
A significant part of preparing for a project is the arrangement of the environment. The design of learning environments is one of Reggio Emilia's signature influences. All senses, emotions, intellect and relationships are considered when an environment is arranged. Individuals and groups may be impacted by mood-inspiring music, alluring essences, individually lit spaces, furniture with different ergonomic designs, textured surfaces, specific tools and equipment, and beautifully displayed natural and manmade materials. Nothing is there by chance; nothing is superfluous. The environment is an external representation of interior landscapes for thinking and feeling.
The idea of the environment as a third teacher is a testament to how carefully it is arranged. Very seldom do things appear by accident.
How is the environment as the third teacher linked with neuroscience?
The brain learns through action and repetition. Efficiently integrated knowledge depends on repeat encounters. One kind of repetition is rote learning, which leads to one-dimensional isolated information. Of course, rote learning is sometimes valuable, but according to Roger F. Bruner from the University of Virginia, ‘The deepest "AHAs" spring from an encounter and then a return. (Bruner, 2001)’
Multiple engagements with an idea develop critical mass in understanding concepts and connections. When an environment is set up so children can encounter similar ideas in different modes and activities, repetition helps develop a complex relational understanding of the content. For example, if the idea is to explore the role of water as a life-giving force on the planet and how it appears in different states and places, then children’s experience of its various states in the classroom and interpretations in narrative and even dance, will give deeper more enduring meaning to the idea and how the idea coheres with other ideas.
Carla Rinaldi says: The physical space can be described as a language. The language of space is powerful, and it is a conditioning factor. Its code is not always explicit and recognisable, but we perceive and interpret it from an early age. This statement attests to the child’s learning being mediated by environmental influences. This was scientifically validated by the critical longitudinal Dunedin study that followed children from childhood into adulthood (Belsky, Caspi, Moffitt, & Poulton, 2020). Children with more stimulation, care, and support later enjoyed greater life success. The Reggio Emilia classroom is crucial for cognitive, social, and emotional development, as you will have read in the section on the image ofchildren and partnership.
9. Learning as Individual and Group Construction
LEARNING OCCURS IN DIALOGUE WITH OTHERS
Collaboration and the collective were emphasised from the outset of the Reggio Emilia schools. It is part of the schools' history, politics, and processes. Loris Malaguzzi and the teachers read and explored everything about children's learning. But they did something unique: For the first time, they regarded the child as the expert in their learning. They sought to make the learning visible.
Piaget believed that all the concepts a child would need to learn were implicit in the child’s brain. With maturation, as each concept was introduced and practised, the children would gain proficiency. There was a trust that implicit concepts would become explicit through engagement. He posited that the ideas would emerge when the child was developmentally ready (Ginsberg & Opper, 1988).
Vygotsky developed these ideas. He believed that engagement with materials and concepts was necessary, but knowledge was socially constructed, and the child had to engage with others. Knowledge is co-constructed between the individual and society. Language is one of the powerful tools for creating co-constructed knowledge (Miller, 2014).
The Reggio Emilia Philosophy relates its work to the co-construction of learning. It has continuously operated from the idea that we learn better when in a relationship with others. In addition to language, this learning together is also mediated by the environment and the educational tools available to the students.
How is learning as an individual and a group construction linked with neuroscience?
In neuroscience, we learn that children’s brains look for patterns in the environment around them. They begin to give meaning to or interpret what they are experiencing from the earliest age. Even before language develops, their ability to interpret actions, emotions and situations is highly active (Donaldson, 1984). The idea of mirror neurons is not validated across neuroscience literature, but the idea that children imitate what they sense around them has sound scientific backing. Learning from others, elders, peers, or community members, is a critical way to develop our identity. In his ecological model, Urie Bronfenbrennerdiscusses the influences of various social circles on our human journey (Bronfenbrenner, 1979).
Imitation learning could be the basis of empathy, learning and understanding through events unfolding. However, in Reggio Emilia, the emphasis on group learning was unique when implemented. Many schools around the world still focus on learning as an individual journey. Reggio Emilia understands that the group is impacting the child’s neural network. Still, the whole group’s mental frame and neural network are also affected. There are multiple layers to learning in a group.
D. Principles that encapsulate the ASSESSMENT in the schools
10. THE PEDAGOGY OF LISTENING
11. DOCUMENTATION
12. ASSESSMENT
10. The Pedagogy of Listening
Listening is done with all the senses
In 2000, I made my first of three study tours to Reggio Emilia. One of the lectures by Carla Rinaldi reframed assessment as ‘a pedagogy of listening’ (Rinaldi 2001). When I heard her address on listening, it was the first time I recognised my value as an early childhood educator. The listening she describes uses all the educator’s intellectual and affective faculties, not just their ears. The pedagogy of listening is respectful, hears back, gives time, is multimodal, sensitive, reflective, curious, conscious of emotion, suspends judgement, and most movingly, ‘removes the individual from anonymity’.
We are listening for:
· Who is this child?
· How are they thinking, discovering, acting, communicating?
· What is their relationship with the group?
· How is he or she interpreting the world?
When we ask these questions, we are searching or researching. We also ask questions about ourselves. As secure as we think we are in our knowledge, research is being open. Research is about learning, relationships, seeing possibilities, finding new meaning, seeing links, experiencing highlights, finding nodes of interest, unpacking values, surfacing beliefs, recognising change, feeling emotion, and seeing how everything is resonating together.
How is the pedagogy of listening linked with neuroscience?
Pedagogical listening is far more complex than the usual understanding of ‘processing auditory information’. It is a kind of meta-listening. The teacher/s listens to the children and indeed hears their comments, wondering, hypotheses and understanding. But they are poised to listen for much more:
The relationships between the children
The prior knowledge the children are mobilising
The possibilities for further learning
Identity formation
New skills
Attitudes
Curriculum areas
Processes
Understanding and knowledge
Clarifying concepts
Artefacts
Creative acts
From the above, we see that we are not seeing children as parts but as a whole. Everything is important and worthy of our attention, not just what we seek. Our brains are essentially lazy. They like routine and predictability. When we broaden our ideas about what we are listening for and add more modalities and senses for that listening, we are open to seeing and observing more.
An essential part of listening is that it is a loop. What is heard/observed is often communicated back to the child. The child gains a perspective about their work from outside themselves. This lends their thinking more value. It becomes, in a sense, an artefact that can be interpreted, extended and analysed by others. Because the teacher observes very closely, she can reflect on children’s interpretations, inferences and extrapolations. This is observing the processes they use to make sense of the world. Reflecting is the space to connect old ideas to new ones and old insights to new ones.
In an earlier discussion, we saw that when children feel validated and their selves are reciprocated, they are much more likely to be motivated to learn. Professor Reuven Feuerstein, a cognitive psychologist and contemporary of Loris Malaguzzi, saw all learning as presenting two sides of the same coin: cognition and emotion. The emotion he elaborated on was not a feeling but motivational energy to engage with learning and society (Feuerstein, Rand, Hoffman, & Miller, 1980).
11. Documentation
Once documentation is created, it is a living thing open to continuous interpretation.
It can be revisited, reconstructed and re-signified
Documentation is the act of making learning visible. It is achieved using photography, capturing conversations and offering children one hundred languages to express their thinking, meaning-making and learning. This part of the Reggio Emilia approach is strongly linked to developing metacognitive thinking. One of the most powerful things we can do as educators is to enable children to appreciate and understand their thinking. Not only is the content made explicit and shared, but the actual thinking processes themselves are discussed. The documentation also removes egocentric thinking. The documentation itself becomes an artefact open to interpretation. Students learn to see their role in the learning and others’ roles. They may adjust their thinking concerning the evidence that is placed before them. The documentation is a contextually embedded assessment tool. The teachers can glean information from what children have said and done on several occasions throughout a project, so their progress and transformation can be tracked. Because processes are documented, tracing the project's development or deeply analysing its aspects for different purposes is easy.
How is documentation linked with neuroscience?
Similarly to listening to children, which demonstrates their importance, they see their interests and thinking processes valued when work is documented. When children see their work taken seriously, they feel they are being taken seriously. Externalising their ideas and actions gives them an objective identity outside of themselves, and they know they contribute to the learning community. They can see it for themselves and show others their work as an extension of themselves. Self-worth and self-esteem are essential in developing healthy identities, and it is logical to see that children will feel competent when what they undertake is recorded (Solomons, 2013).
The documentation process observes all aspects of the child, not only their cognitive but also their social and emotional dimensions.
12. Assessment
Assessment is a dialogue of observation and interpretation
Assessment is the continuous attribution of meaning and interpretation. It is not an end product but a structuring process to interpret the learning. Assessment in Reggio Emilia occurs at the systemic level to ensure the quality of the interactions with parents and the community and at the individual student level to monitor and develop the educational activity. Assessment plots the learning path and considers tasks, skills, processes, abilities and plans. The assessment practices can map an individual’s progress in the learning journey on many levels to identify and elaborate on:
Knowledge
Understanding
Levels of skill
Processes
Senses of identity
Interactions within the group
How does assessment link with neuroscience?
How we assess children depends on our internal beliefs about them and their performance. The way we assess and communicate with children can greatly influence their self-esteem and the way they engage with others in the world. In the 1960’s Robert Rosenthal, a Harvard University professor, and Leonore Jacobson, an elementary school principal in San Francisco, published 'Pygmalion in the Classroom: Teacher expectation and pupils' intellectual development'. What the elementary school study suggests is that we communicate subtle and unsubtle messages that inform children how we think they will perform or behave. Not all the cues are verbal, or even conscious. ‘When we expect certain behaviours of others, we are likely to act in ways that make the expected behaviour more likely to occur.’ (Rosenthal, R & Babad, E. Y, 1985)
When the whole child is considered and a complex The elementary school study suggests assessment is in place, children are more likely to feel competent and flourish.
Summing up
Several correlations exist between Reggio Email's pedagogy and a broad spectrum of neuroscience research on effective learning.
1. Brain development is supported through thinking and activity. Several Reggio principles apply in this active engagement: providing children with a rich, well-planned and resourced environment, making learning visible, listening to children's hypotheses and meaning-making, and providing rich sensory experiences.
2.Reggio Emilia encourages the powerful nature of attention and engagement in learningby harnessing children's interests and personalising learning.
3. Repetition and practice build solid neural networks. A particular piece of learning is refined, acquired more quickly and is more enduring if encountered often and in different ways. In Reggio Emelia, children are always encouraged to develop their thinking and skills through revisiting ideas.
4. New knowledge is based on prior knowledge, and this connection is better when it is reinforced in several ways and offered sequentially. Because the young learners in Reggio Emilia schools do projects that go for extended periods, the learning is connected, not episodic. Also, things are explored using different modalities or sensory systems. Children gain a better understanding of the relationships. With repetition, the neurons gain myelination (the fatty white substance on them), which allows the electronic information to travel more speedily along them.
5. Children build up intuitive knowledge by using and manipulating objects and materials. In Reggio education, children are offered these materials firsthand and act autonomously to explore them. But it does not stop there. The children are allowed to discuss their findings. Vygotsky spoke about the importance of the social context of learning. This is one of Reggio Emilia's foundation stones, too. The Reggio educators support the child in linking intuitive knowledge to the body of knowledge of humanity by giving them the labels and language to discuss it. Children begin early on to use all kinds of symbolic representations of reality. Much of what we retain in memory is symbolic, virtual transfer from reality and abstract theories. From an early age, children in the Reggio Emilia schools are being encouraged to build symbolic languages.
The hundred languages as a principle in Reggio supports the five correspondences mentioned above between the neuroscience of how children learn and the Reggio Emilia education. Through the hundred languages, different sensory systems are harnessed for learning. No child is left out because where one path of sensory perception may be less efficient in a learner, the others are available to provide a different channel for learning. The use of various media also means that sensory areas are not ignored or under-utilised. In neuroscience, they have found that if you don't use it, you lose it. Jack Shonkoff at Harvard University has shown how children's brains are pruned, and they have fewer neurons when they are fourteen than when they are four. So, to retain a rich network, all the sensory channels need to be kept active. (The opposite of this is when children suffer deprivation or under-stimulation) (Shonkoff, Phillips, & (Eds), 2000) . So, the concept of the hundred languages is crucial.
6. Finally, if we consider the effects of stress on learning as opposed to feeling engaged and in control, then the Reggio Emilia philosophy of learning through joy and engagement andcollaborative partnerships also favours healthy brain development.
I want to end this discussion with this beautiful quote by Loris Malaguzzi:
All people – and I mean scholars, researchers and teachers who in any place have set themselves to study children seriously – have ended updiscovering not so much the limits and weaknesses of children but rather their surprising and extraordinary strengths and capabilities linked with an inexhaustible need for expression and realisationn. -Loris Malaguzzi-
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Lili-Ann Kriegler (B. A Hons, H. Dip. Ed, M.Ed.) is a Melbourne-based education consultant and author of Edu-Chameleon. Lili-Ann’s primary specialisations are in early childhood education (birth-9 years), leadership and optimising human thinking and cognition. Her current part-time role is as an education consultant at Independent Schools Victoria and she runs her own consultancy, Kriegler-Education. Lili-Ann is a child, parent and family advocate who believes that education is a positive transformative force for humanity. Find out more at https://www.kriegler-education.com