The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia: Voices and Ideas for a Dialectic Educational Experience (2024) By Stefania Giamminuti, Paola Cagliari, Claudia Giudici and Paola Strozzi
By Diti Hill-Denee
This book will be welcomed by all those seeking a deeper understanding of the Reggio Approach, an approach that is still, all too often, embraced by teachers who work within a context of traditonal, familiar, known and unchallenged approaches to education, leading to what has been critiqued as ‘installing light tables without knowing why’. As Peter Moss states in the preface, “This book is very important for anyone wanting deeper understanding of the extraordinary education project of Reggio Emilia”.
I have only just purchased this recently published book while on my 8th Study Group trip to Reggio Emilia in April 2024. I have by no means yet read the whole book! However, I have delved into each chapter to gain an overall impression of the book’s direction. The Role of the Pedagogista sits in amongst many other outstanding publications in Routledge’s Contesting Early Childhood series. These books all have in common the desire to offer alternative narratives and ethical and democratic practices to those working in early childhood. In the preface of this book Peter Moss challenges “the impoverished education of the neoliberal hegemony” and Gunilla Dahlberg comments on the ‘enchanting concepts’ of A city that cares and collective research, and on the book’s call for an education common, reflecting the call to return to and support ‘collective action’.The preface and the introductory chapter by Stefania Giamminuti (Reciprocal formazione in Reggio Emilia) set the scene for the rest of the book.
For me, the key messages from an initial reading are:
The call to ongoing change to the fundamental ideas and thoughts that underpin everyday practice, the challenge to see early childhood education as democratic, political and ethical, and actively seeking alternative practices that reflect shared ideas and values.
The Reggio Emilia Approach is, at heart, about social, political, democratic, ethical and cultural ideas and values, resulting in a deep, moral, and rights-based reflection on one’s everyday practice.
THINKING, in order to consider/reflect upon one’s TEACHING.
Engaging in collective action and facilitating the flow of formazione, the flow of thoughts between the organisation, the teachers and the children.
Some may be wondering about the term dialectic in the title. To make the meaning of the term dialectic clear, Stefania Giamminuti writes in chapter 3 about ‘the value of relationality’. She explains this word as an embedded action which creates ‘response-ability’. She says that the idea of ‘relationality expands the field from the individual to the collective’ (p.58). In chapter 4 Paola Strozzi writes that relationality underpins the concept of dialectics and dialectic encounters. Personally, I have always drawn on the idea of dialectics in order to explain the polarised and abstract nature of education, and so it is exciting to see this term described so clearly in this chapter and directly linked to collective action. Paola Strozzi describes dialectical processes as ‘in essence, processes of creating meaning’. A dialectical way of thinking addresses the inherent turbulence and opposition of ideas that often exists in early childhood settings, with a ‘purpose that has the children, and their wellbeing and knowledge, at its centre’; a dialectical process is constantly seeking for ‘a common framework and shared premises of values’ (p.89). ‘Relations between people, ideas, and environments are multiple and intense, so as not to run the risk of avoiding complexity or reducing it to something simpler but, instead, of trying to explore it’; ‘complexity is therefore a constituent part’ of being human and ‘therefore a value’ (p.89). Further, on page 125, Strozzi writes ‘A dialectic of doing and making...is the shared tension towards understanding and researching the best learning contexts for children and adults’.
I am now looking forward to reading the whole book, and engaging in discussion with other readers!
