The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia

Voices and Ideas for a Dialectic Educational Experience

Stefania Giamminuti, Paola Cagliari, Claudia Giudici, Paola Strozzi

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9781032019215
• eBook ISBN: 9781000999419
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Éducation
• Subtopic: Éducation générale

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.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Endorsements Page
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• About the authors
• Series editor foreword
• Glossary
• Preface
• 1 Reciprocal formazione and collective care
• 2 Reciprocal formazione in Reggio Emilia
• 3 The value of relationality and an ethic of dialectics
• 4 Dialectical encounters in Reggio Emilia
• 5 The value of artfulness and an ethic of making
• 6 Pensiero progettuale and educational research in everyday contexts in the nidi and scuole dell’infanzia of Reggio Emilia
• 7 The value of culture and an ethic of research
• 8 Education Commons: History, choices, and tools for rendering a utopia concrete
• 9 The value of the commons and an ethic of alliances
• Epilogue
• Index