Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini, and George Forman, eds.

(Ablex, 1993)

This is the first comprehensive study (in English) of the internationally acclaimed infant and early childhood programs of Reggio Emilia, Italy. In this book, twenty-six American and Italian educators — including Howard Gardner, Lillian Katz, and the visionary founder of the Reggio Emilia schools, Loris Malaguzzi — reflect in depth on the origins, philosophy, teaching methods, and policy implications of these delightful learning centers.

The essential basis of the Reggio Emilia approach is a profound respect for the child’s active, inquisitive, and vitally creative engagement with the world. Malaguzzi speaks of children’s “surprising and extraordinary strengths and capabilities linked with an inexhaustible need for expression and realization” (p. 72); Tiziana Filippini adds that “For us, each child is unique and the protagonist of his or her own growth…. Children are so open to exchange and reciprocity. From early in life they negotiate with the social and physical world — with everything the culture brings to them” (p. 114). In contrast to Americans’ emphasis on logical and verbal skills, this approach cultivates “the hundred languages of children” — the numerous artistic and kinesthetic (as well as verbal) ways in which children make meaning of their experience and express their discoveries.

The Reggio Emilia pedagogy is grounded in the insights of Deweyan progressivism, Piagetian constructivism, Vygotskian social learning theory, and the work of many other keen observers of children’s learning and development. Children pursue extensive investigations of their world, guided by teachers who share their sense of adventure and “amazement.” Believing that “the potential of children is stunted when the endpoint of their learning is formulated in advance” (Carlina Rinaldi, p. 104), teachers develop an “emergent curriculum” in collaboration with the learners. The design of the school building (including an atelier or art space), and the careful cultivation of relationships between teachers, administrators and families, create a rich educational ecology that supports learner-centered practices. Malaguzzi sees the school as “an integral living organism, as a place of shared lives” in which “children, teachers and families feel at home” (pp. 56, 58).

In a larger sense, Reggio Emilia offers a model of an entire community (in this case, a city of 130,000) dedicated to the healthy development of its children. Several of the authors in this volume discuss the political and social conditions that are necessary for sustaining a truly progressive educational system — conditions that we do not at present seem to share in the United States. The Reggio Emilia model cannot simply be imported, but it may inspire us to raise important questions about the role of schooling in our own culture.

The Foundation for Educational Renewal
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