Visual Learning and Listening based on the works of Reggio Emilia
This articulation of creativity by Carlina Rinaldi, former director of the municipal early childhood centres of Reggio Emilia, Italy, reveals underlying concepts of the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education. Of the many distinct concepts of this approach, this discussion touches on: the centrality of the atelier/studio and the essential, collaborative role of the atelierista, a trained visual artist/educator; the “competent child”; the relational nature of learning and teaching, and by implication, the crucial role of listening.
The skillful and innovative use of visual materials—accomplished through the expertise and guidance of the atelierista—is initially the most striking element visible in the work of the Reggio Emilia schools. Further study reveals the complex interweaving of ideas, concepts and materials with the pedagogical comportment of the teachers and the way this shapes the learning of the child.
My introduction to Reggio Emilia began six years ago, when this new approach was launched in the Junior School at Bishop Strachan. Finally! I thought: Here was acknowledgement of the broad contribution that visual art knowledge could bring to learning and understanding, recognition that ideas can be articulated visually, in multiple ways without words, and words can interpret visual ideas in many ways.
My first task as an elementary visual art teacher was pragmatic: collaborating with the classroom teachers to incorporate and integrate Science, Social Studies, and Literacy with Visual Art. My focus then shifted from “delivery” to inquiry, working with the students aged six to 12: How many shades of orange can be made from yellow and red? How many textures can we make in clay? Allow questions to progress and they become more pointed: How many approaches to drawing an animal could students discover? How do body and antler shapes differ in moose and deer? What does this tell us about how these animals move? Students begin to draw and explain their ideas of “what,” “how” and “why.” Inquiry then bridges disciplines with a conscious attempt to integrate other subjects. In this example, drawing becomes part of the Grade 4 research to understand animals in their habitats. The challenge becomes one of cultivating an approach to the many demands of the Ontario curriculum that fosters imaginative and creative responses from students.
Inclusion of the ateliers and atelieristas in the Reggio schools’ daily explorations expands upon the creativity and imagination evident in the field of visual art and in artists, and includes them in concepts about thinking, learning and pedagogy in all areas of education. In contrast to North America’s dichotomy between artists and non-artists, Reggio Emilia attempts to bring artistic thinking together with all thinking.
Also, contrary to North American notions that creativity is individually endowed and promoted, while imagination is a variously unreliable yet charming, or even daring, quality, Reggio Emilia understands both qualities to be intrinsic resources requiring cultivation within each child, as well as each adult. Reggio educators suggest creativity is expressed through combined cognitive, affective and imaginative processes that rely upon the “well supported development of personal resources,” including social interaction, communication and visual technical skills, within a context that promotes a sense of freedom. (Malaguzzi, in Edwards, p. 76)
Although art techniques and experience with visual materials are crucial for the children, art is not studied as a subject. Instead, projects offer “extraordinary educational possibilities … [and involve] an integration of acts of visual representation with scientific hypothesis testing. It goes far beyond the emphasis on aesthetic expression and perceptual exploration” of traditional art studies. (Vecchi, in Edwards, p. 147) Projects might include: the study of shadows, the study of light, colour, crowds, how a fax machine works and a study of the city of Reggio Emilia itself. This integration across disciplines provokes creative and imaginative responses from both children and teachers, counteracting predictable, step-by-step rote procedures that cultivate compliance rather than inquiry.
In order for children to be producers of knowledge and not just recipients of information, Loris Malaguzzi, founder, director, philosopher and educator at the Reggio Emilia preschools, believed in the exigency of a multiplicity of “hands-on” experiences with a variety of materials so children could communicate their ideas, whimsy and understanding.
The interrelated concepts, experiences and ideas articulated through the various materials came to be thought of as languages, eventually captioned as The Hundred Languages of Children (also the name of the current internationally renowned exhibition of children’s work from the Reggio Emilia schools). Developing facility with the many languages of images and structures, of narrative, of clay, paint, wire or words provides children with many opportunities that would achieve “a more highly developed use of perception, which involves continual transaction with the outside world; an extra stimulus for knowledge and interpretation, and a leap of the imagination. And this imagination is…a unifying element of intellectual activity and, creatively speaking, the central momentum for science as well as for poetry and the figurative arts.” (Malaguzzi, 1997, p. 35) The Reggio Emilia philosophy approaches knowledge not as a fixed point but perhaps more like a web that is recognized and organized in whole or in part by imagination, “the unifying element.”
In Reggio Emilia, the young child is understood to possess great capacities as a learner. The philosophies and concepts that support the learning endeavours of the “competent child” surpass those I am familiar with in North America, which constrain young children by definitions of developmental appropriateness. In Reggio Emilia, children work near to each other, in groups of various sizes where they negotiate their ideas and contributions to the collective work in the company of teachers. Quite remarkable in comparison to classes where children are directed by adults. This process of participation and negotiation creates the fundamental appreciation for the group as the place of learning. Children are:
In this way, children become resources and producers of new knowledge and mutual contributors to the success of one another.
The teachers’ responsibilities towards these ends are strategic and, surprisingly, intimate. Vecchi describes the parameters for creating “situations within which these processes can be experimented with, grow and evolve. This means devising and implementing generative contexts, paying attention to procedures, and creating the right conditions to allow the fruition of the creative process.” (2004, p. 140) “The teacher’s role is to be a competent listener to the visual language and to the children’s individual and group strategies in order to support the children in a way that is in tune with their autonomous expression.” (p. 15)
The term “listener” for the teacher confronted with visual language seems intentionally metaphorical. If we stop thinking of verbal language as the only language, and include visual languages, then listening is no longer limited to an auditory, passively receptive process. Now involving a much broader vocabulary as well as active interpretation, intervention, adaptation and theorizing, listening becomes a creative act.
Rinaldi speaks of the “pedagogy of relationships and listening” as fundamental to nurturing creativity. Children seek meaning and understanding through a process of interpretations, questions and theories about their experiences, which she considers to be the “most extraordinary aspects of creativity.” (p. 113) Sharing these interpretative theories and developing combined theories with attentive peers and adults leads to “relational creativity.” The sharing predisposes reflection, which generates understanding and knowledge. Malaguzzi stated that inherent creativity would be evident to the adult who focused more upon children’s processes of theory and idea development than on end results. (in Edwards, p. 77) There is not, therefore, an isolated creative act within the process of learning and knowledge building. The entire delicate interchange of ideas and discoveries among peers under the collaborative guidance of the competent listening adult establishes the child as a creative and imaginative resource sustained through the many verbal and non-verbal languages, relationships and interrelationships.
As a North American-trained visual artist and visual art teacher, I have been influenced by diverse trends in visual art disciplinary study pertaining to creativity and imagination. (Efland, 2004, p. 694) The ideas from Reggio Emilia provoke many questions, challenge existing practices and beliefs, but inspire tangents and new ideas. The greater emphasis on inquiry and integration of visual art with other subjects requires reorganizing personal as well as pedagogical and curricular priorities—a fruitful, though slow, process. Most encouraging, however, is the Reggio Emilia insight into the unique relational and pivotal experience of visual art processes within the whole of education:
I think that artistic thought, in order to be defined as such, must necessarily establish an intense and empathic relationship with things. This approach undoubtedly helps to investigate and highlight the hidden patterns of reality, to create new maps that can combine logical and emotional processes and connect technique with expressiveness: an excellent background for earning as well as a goal to keep constantly alive in schools and in education. (Vea Vecchi, 2004, p. 138)
more information
Efland, A.D. “Emerging visions of art education” in E. Eisner and M.D. Day, (Eds.) Handbook of Research and Policy in Art Education, pp. 691–700 (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc., Mahwah, 2004)
Malaguzzi, L. “History, ideas and basic philosophy” in C. Edwards, L. Gandini and G. Foreman, (eds.), The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia approach—Advanced reflections, 2nd ed., pp. 49–97 (Ablex Publishing Corporation, Westport, 1998)
Malaguzzi, L. (ed.) The Hundred Languages of Children: Narrative of the possible, Catalogue of the exhibit, 2nd ed., pp. 34–36 (Reggio Children, Reggio Emilia, 1997)
Rinaldi, C. In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia: Listening, researching and learning (Routledge, New York, 2006)
Vecchi, V. and Giudici, C. (eds.) Children, Art, Artists: The expressive languages of children, the artistic language of Alberto Burri (Reggio Children Reggio Emilia, 2004)
Vecchi, V. (ed.) Theatre Curtain: The ring of transformations (Reggio Children, Reggio Emilia, 2002)
Vecchi, V. “The Role of the Atelierista” in C. Edwards, L. Gandini and G. Foreman (eds.), The Hundred Languages of Children: The Reggio Emilia approach—Advanced reflections, 2nd ed., pp. 139
About Ellen Wright
Loading ...
