Reggio Emilia Encounters

The documentation of young children's learning plays a vital role in the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia. This leading edge approach to bringing record-keeping and assessment into the heart of young children's learning is envied and emulated by educators around the world. This inspiring book is based upon a documentary approach successfully implemented by Stirling Council in Scotland, whose pre-school educators experienced dramatic improvements in their understandings about young children, how they learn and the potential unleashed in successfully engaging families in the learning process. This approach; which is based on careful listening to children and observation of their interests and concerns, centres around recording and commentating on children's learning through photos, wall displays, videos and a variety of different media. This follow-up text is an accessible and lively companion to the An Encounter with Reggio Emilia: Children’s Early Learning made Visible. It will encourage the reader to develop a deeper understanding of the approach and will show how the authors have seen a complete paradigm shift for those already working with documentation as a result of the guidance laid out in their previous book. Drawing on the experiences of practitioners and collaborators, the authors offer a framework from which any early years educator can easily adapt and develop in their own educational setting.

The documentation of young children's learning plays a vital role in the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia. This leading edge approach to bringing record-keeping and assessment into the heart of young children's learning is envied and emulated by educators around the world. The fully revised 2nd edition of An Encounter with Reggio Emilia is based upon a documentary approach to children’s learning successfully implemented by Stirling Council in Scotland, whose pre-school educators experienced dramatic improvements in their understandings about young children, how they learn and the potential unleashed in successfully engaging families in the learning process. This approach, which is based on careful listening to children and observation of their interests and concerns, centres around recording and commentating on children's learning through photos, wall displays, videos and a variety of different media. The authors include chapters on • Why early years educators should use documentation as a means to enhance young children’s learning • The values, principles and theories that underlie the ‘Reggio’ approach • How to implement documentations into any early years setting, with real-life case studies and hints for avoiding common pitfalls • How to involve, inspire and enthuse familiar and the wider community. This text is an important read for any individual working with young children or interested in the using ‘The Reggio Inspired Approach’ in their early years settings

The documentation of young children's learning plays a vital role in the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia. This leading edge approach to bringing record-keeping and assessment into the heart of young children's learning is envied and emulated by educators around the world. This unique, accessible and inspiring book is based upon a documentary approach successfully implemented by Stirling Council in Scotland, whose pre-school educators experienced dramatic improvements in their understandings about young children, how they learn and the potential unleashed in successfully engaging families in the learning process. This approach, which is based on careful listening to children and observation of their interests and concerns, centres around recording and commentating on children's learning through photos, wall displays, videos and a variety of different media. The authors, both experienced educators include chapters here on: why early years’ educators should use documentation as a means to enhance young children's learning the values, principles and theories that underlie the 'Reggio' approach how to implement documentations into any early years setting, with real-life case studies and hints for avoiding common pitfalls how to involve, inspire and enthuse families and the wider community

The documentation of young children's learning plays a vital role in the pre-schools of Reggio Emilia. This leading edge approach to bringing record-keeping and assessment into the heart of young children's learning is envied and emulated by educators around the world. This inspiring book is based upon a documentary approach successfully implemented by Stirling Council in Scotland, whose pre-school educators experienced dramatic improvements in their understandings about young children, how they learn and the potential unleashed in successfully engaging families in the learning process. This approach; which is based on careful listening to children and observation of their interests and concerns, centres around recording and commentating on children's learning through photos, wall displays, videos and a variety of different media. This follow-up text is an accessible and lively companion to the An Encounter with Reggio Emilia: Children’s Early Learning made Visible. It will encourage the reader to develop a deeper understanding of the approach and will show how the authors have seen a complete paradigm shift for those already working with documentation as a result of the guidance laid out in their previous book. Drawing on the experiences of practitioners and collaborators, the authors offer a framework from which any early years educator can easily adapt and develop in their own educational setting.

The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia offers unparalleled insight into dialectic encounters between teachers, pedagogistas, and atelieristas in the world-renowned municipal early childhood services of the city of Reggio Emilia. It sheds light on the system and culture that cares for and sustains an enduring educational experience, for the common good. Emerging from a collaborative research project with Reggio Children and the Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres – Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, this book features in-depth observations of pedagogistas, teachers, and atelieristas, as well as interviews with key figures in Reggio Emilia. Children’s learning is thoughtfully emphasised, as the authors render the inextricable connection between theory-practice-research, framing documentation and progettazione as artful collective experimentation. The authors illuminate how Reggio Emilia’s system sustains reciprocal professional formation through progettazione, contesting dominant marketplace discourses of early childhood education as a commodity and re-imagining settings driven by values of reciprocity, artistry, culture, and the common good. By troubling conventional views on education and care, professionalism of teachers, and educational leadership, this book will appeal to all those who long for something different and hope to shift the field of possibility for early childhood education culturally, socially, pedagogically, and politically. It will be a key resource for teachers, leaders, policy makers, and scholars in the whole field of education.

Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education rearticulates understandings of materials—blocks of clay, sheets of paper, brushes and paints—to formulate what happens when we think with materials and apply them to early childhood development and classrooms. The book develops ways of thinking about materials that are more sustainable and insightful than what most children in the Western world experience today through capitalist narratives. Through a series of ethnographic events and engagement with existing ideas of relationality in the visual arts, feminist ethics, science studies, philosophy, and anthropology, Encounters with Materials in Early Childhood Education highlights how materials can be conceptualized as active participants in early childhood education and generators of human insight. A variety of examples show how educators, young children, and researchers have engaged in thinking with materials in early years classrooms and explore what materials are capable of in their encounters with other materials and with children. Please visit the companion website at www.encounterswithmaterials.com for additional features, including interviews with the authors and the teachers featured in the book, videos and photographs of the classroom narratives described in these pages, and an ongoing blog of the authors’ ethnographic notes.

Bringing Reggio Emilia Home is the first book to integrate the experiences of one American teacher on a year-long internship in the preschools of Reggio, with a four-year adaptation effort in one American school. The lively text includes many "mini-stories" of preschool and kindergarten-age children, teachers, and parents who embark on journeys of learning together. These journeys take shape in language, in drawings, in tempera paint and clay, in outdoor excursions, and in the imaginations of both the children and adults. This informative and accessible work features photographs of the children (both in Italy and the United States) and samples of the children’s work, including some in full colour. During the past 10 years there has been a tremendous interest among early childhood educators and parents in the innovative approaches to teaching pioneered in the preschools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. This book is a must read for anyone interested in the Reggio Approach! Teachers, especially those in early childhood, teacher educators, policy makers, administrators, and parents will find it invaluable.

The Reggio Emilia Approach to early childhood education is celebrated in this exploration of the famed philosophy. Words and images from classrooms across North America describe the values and principles at the core of this educational system. Full color.

Pedagogical Encounters demonstrates how learning spaces that are ethical, responsive, and transformable can enable students and teachers to open toward new ways of being in the world. Through collective biography, ethnography, and arts-based research, the authors - educators with experience in diverse settings - generate rich descriptions of classroom practices, and elaborate and clarify new theoretical concepts through their discussion in relation to specific sites of teaching and learning.