Reggio Emilia Method ~

          The Reggio Emilia Approach is an educational philosophy focused on preschool and primary education. It was developed by Loris  Malaguzzi, who was a teacher himself, and the parents of the villages around Reggio Emilia in Italy after World War II. After such a great and destructive event, people believed that children were in need of a new way of learning: the assumption was that people form their own personality during early years of development and, moreover, that children are endowed with "a hundred languages". The aim of this approach is teaching how to make them useful in everyday life. The program is based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community through exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment based on the interests of the children through a self-guided curriculum.  This method is recognized worldwide for its innovative approach to education: its name comes from the city itself. The keyword of this method is foster education, from the tender age, promoting the best possible integration among children’s languages which, as Loris Malaguzzi said, are a hundred or more. In this approach, there is a belief that children have rights and should be given opportunities to develop their potential. Children are believed “knowledge bearers”, so they are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas about everything they could meet or do during the day.

The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following set of principles:

• -Children must have some control over the direction of their learning;

• -Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, seeing, and hearing;

• -Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore.

• -Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.

          The Reggio Emilia approach to teaching young children puts the natural development of children as well as the close relationships that they share with their environment at the center of its philosophy.  “Influenced by this belief, the child is beheld as beautiful, powerful, competent, creative, curious, and full of potential and ambitious desires." The child is also viewed as being an active constructor of knowledge. Rather than being seen as the target of instruction, children are seen as having the active role of an apprentice. This role also extends to that of a researcher. Much of the instruction at Reggio Emilia schools takes place in the form of projects where they have opportunities to explore, observe, hypothesize, question, and discuss to clarify their understanding. Children are also viewed as social beings and a focus is made on the child in relation to other children, the family, the teachers, and the community rather than on each child in isolation.