Education Atlas
Reggio Emilia and the Room as a Teacher
The Reggio Emilia approach is usually summarized by its stance on children, that they possess a hundred languages, many equally valid ways of expressing understanding beyond words. Read through its own claim about the physical environment, the room itself is treated as a third teacher alongside the two adults in it.
Documentation as the Evidence
Developed by Loris Malaguzzi with parents in villages around Reggio Emilia after the Second World War, the approach gives children real control over long-term, open-ended projects built from their own interests, with teachers acting as co-learners and careful observers rather than instructors delivering a fixed curriculum.
Detailed documentation of children's work is what makes the third-teacher claim more than a slogan: it is the record a teacher keeps instead of a lesson plan, and it is also what let the approach travel, since the 1981 exhibition The Hundred Languages of Children carried that documentation to Stockholm and brought international recognition with it.
Where To Read More
- Reggio Emilia ApproachNamed Pedagogical Models and MovementsReggio Emilia Approach, the subject entity of this essay
- Loris MalaguzziFounders of Named Pedagogical Methods and MovementsLoris Malaguzzi, credited with developing the approach