The Early Childhood Schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy

by Lydia Spinelli, The Brick Church School

In 1991, Newsweek magazine called the early childhood schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy the best early childhood schools in the world. Since then, thousands of educators from eighty different countries have visited Reggio; the conference of the National Association for the Education of Young Children in the U.S. has had a Reggio Emilia strain every year; and many early childhood schools around the world have been influenced by their practices. What makes these schools so special?

First of all, the commitment of this small northern Italian city (around 150,000 inhabitants) in Emilia Romagna to early childhood education is unique and inspiring. Sergio Spaggiari, Director of Early Childhood Education for Reggio, has said that starting education at age six is like starting to build a building from the sixth floor - just as a building needs a solid foundation to stay up, children need a solid educational foundation. The famous Reggio schools are municipal and were founded over forty years ago, although federal schools and private schools (mostly Catholic) also exist in Reggio. There are 1,500 children from birth to age three in infant-toddler centers and 4,000 children from age three to six in preschools. In 1990, there was a protest in Reggio about not having enough infant-toddler centers, so the municipality decided to build an additional infant-toddler center every year. Early childhood services offered for children from birth to age six now completely cover requests by families.

The municipal, federal and private schools in Reggio collaborate for professional development and they all share a basic philosophy for children from birth to age six:

• The schools are educational institutions, not just day care.
• Education is a right of children and it is the responsibility of the community to provide it.
• Schools are part of public affairs, not private.

The city's commitment to young children is evident not only in the schools. Children designed the curtain for one of the municipal theaters. Businesses donate usable materials to a recycling center called Remida; the schools then use these materials for art projects. A new international center for children's culture and creativity named after Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the early childhood schools, opened last year in an abandoned Parmesan cheese factory. Exhibits on the schools and the children's work, conferences and lectures take place in the new center.

Second, the Reggio schools were premised from their inception on an image of the child that, while not completely unique, broke with traditional education. The Reggio educators believe children are competent from birth. The child is equipped with the means and tools to construct his or her own learning about the world. The child is biologically programmed to explore, discover and communicate. The child is capable of empathy. Reggio's optimistic way of looking at children focuses on what they do know, what they are researching, rather than what they do not. Children build relations and make connections between things and with other children. The child is hungry for dialogue. The child is made up of a hundred languages, a hundred forms of intelligence, kinds of desire and will. Children are great bearers of potential intellectual power. Every individual is not just a head; school so often gives too much importance to the head. Loris Malaguzzi said the giraffe is unfortunate because its heart is so far from its head. He could fall in love on Monday and only find out on Friday. How many giraffe schools are there around the world keeping the heart distant from the brain? How many schools are aware of children's thinking and forget their emotions? Malaguzzi stated that we have to go back and sew things together.

Third, the belief in the intellectual power of the child leads to a role of the teacher not as a transmitter of knowledge but as a collaborator in helping children to construct knowledge. The central role of adults is to activate, especially indirectly, the meaning-making competencies of children as a basis of all learning. This does not mean to let the child do what he wants; they are not saying the child has everything he needs within himself. Competencies become concrete with interaction. Adults play a very important role - Reggio educators believe in competent teachers as well as competent children. The teachers still teach, but they put the learning process in the center of the experience. They document what the children do to revisit and learn from that experience. What the teachers discover through their documentation is then used to modify the learning process. Teachers are learning with the children. Loris Malaguzzi said, "Teachers are like explorers using maps and compasses; they know the direction, but they know that every year the terrain, climate, season and the children add new ones and that the order of times and problems can change. Destinations are important and will not be lost from sight: but more important is how and why I reach them. That is precisely why it is essential for both adults and children to be able to re-trace their steps, or rather their knowledge processes through an attitude of re-cognition made possible by observation, documentation and interpretation." Documentation is therefore essential in the Reggio approach. Teachers document the children's learning with notes, photos, audio recordings and videotapes. They then use the information they have gathered to structure the next step in the child's learning.

How does this translate into practice? Teachers and children work together on projects. Teachers meet for two-and-a-half hours a week and, starting from the children's interests, conjecture and forecast how children might go about solving a particular problem or investigating an area of interest. They begin to organize the space and materials and think of how many children will do the project. The design process is not a linear process where things are decided beforehand; the teachers are open to embracing changes on the way through listening to the children and going back and forth with colleagues and discussing. In addition to classrooms, each school has an atelier (studio) and an Atelierista (artist) who coordinates the projects, serves as a resource for the teachers, finds connections and relationships between projects and does much of the documentation. A small group of students works on a project at a time. Some projects spill over to include the whole class in some aspects of the study and others are confined to the small group. The duration of the project depends on the interests of the children.

Examples of projects are studies of the city of Reggio Emilia, a nearby park, sounds of the street, an amusement park for the birds, how a fax machine works, the wheel and movement, bridges, robotics, angels and itineraries of a ladybug. One project, titled "Five- and six-year-old children tell incoming three-year-olds about their new preschool," included maps of the school; descriptions of all the rooms and outdoor area and what happens in them; and exploration of topics such as the teachers, talking together, visiting friends, groups, memories, eating lunch at school, advice, children's rights, and rules at school.

Another unique aspect of the Reggio Schools that is perhaps related to their Italian culture is the sense of aesthetics. The environments are beautiful. The schools have a central piazza like Italian towns. The use of light, color, form, natural objects and recycled materials create an atmosphere that is both peaceful and enticing. The art the children produce with the guidance of their teachers is stunning. In fact, an exhibit of the children's work, "The Hundred Languages of Children" has traveled the world for twenty years.

Italians are also great conversationalists. In the Reggio schools, they believe in dialogue among children, teachers, parents and the community. Sergio Spaggiari said, "In an educational community, conversation must be the glue that holds things together. If I give you a dollar and you give me a dollar, we both have a dollar. If I give you an idea, and you give me an idea, we each have two ideas. Dialogue and exchange enrich people. We need a pedagogy of listening. The first part of listening is crediting the other person with something to say. Children are so seldom listened to because we don't credit them with interesting ideas. We have to take up a listening attitude with other people - we need to listen to others as well as to ourselves." So what's all the fuss about?

• A city committed to the education of all of its young children with those most in need getting first priority.
• An image of children as competent and capable of constructing knowledge.
• The role of the teacher as a collaborator in helping children to construct knowledge.
• Careful observation and documentation to study the children's learning process.
• Beautiful environments for young children.
• Constant dialogue among children, teachers, parents and the community.

Those of us who care deeply about the education of young children and have visited Reggio cannot help but view it as almost a Utopia. Interestingly, Sergio Spaggiari, Director of Early Childhood Education for Reggio, ended his speech on May 8, 2006 with, "Utopia is like a beautiful woman. As you approach, she retreats, but utopia helps us to walk forward and to construct the policy. Keep walking!"