027: Is a Reggio Emilia-inspired preschool right for my child?

This episode is the final in our mini-series that I hope will help you to think through the options you might have for your child’s preschool. In previous episodes we looked at Waldorf and Montessori approaches to early childhood education; today we examine the Reggio Emilia-based approach with Suzanne Axelsson, who studied it for her Master’s degree in early childhood education and is well-respected in the Reggio field.  She helps us to understand how the “concept of the child” impacts how we see the child and support their learning, and what are the “hundred languages of children”… Suzanne Axelsson's Book The original learning approach: Weaving together playing, learning, and teaching in early childhood - Affiliate link References Bodrova, E., & Leong, D.J. (2006). Tools of the mind: The Vygotskian approach to early childhood education (2nd Ed.). New York, NY: Pearson. Edwards, C., Gandini, L., & Forman, G. (Eds.). (2012). The hundred languages of children: The Reggio Emilia experience in transformation.   Read Full Transcript Transcript Jen:   [00:27] Hello and welcome to today’s episode of Your Parenting Mojo, which is called Is a Reggio Emilia Preschool Right for My Child. So this is the third in our mini series about different approaches to preschool education and today’s episode is going to be a little bit odd for me because I actually know a fair bit about the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, but I went out and found us a real expert to talk with and I’m going to pretend like I don’t know very much so that we can ask the kinds of questions that people here are new to Reggio Emilia might ask. Our guest today, Suzanne Axleson received her master’s degree in early childhood education at Sheffield University in England, where she specialized in Reggio Emilia language and communication and documentation as a tool to aid memory and deepen children’s learning. She has 20 years of experience teaching in a variety of early years settings including traditional Swedish preschool and Montessori. Suzanne recently worked at Filosofiska, which I hope I’m pronouncing correctly, Sweden’s first preschool with a philosophical profile where she developed an approach to use philosophy as a pedagogic tool for young children, but she recently decided to spend some time collecting her thoughts in preparation for writing a book on how to use listening to improve pedagogical outcomes. Welcome, Suzanne. Suzanne:    [01:39] Thank you. Jen: [01:40] Thanks so much for joining us today. I wonder if you could tell us about how you first learned about the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education and what about it spoke to you? Suzanne: [01:49] It was round about 2007 when I was working in a preschool and there were teachers talking about that this is a new approach to this preschool should take and we looked into it so we realized this was something we were going to do and so I looked more into it and realized it spoke to me because it’s more or less what I’ve been doing all the time. It was about observing the children and listening to the children and making sure that the learning was happening appropriately for them. So it felt like a natural contraction of how I was working as an educator but to deepen that, to learn more about it. Jen:     [02:27] Okay, and what specific elements of the practice were you referring to there? Suzanne:   [02:32] When working with projects the children will find something of interest and then you will go into their interest and deepen their understanding of this by if for example, it was dinosaurs, it would not just be looking at everything that was dinosaurs and learning facts about dinosaurs. Why was it they were interested in dinosaurs and quite often it was finding out more about their fears and finding out more about how they themselves build things or created things or drew things and interacted with what was scary or it was different depending on the group of children, so dinosaurs was never – I’ve done it many different times, but he’s never been exactly the same. Jen:  [03:13] Hm. And is never exactly the same because the children are never exactly the same. Right? Suzanne:   [03:18] They all have their different approaches. Some children have been – they’ve wanted to be paleontologists, so they wanted to go and pretend that we’re finding fossils and it’s all been about the bones and connected to the bones in their own body, so it was like an exploration of their own body through the dinosaur bones while others, It’s been definitely the fear. There’s something was those big scary teeth was what was fascinating them. There were more of the fear exploration during that time. Jen:   [03:45] Okay. Suzanne:   [03:46] It’s always been an interesting way to… It gives us the opportunity to look at, to, to discover what children are learning, but they give me a new perspective on the same thing. So I never go and see dinosaurs and exactly the same way. Jen:    [03:59] Mm. Yeah. Okay. Um, so I wonder if for somebody who’s never seen a Reggio classroom before, can you walk us through what one looks like in your mind? What does the room look like and what are the children doing and and how do they move through their day? Suzanne:   [04:13] In my mind, the classroom would be one would inspire learning now look around and I would know the children were interested in and know what they’ve been doing recently because there’d be documentation on the wall and that everything would be accessible for the children or most things will be accessible for the children because sometimes you can’t have everything out all at once. The children will be busy. They will be engaged. It would have freedom, freedom to move around and the classrooms from what I’m used to, when I’ve observed classrooms in the U.S. Have been more like a classroom while I’m used to the children being exposed to a whole series of rooms that they can move in and out of, so they have even more freedom here in Sweden and then what they do in the US, so um, aesthetic, it would be beautiful, but then what beautiful is, is can be quite different from preschool to another preschool because you’ve got to include your own culture and your own context. Suzanne:  [05:17] I think when I’ve observed schools in the US, they’ve had an awful lot of things on the walls while here in Sweden and not quite so many things on the walls, so there’s huge differences in how Reggio is being interpreted, but it’s not just the beautiful classroom is not enough is how the classroom is designed to create interactions with the teacher, with the materials, with children, with each other. So it’s not so much about a beautiful looking classroom is it’s very much about a room that is created with consideration for children and consideration for their interactions and consideration for the interests and learning of the children. Jen: