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Broadly speaking, Reggio Emilia is an approach to early childhood learning named after the town where it originated in Italy. Founder Loris Malaguzzi believed children were in need of a more holistic kind of education after World War II.Feb 24, 2020
The Reggio Emilia approach believes that parents and the wider community have collective responsibility of children. It is an inclusive, village-style approach that engages children, parents and the community as all being essential components to the learning process.
The purpose of the Reggio Emilia approach is to empower children to take pride in their own education, so that they have positive experiences in the classroom and feel passionate to continue to learn and explore.
The Reggio Emilia approach values the belief that children are strong, competent and capable citizens who are full of wonder and curiosity to learn. It believes that children have a natural drive that makes them want to understand and know about the world around them and how this world relates to them.
In Joanne Clarke’s letter about Alanna Mitchell’s series on neuroscience and education, she refers to Reggio Emilia as “an Italian educator and philosopher.” Reggio Emilia is not a person but a place – a small city in northern Italy that devotes as much as 12 per cent of its annual budget to exemplary early childhood …
It was first developed after the conclusion of World War II by psychologist Loris Malaguzzi and parents in the surrounding area of Reggio Emilia in Italy, where the philosophy gets its name. They believed that children would benefit from a new and progressive way of learning.
The Reggio Emilia Approach is considered an ‘alternative’ educational approach to early childhood learning, but it delivers very mainstream outcomes. … They are recognised as active participants in constructing their own knowledge and they have substantial control over the direction that their learning takes.
But a growing form of early childhood education, called the Reggio Emilia approach, is turning heads with its unique take on teaching—one that makes parents, teachers and children equal shareholders in the learning initiative. … Rather, it’s an approach based around certain fundamental values about how children learn.
Reggio Emilia teachers will typically provide authentic art materials such as watercolors, clay, chalk, and charcoal for children to experiment with in the classroom. They also offer all kinds of art instruments or vehicles for pigment including brushes, cotton balls, sponges, q-tips, sticks, and pinecones.
Named after the city in northern Italy in which it emerged after World War II, Reggio Emilia is an educational philosophy that prioritizes play-based, hands-on learning over a prescribed curriculum.
A Reggio inspired classroom is a nontraditional learning environment where there are no assigned seats. Children have easy access to supplies and learning material, and are consistently inspired and encouraged to direct their own learning.
Reggio-inspired classrooms are designed to encourage relationships, communication, and collaboration through play. Classroom materials are thoughtfully incorporated to encourage creativity, problem-solving work, experimentation, exploration and open-ended play. … There are no assigned seats in a Reggio Emilia classroom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hN9MSHtSUY
The Cons of Reggio Emilia
As learning is child-directed and project based, it is very difficult to show parents that their children are actually learning. There are no worksheets sent home, as an example, to show that their child has learnt their letters of the alphabet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTfXy7gF-0w
In Reggio Emilia, publicly funded schools provide education for children from birth to six years. … The schools of Reggio Emilia began as a parent initiative. With the end of World War II, parents in Italy banded together and founded the town’s first pre-school.
In sum, a useful lesson of the Reggio Emilia approach is that there is no rea- son to believe that teachers must choose between encouraging realistic or imag- inative visual expression as two mutually exclusive alternatives.
“I really like the Reggio Emilia approach. They have a child-led philosophy that I appreciate. Very play-based and I like that openness of the day, but there’s structure too, a good combination. … They value each child as an individual; they’re never condescending to children; they talk to them in regular words.
75 practicing teachers who self-identify as Reggio-inspired educators consented to participating in this study. The participating teachers identified seven characteristics of the Reggio Emilia philosophy – Child-centered, Learning from the Environment, Documentation, Inquiry, Observation, Collaboration, and Community.
The Reggio Emilia Philosophy is an innovative and inspiring approach to early childhood education, which values the child as strong, capable and resilient; rich with wonder and knowledge.
The Reggio Approach is a birth to age-6 early childhood program implemented in Reggio Emilia, Italy starting in the early 1960s. It is based on a vision of the child as an individual with rights and potential.
It might be through reading, writing, creating a sculpture, painting, or hiking. Having various ways to create and construct offers children multiple ways to learn. Tip: Ask the children what they like to do.
Learning is child-led
The Reggio Emilia approach views children as capable of acquiring knowledge within themselves through their natural curiosity and creativity. They are capable of constructing their own learning. There is no curriculum, as such, more a cycle of inquiry. A provocation is presented.
The Reggio Emilia Approach is lead by the child’s curiosity, connection to the world around them, and the belief that children have the ability to develop their own potential. … Play is driven by the children’s interests, questions, and the world that they live in.
Reggio Emilia focuses more on collaborative learning whereas Montessori focuses on independent learning. Reggio Emilia classrooms are more flexible and open-ended whereas Montessori areas are more structured. … Reggio Emilia groups children by traditional age ranges whereas Montessori groups multiple ages together.