“A teacher’s goal is not so much to ‘facilitate’ learning in the sense of ‘making it smooth or easy’ but rather to ‘stimulate’ it by making problems more complex, engaging, and difficult.” – Loris Malaguzzi
Working the Reggio Way: A Beginner’s Guide for American Teachers
Julianne Wurm
Working the Reggio Way: A Beginner’s Guide for American Teachers was written in the context of applying the Italian “Reggio Approach” once featured in a 1991 Newsweek issue as offering “the best early childhood programs in the world,” into the American setting. The book is supposed to fill the cultural gap by providing practical suggestions for the American early childhood educator. It is not so much to replicate the schools themselves, “as cultural restraints make that impossible,” but to use the approach relevant to the culture of the United States. By asking many questions or engaging readers in exercises through out the chapters, the reader is lead to becoming a “reflective practitioner.” Progressing through the book should allow the reader to see the difference between values and actual practice. Reflective practice, as a basic point of origin for working with children in Reggio ways, is “looking at the ways you are working and asking questions of yourself and your colleagues.” The book presents the challenge for the practitioner to take responsibility for his/her professional development, “which requires constant reflection, collaboration, and questioning.”
The book is organized by starting with the reader’s reflection of his/her “own values about children, education, and community.” These values are to be the basis of succeeding actions, through the lens of which the reader “will look at the physical environment and space; the organization of time; the Reggio approach to curriculum through progettazione, or projects; and then the documentation, questioning that give life to the curriculum and the program.” Because it is a guide book, the book proceeds on a step by step learning course. The author encourages readers to learn along and actively participate by answering questions and writing these answers in a notebook or discussing it with a study group of colleagues.
A great emphasis of the approach is its interconnectedness. The one quality, the author says, proves difficult for teachers, because the approach presents a “big, complex picture” rather than small, compartmentalized, and individual pieces.
Chapter 1 begins by asking questions fundamental questions which serve as foundations in creating a vision for the school:
What is a child?
What is childhood?
How do we learn?
How do children learn?
What is the meaning of to educate?
What is the relationship between teaching and learning?
What is the relationship between theory and practice?
What is the relationship between school and research? And what is the relationship between school for young children and research?
What is the relationship between school and education?
The premise is the view that educators have of children, or their answers to the questions stated above affect actions including even the arrangement of the environment. In Reggio Emilia, children are not viewed as fragile but rather as “strong, powerful, and rich in potential, driven by the power of wanting to grow, and nurtured by adults who take this drive towards growth seriously.” Three features of the Reggio programs are manifestations of this view of the child as competent: a “wait time” which requires teachers to give the children time to understand concepts on their own; access to the bathroom without adult supervision; and sinks at children’s level.
“The curriculum in Reggio grows from teachers, children, and their families in those schools from their cultural context.” This approach may seem very radical for an educational system, present not only in the US that traditionally espouses a clear set of objectives and materials, or to “align their work with standards or readiness guidelines.” Alignment however should come with an established vision resulting from an examination of views and moving all elements, considering what is already in existence, towards that stated vision: aligning values and practice.
Space, “the physical, unchanging features of the place in which one lives and works with children” and environment, “the way physical space is dressed up, lived in, defined, and redefine over time” is discussed in Chapter 2. The author further gives the distinction for these two terms by suggesting conceiving “the space as forming the scaffold or framework upon which we create the environment.”
Sample Questions to Ask on the Environment:
(What do the answers communicate about your view of the child?)
o Why are the plant leaves dusty or limp from lack of watering?
o Why are there fake plants instead of real ones?
o Why are many of the toys stored out of reach of children?
o Could the storage areas be covered to create a more pleasing aesthetic sense?
o Are there boxes of old materials stored on tip of cabinets?
o Why do the children eat on paper plates?
o Why is the food made the previous day and reheated?
o How are materials presented?
o Is the restroom accessible to children at all times?
o Is the documentation at an adult’s eye level or a child’s?
o Where do the children eat?
o Where do they rest?
o What do they rest on?
o Is the outdoor space cement with a play structure?
o Is there adequate natural light?
o Does the air move freely throughout the school?
o Are there mirrors for children to see themselves?
o What does the child see when he looks up?
o Are the walls stimulating?
o Are the walls orderly?
o Are the walls clean?
o What are the clothes like in the dress-up area – adult hand-me-downs or child-sized fantasy clothes?
o Are the kitchen implements in the house-play area real or from the kitchen kit for children?
o Does the environment hold the child’s attention?
o Does the child want to stare at the light sparkles made from a hanging prism?
o Are musical instruments available?
o Are there places for the children to interact with one another both inside and outside?
o Are there safe “nooks” for two or three children to go to on their own?
o How are the blocks in the construction area stored?
o Is there a construction area?
o Is there a House-play area?
o Is there a dress-up area
Monday, July 10, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
Early Childhood Care and Education in Indonesia
Speaking of Indonesia’s investment in ECD, the Section for Early Childhood and Inclusive Education Division of Basic Education of the UNESCO Education Sector came up with a Policy Review Report of Early Childhood Care and Education in Indonesia in January 1995 as part of their Early Childhood and Family Policy Series.
A copy of the report in English and Indonesian may be obtained online. A search through the UNESCO library portal will also give some related documents: An earlier national case study report, and ECCE in South East Asia.
A copy of the report in English and Indonesian may be obtained online. A search through the UNESCO library portal will also give some related documents: An earlier national case study report, and ECCE in South East Asia.
Some notes:
- The major access gap between advantaged and disadvantaged children in Indonesia lies in their access to early childhood educational services.
- The current participation level for educational early childhood services is 8%.
In 2003 the total expenditure for early childhood care and education was only 0.55% of the education budget. - The absence of public investment remains a major obstacle to bridging the access gap between the disadvantage and the advantaged.
If Indonesia is serious about long-term social development, social cohesion, poverty alleviation and economic growth, it must consider making a greater investment in early childhood services. - Considering that serving poor children is one of the best ways to maximize the benefits of investment in early childhood, public investment directed mainly to the poor is a doubly sound policy option for making the best use of exiting resources.
- As many as eight ministries and government offices with their own early childhood services co-exist: The Ministry of National Education, the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Social Welfare, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, the Ministry of Home Affairs, the Ministry of Religious Affairs, the Family Welfare and Empowerment Team, and the National Family Planning Coordination Board.
- Different ministries and government agencies plan policy with no apparent coordination.
Tuesday, July 04, 2006
Notes on Reggio Emilia
I’ve recently been reading on the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education and I’ve been learning quite a lot.
I’m posting some notes that I’ve picked up. This segment is from Reflections on the Reggio Emilia Approach, a collection of papers edited by Lilian G. Katz and Bernard Cesarone, monograph series of the ERIC/ EECE (1994).
The Reggio Emilia approach is described by Howard Gardner in “Complementary Perspectives on Reggio Emilia” in “The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education (1993),” as
…a collection of schools for young children in which each child’s intellectual, emotional, social, and moral potentials are carefully cultivated and guided. The principal educational vehicle involves youngsters in long-term engrossing projects, which are carried out in a beautiful, healthy, love-filled setting.”
The municipal early childhood programs in the city Reggio Emilia (pop. 130,000) located at the Emilia Romagna region, originated in cooperative schools started by parents at the end of World War II. The city currently supports 22 preprimary schools for children 3-6 years of age, as well as 13 infant-toddles centers for children under 3. Children of all socio-economic and educational backgrounds attend the programs, including special needs children; 50% of the city’s 3-6 years olds and 37% of the city’s children under 3 are served in the municipal schools and centers (Edwards, et al: Promoting Collaborative Learning)
[Why only 50 and 37%, I wonder… and how do they implement programs for special children?] – I read further and saw a figure that 90% of the children are enrolled, there are also privately funded institutions that might have catered to the other percentage of children not enrolled in the municipal funded centers.
Staff Development in Reggio Emilia
By Carlina Rinaldi, Municipal Preprimary Schools of Reggio Emilia,
Reggio Emilia, Italy
By way of introduction:
o Research as a permanent learning strategy for both children and adults.
o Staff development is a vital and daily aspect of work – of personal and professional identities.
o The group is not characterized simply by the sum of individual people or as a game between minority and majority thinking. Instead. It is a new way of thinking, it is a co-construction together towards a common interpretation of educational goals.
On competence:
o The fundamental premise of staff development is that it will develop the competence of the teacher by fostering interaction with children, parents, and colleagues. Moreover, every child has the right to have a competent, well-informed teacher. This competence is acquired through practice and through reflection within the teacher group.
o Teachers should be well educated in the broadest sense of the word. The teacher ought to be a person belonging to our present-day culture who, at the same time, is able to criticize, to question, and to analyze this culture. The teacher out to be intellectually curious, one who rebels against a consumeristic approach to knowledge and is willing to build upon knowledge rather than to consume it. To consider the teacher as such is both a premise and an objective.
o The main job [of educator] is to facilitate the entrance of children into the culture and the symbols around them and to help them to create new cultures and symbolization while respecting their own personal strategies, their own ways, their own timetable. The children are competent in this regard. We must support their “journey” by building with them and for them a network of understandings that is founded on the continual intertwining of the fields of knowledge and the fields of experience.
o The problem is not so much to question ourselves about how to teach children, but to ask ourselves what and how children can learn from a certain situation.
Promoting Collaborative Learning in the Early Childhood Classroom: Teachers’ contrasting Conceptualizations in Two Communities
By: Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini, and John Nimmo
Noteworthy Features of the City-financed, City-managed Systems of Preprimary and Infant-toddles Education in Reggio Emilia and Pistoia, Italy:
1. The ways in which children, teachers and parents are connected in to operative communities focused on the surrounding cit and region;
2. the ways in which children are stimulated toward cognitive, social, and emotional development through collaborative play and group projects.
o Rather than focusing on the developing child as an autonomous learner, Reggio Emilia and Pistoia educators see education as a communal activity and sharing of culture through collaboration among children and also between children and teachers, who open topics to speculation and negotiation. The Amherst, Massachusetts educators, in contrast, see education first and foremost as a means for promoting the development of each individual.
I’d like to put the Conclusion of this article in whole because it’s so interesting especially in describing the different cultural contexts with which teachers work with children, and presents as well very challenging questions on collaborative and individual learning.
Beginning with shared assumptions about the nature of the child of the schooling as a “system of relations and communications embedded in the wider social system” (Rinaldi, 1990), the educators in Reggio Emilia have developed over the past thirty years a distinctive approach to early education. The concrete features of this approach include, as key components, small group collaborative learning; continuity over time of child-child and child-teacher relations; a focus on problem solving and long-term projects involving mastery of many symbolic media; fostering of the connections between home, school, and the wider community; and awareness and appreciation of cultural heritage (city, region, and nation). Accompanying these concrete organizational features is a shared discourse or language of education that allows the Reggio teachers to collaborate, that is, in their own terms, to exchange ideals, listen to one another, and engage in meaningful conflict over ideas. Their language of education is readily apparent in their statements in the collaboration interviews, as well as the subsequent group vide-reflection discussions. It is based on a theory of knowledge that defines thinking and learning as social and communicative events – co-constructive experiences for both children and adults.
The Amherst educators, members of a school community founded in the 1960s based on Deweyian principles of progressive education, likewise developed a shared language of education. Central to their goals are promoting the development of each unique individual, within a strong community stretching backward and forward in time and containing children, their families, and all the staff at the school – director, librarian, teachers, assistant teachers, and others. This community is conceived as democratic, diverse, and drawing strength from the ties of cross-age relationships. Their language of education, very different from that heard in Reggio Emilia, is based on a theory of knowledge that sees thinking and learning as a matter of each child gaining knowledge of self, others, and the wider world through social interaction, research, and discussion – processes that stimulate the development of mature autonomy and self realization. Placing the two perspectives in juxtaposition, it is easy to see how each language of education constrains or directs the thinking of its teachers, but = at the same time packages ideas economically to make the communication and dialogue possible for the community. The language of education preferred in Amherst focuses teachers’ attention on individuals and how they develop and change over time. The preferred discourse makes it difficult for them to regard groups as the always desirable context for intellectual work and supports the view that teachers should closely monitor social interactions between children and be available to work closely in short, one-on-one or one-on-two spurts, with children engaged in intellectual work, so that children have opportunities for both guided and independent learning. In contrast, the language of education preferred in Reggio Emilia focuses teachers’ attention on children always in relation to the group, and makes it difficult for them to speak systematically about the value of their program in terms of what the children gain from it, year by year, across specific domains.
At the same time, the educators in each community seem to be aware of more dimensions and more complexity that what their language of education structures for them. As aw shall discuss in future writings, both groups of teachers are highly aware of the unique personality f each chills and also highly knowledgeable about the group processes in their classroom. Indeed, it appeared that the interviews and discussions involved in our research, particularly the cross-cultural video-reflection, provoked the teachers to consider the limitations of both their own and the other community’s discourse and practices.
I wonder, however, if anybody has ever made studies on the effects of the Reggio Emilia approach to the community or to Italy, for that matter. If their early childhood development programs are so world renowned to be superior, and with the knowledge that investment in ECD is worth all other investments, have the Reggio Emilia schools produced better individuals and communities as compared to other places in the world? Are the Italians better, in a sense, than other people in the world with different ECD or early childhood education approaches?
I’m posting some notes that I’ve picked up. This segment is from Reflections on the Reggio Emilia Approach, a collection of papers edited by Lilian G. Katz and Bernard Cesarone, monograph series of the ERIC/ EECE (1994).
The Reggio Emilia approach is described by Howard Gardner in “Complementary Perspectives on Reggio Emilia” in “The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education (1993),” as
…a collection of schools for young children in which each child’s intellectual, emotional, social, and moral potentials are carefully cultivated and guided. The principal educational vehicle involves youngsters in long-term engrossing projects, which are carried out in a beautiful, healthy, love-filled setting.”
The municipal early childhood programs in the city Reggio Emilia (pop. 130,000) located at the Emilia Romagna region, originated in cooperative schools started by parents at the end of World War II. The city currently supports 22 preprimary schools for children 3-6 years of age, as well as 13 infant-toddles centers for children under 3. Children of all socio-economic and educational backgrounds attend the programs, including special needs children; 50% of the city’s 3-6 years olds and 37% of the city’s children under 3 are served in the municipal schools and centers (Edwards, et al: Promoting Collaborative Learning)
[Why only 50 and 37%, I wonder… and how do they implement programs for special children?] – I read further and saw a figure that 90% of the children are enrolled, there are also privately funded institutions that might have catered to the other percentage of children not enrolled in the municipal funded centers.
Staff Development in Reggio Emilia
By Carlina Rinaldi, Municipal Preprimary Schools of Reggio Emilia,
Reggio Emilia, Italy
By way of introduction:
o Research as a permanent learning strategy for both children and adults.
o Staff development is a vital and daily aspect of work – of personal and professional identities.
o The group is not characterized simply by the sum of individual people or as a game between minority and majority thinking. Instead. It is a new way of thinking, it is a co-construction together towards a common interpretation of educational goals.
On competence:
o The fundamental premise of staff development is that it will develop the competence of the teacher by fostering interaction with children, parents, and colleagues. Moreover, every child has the right to have a competent, well-informed teacher. This competence is acquired through practice and through reflection within the teacher group.
o Teachers should be well educated in the broadest sense of the word. The teacher ought to be a person belonging to our present-day culture who, at the same time, is able to criticize, to question, and to analyze this culture. The teacher out to be intellectually curious, one who rebels against a consumeristic approach to knowledge and is willing to build upon knowledge rather than to consume it. To consider the teacher as such is both a premise and an objective.
o The main job [of educator] is to facilitate the entrance of children into the culture and the symbols around them and to help them to create new cultures and symbolization while respecting their own personal strategies, their own ways, their own timetable. The children are competent in this regard. We must support their “journey” by building with them and for them a network of understandings that is founded on the continual intertwining of the fields of knowledge and the fields of experience.
o The problem is not so much to question ourselves about how to teach children, but to ask ourselves what and how children can learn from a certain situation.
Promoting Collaborative Learning in the Early Childhood Classroom: Teachers’ contrasting Conceptualizations in Two Communities
By: Carolyn Edwards, Lella Gandini, and John Nimmo
Noteworthy Features of the City-financed, City-managed Systems of Preprimary and Infant-toddles Education in Reggio Emilia and Pistoia, Italy:
1. The ways in which children, teachers and parents are connected in to operative communities focused on the surrounding cit and region;
2. the ways in which children are stimulated toward cognitive, social, and emotional development through collaborative play and group projects.
o Rather than focusing on the developing child as an autonomous learner, Reggio Emilia and Pistoia educators see education as a communal activity and sharing of culture through collaboration among children and also between children and teachers, who open topics to speculation and negotiation. The Amherst, Massachusetts educators, in contrast, see education first and foremost as a means for promoting the development of each individual.
I’d like to put the Conclusion of this article in whole because it’s so interesting especially in describing the different cultural contexts with which teachers work with children, and presents as well very challenging questions on collaborative and individual learning.
Beginning with shared assumptions about the nature of the child of the schooling as a “system of relations and communications embedded in the wider social system” (Rinaldi, 1990), the educators in Reggio Emilia have developed over the past thirty years a distinctive approach to early education. The concrete features of this approach include, as key components, small group collaborative learning; continuity over time of child-child and child-teacher relations; a focus on problem solving and long-term projects involving mastery of many symbolic media; fostering of the connections between home, school, and the wider community; and awareness and appreciation of cultural heritage (city, region, and nation). Accompanying these concrete organizational features is a shared discourse or language of education that allows the Reggio teachers to collaborate, that is, in their own terms, to exchange ideals, listen to one another, and engage in meaningful conflict over ideas. Their language of education is readily apparent in their statements in the collaboration interviews, as well as the subsequent group vide-reflection discussions. It is based on a theory of knowledge that defines thinking and learning as social and communicative events – co-constructive experiences for both children and adults.
The Amherst educators, members of a school community founded in the 1960s based on Deweyian principles of progressive education, likewise developed a shared language of education. Central to their goals are promoting the development of each unique individual, within a strong community stretching backward and forward in time and containing children, their families, and all the staff at the school – director, librarian, teachers, assistant teachers, and others. This community is conceived as democratic, diverse, and drawing strength from the ties of cross-age relationships. Their language of education, very different from that heard in Reggio Emilia, is based on a theory of knowledge that sees thinking and learning as a matter of each child gaining knowledge of self, others, and the wider world through social interaction, research, and discussion – processes that stimulate the development of mature autonomy and self realization. Placing the two perspectives in juxtaposition, it is easy to see how each language of education constrains or directs the thinking of its teachers, but = at the same time packages ideas economically to make the communication and dialogue possible for the community. The language of education preferred in Amherst focuses teachers’ attention on individuals and how they develop and change over time. The preferred discourse makes it difficult for them to regard groups as the always desirable context for intellectual work and supports the view that teachers should closely monitor social interactions between children and be available to work closely in short, one-on-one or one-on-two spurts, with children engaged in intellectual work, so that children have opportunities for both guided and independent learning. In contrast, the language of education preferred in Reggio Emilia focuses teachers’ attention on children always in relation to the group, and makes it difficult for them to speak systematically about the value of their program in terms of what the children gain from it, year by year, across specific domains.
At the same time, the educators in each community seem to be aware of more dimensions and more complexity that what their language of education structures for them. As aw shall discuss in future writings, both groups of teachers are highly aware of the unique personality f each chills and also highly knowledgeable about the group processes in their classroom. Indeed, it appeared that the interviews and discussions involved in our research, particularly the cross-cultural video-reflection, provoked the teachers to consider the limitations of both their own and the other community’s discourse and practices.
I wonder, however, if anybody has ever made studies on the effects of the Reggio Emilia approach to the community or to Italy, for that matter. If their early childhood development programs are so world renowned to be superior, and with the knowledge that investment in ECD is worth all other investments, have the Reggio Emilia schools produced better individuals and communities as compared to other places in the world? Are the Italians better, in a sense, than other people in the world with different ECD or early childhood education approaches?
Malnutrition Affecting Aceh’s Youngest
I found this in one of the news bits of The Jakarta Post, July 1, 2006 issue reported by Antara: Naimah Hasan, an official of the Bureau of/ Agency for Reconstruction and Recovery for Aceh and Nias (BRR) stated that an estimated 60 percent of Acehnese children under five are malnourished according to a recent survey conducted through Aceh. A 2005 census of the province placed the population of children aged under five years old at 402,460. The official added that reconstruction efforts in Aceh had been focused on physical projects at the cost of health.
I think that Aceh especially should seriously look into its ECD investments and interventions because after the tsunami, the trend had been for families to get pregnant as a response to the loss they had incurred. There is indeed a lot of marrying and women getting pregnant around here.
I think that Aceh especially should seriously look into its ECD investments and interventions because after the tsunami, the trend had been for families to get pregnant as a response to the loss they had incurred. There is indeed a lot of marrying and women getting pregnant around here.
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