Interaction Imagination

Just over three years ago I was invited to Toronto, Canada to participate in the Rhythm of Learning "The Rhythm of Learning in Nature is an opportunity offered by the York Region Nature Collaborative for like-minded educators to come together in place to experience nature, outdoor play, Reggio-inspiration and forest school practices. The week follows an emergent curriculum framework, as we will invite both facilitators and participants to decide the direction of the work and

(This post How is your Third Teacher Teaching? can be read in English here) Under åren har jag haft den stora privilegium att besöka många förskolemiljöer i många olika länder ... och detta får mig alltid att tänka på den tredje pedagogen och hur den interagerar med barnen och pedagoger. Reggio Emilias lärare ser miljön som en integrerad del av inlärningsprocessen, en plats för interaktioner med barnen, pedagoger och föräldrarna. Den tredje pedagogen ger barnen kunskap kring

This week over in the Facebook group - "The Reggio Emilia Approach" I posted a question "What are provocations?" This is a word I often see used in connection with the Reggio Emilia Approach, and in ever wider circles too. What I have see over the years is that the word is often used together with a beautifully set out activity, and quite often that activity looks very teacher down... in the sense that the teacher has chosen the "correct" colours for the flowers (or other ob

Unlike many other pedagogies, the Reggio Emilia Approach does not have specific models or written methods and thus makes it more tricky to define - especially if you want to keep it short... and over the years this has been a request I have heard being asked often. So below is my attempt to describe it as short as I can... It was Malaguzzi's intention not to write it down so that people would not get stuck in a certain way of doing something, but that the approach would conti

I often write that preschool/school is an institution - with its walls around - and how we need to be jumping up to see over the wall... to see what other possibilities there are rather than just protecting what is within. I want to tear these walls down and create something new... something that some schools are already doing and are starting to to do. How often is learning seen as something that happens within the walls in a specific way... there is a push for learning t

Over the years I found that swing from having great faith in educators to suddenly feeling overwhelmed and that we are never going to achieve true democratic classrooms/learning where there is participation and respect and real learning for all. And in this I mean not just in early education but throughout school. Really its not the educators I have issue with... I think 98% strive to be the best they can for the students/children they work with - there are that 2% (maybe mor

Here are some images that I have found, images that I have taken... images I thought might inspire you one way or another... Chalk board table... for free creative art that can be done over and over again... documenting images as you go and maybe creating a chalkboard table book of images..? how to instructions here... Thinking abut how you organise your materials is important... how easy is it for you to access things, for the children, more importantly.... is it easy to pu

Sometimes something catches your eye and you just have to read it... my two 14 year old daughters love Sherlock Holmes, so when I saw the post by Brain Pickings on Konnikova: Mastermind: How to think like Sherlock Holmes, I just had to give it a read. ... and I am glad I did... as I started seeing parallels to my work as a preschool teacher... in that observations and how we observe and analyse what we have seen can allow us to deduce what is the best continued path for the c

It was a few years ago when I was first drawn to AnjiPlay, I don't remember exactly how many, but I do remember feeling a connection to the approach, just in the same way that I had felt a connection with the Reggio Emilia Approach... not so much a wow, this is amazing, but more, this feels like home. I think we are all going to have different responses to revolutionary educational practice. For some it might seem too much and the mere idea of the approach is scary... for oth

Sergio Spaggiari shared recently a personal memory from working in preschools in Reggio Emilia together with Malaguzzi. The memory struck a chord with me as it resonated with the thoughts and reflections I have been having about children's rights, about what is happening in USA and around the world... about play and the way it seems so hard to implement a whole child approach to learning despite there being so much research about the harm of standardised testing and the benef

This is one of those posts that actually I was kind of saving for my book, but due to the response I have received after my keynote in Athens where I briefly mentioned how I see time connected to play and as a part of Original Learning, I feel there is reason to share my thinking earlier... Four or five years ago I was chatting with my children and up popped that phrase that we adults like to use... "you need to think outside of the box" - my daughter replied by saying that h

I often see posts and discussion about open-ended toys and materials... loose-parts and sometimes wonder how "open-ended" is being interpreted... as for some it seems to be about taking away materials like cars, play food etc... which is more extreme than how I interpret it... but how extreme can we go? What are open-ended toys... or open-ended play? I thought I would take some time to explore these ideas... I also see, repeatedly, rather intense discussion about plastic

The first chapter of this communication story was about how we, as educators, communicate - this post will focus on how the room communicates... the learning environment... the third teacher. as an educator inspired by the pedagogy in the preschools of Reggio Emilia, I reflect a great deal about my colleague, the third teacher, and over the years I have written quite a lot of blogposts on the topic, as well as sharing images from settings I have visited... What I have alwa

What looks like chaos to you might be a source of creativity to young learners, so don't be so quick to clear things away... Most often when people think of a Reggio Emilia Approach classroom or early years setting they think of a beautiful room, natural materials and an orderly aesthetic. And yes, there is an element of truth to this, but it is not the whole story. Learning is not orderly or aesthetic, it is organic and that means it can get messy, it can get chaotic, and th

I have been reflecting more and more about the fashion of learning... and that at the moment in my instagram feed and other social media I see that images of digital and technological play are being more and more widely shared... and more an more liked and given social approval... Although I also see there are cultural differences... here in Sweden I see a much bigger push for digital learning than I do in most of the other English (and non English speaking) countries that I

We often talk about being co-researchers with the children, but I also think that we are co-documenters - especially in the sense of the Reggio Emilia approach sense of pedagogical documentation... I do not feel that we should be producing documentation FOR the children, but WITH the children. And if we are collecting data by documenting the children through photos, note-taking, filming, audio, collecting work etc together with the children and then analysing that with coll

This is the final post - number four... the previous ones in this series you can check here... ONE - about observations TWO - about analysing and THREE - about making plans and taking action This post is about PUBLICATION - about how we share the learning as a more finished product of thoughts... how we make the learning visible on the walls, in portfolios, books and films etc. It is usually the part that most people tend to call pedagogical documentation - yet when you g

This is the third in a four part series on Pedagogical documentation. part one can be seen - here and part two can be found - here In Part one I covered the topic of collecting data, while in the second post it was all about the analysis of the collected data... this post will be the decision making and action planning using the analysis as a basis. You might make the decision to introduce a project idea to the children... your observations have lead you to understand tha

This is part TWO in a series of four posts introducing pedagogical documentation. Part one was about collecting data... and can be read here if you missed it. The idea is that these posts are for educators just at the start of their journey with pedagogical documentation, the kind of post that is not giving you a step by step method of what you must do but a post that aims to give you ideas and inspiration and to feel a little more confident as you try it out. So you have c

This is a guide... it is not a step by step manual. So please read, let it fill you with ideas and with questions... and the courage to start... this is a post for pedagogues that have not yet started using pedagogical documentation and are interested in learning more about this documentation approach... This is post one of four... Pedagogical documentation differs from documenting in the sense that it is a tool for the teacher to learn more about the individual children