15 JEAN PIAGET, REGGIO EMILIA

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Learning Objectives

 

By teaching this lesson students will:

  • Learn the contributions of Piaget to early childhood education
  • Understand the principles and fundamentals of Reggio Emilia approach

JEAN PIAGET (1896–1980)

 

15.1 Introduction

 

Jean Piaget was a child psychologist. He was a Swiss developmental psychologist and father of cognitive theory of children. This theory stated that intelligence developed in four different stages. The stages are the sensorimotor stage from birth to 2 years old, the preoperational stage from 2 years old to 7 years old, the concrete operational stage from 7 years old to 10 years old and formal operational stage from 11 years old and above. Early childhood stage comes under Piaget’s preoperational stage of intelligence. According to Jean Piaget, the intellectual development of a person controls other developmental aspects of the person such as physical, moral, social and emotional. He also believed that learning was constrained to the child’s cognitive development. Piaget’s main focus was on how children process knowledge.

 

15. 2 Contributions to Early Childhood Education

  • According to Piaget’s theory children should not be taught certain concepts until they have reached the appropriate stage of cognitive development. He emphasized on readiness. Instruction must be given according to the level of the student. The four stages imply that the child should be mature and ready enough for learning and for intellectual development. It is meaningless to teach the concepts to a premature child. Only when the child is mature enough to learn, she learns and masters it.
  • Development results from maturation or interaction between children and the physical and social environment.
  • For Piaget, this stage is one in which children are egocentric, seeing what happens around them only    from their own point of view. Thinking is not logical at this stage, during which children begin to use language and mental imagery. Visual representation and hands-on experiences are necessary for children at this stage; they cannot form abstract ideas. He stressed that teaching should be done with concrete objects. The child should be taught with concrete objects to see and experience through the processes by touch, feel, smell, taste, discussion, classification, manipulation and exploration. Hypothetical and abstract concepts should not be taught during the early childhood education. Concrete experiences are introduced before abstract concepts. For example, a child is given ample experience with objects floating and sinking before being taught scientific concepts such as density and displacement.
  • At this stage children grow in their ability to use symbols including language.
  • The child should be provided with a variety of intellectually stimulating experiences. He focused on learning by doing and experiences to promote children’s learning. Knowledge comes through actions. So the child should involve directly with the content what she is learning.
  • The teaching must be done by both individual as well as group instruction.
  • Children should be given the freedom to play, experiment and participate in guided learning activities.
  • Children construct their own knowledge.
  • Children should spend time daily in both indoor and outdoor activities.
  • Children learn to a great extent through modelling. So teachers should model appropriate tasks and behaviour.
  • Children should be provided with print-rich environment to stimulate their interests and development of language and literacy.
  • Piaget’s curriculum and programme suggest that children should be given freedom to play experiment and participate in guided learning activities. Early childhood education should allow the children to play especially fantasy and imaginative play which takes time for them to become involved. Play promotes cognitive development. It was a means by which children construct knowledge of the world.
  • One should accept that there are individual differences in developmental progress. Piaget’s theory asserts that children go through all the same developmental stages; however they do so at different rates. Because of this, teachers must make special effort to arrange classroom activities for individuals and groups of children rather than for the whole class group. The educational implication of Piaget’s theory is the adaptation of instruction to the learner’s development level. It is important that the content of instruction needs to be consistent with the developmental level of the learner.
  • A focus on the process of children’s thinking, not just its products. Instead of simply checking for a correct answer, teachers should emphasize the student’s understanding and process they used to get the answer.
  • Recognition of the crucial role of children’s self-initiated, active involvement in learning activities. In the classroom, children are encouraged to discover themselves through spontaneous interaction with the environment, rather than the presentation of ready-made knowledge.
  • The teacher is seen as a facilitator. She arranges the environment and prepares activities and experiences appropriate tothe developmental level of the children in the  class.

The teacher’s main role is the facilitation of learning by providing various experiences for the students. “Discovery Learning” allows opportunities for students to explore and experiment, while encouraging new understandings. Opportunities that allow learners of different cognitive levels to work together often help encourage less mature students to advance to a higher understanding of the material. One future implication for the instruction of students is the use of hands on experiences to help students to learn.

  • Recognizing that the child learns by actively organizing and constructing the environment, the teacher provides real materials for the child to sort, order, and arrange.
  • Facilitate learning by using familiar examples to explain complex ideas
  • Imaginative play is encouraged. Pretending is viewed as a way of developing a system of symbols to stand for real events and as a way of learning to take different points of view.
  • The child is given many opportunities to experiment with different media, including water, sand, paint, clay, and play dough. Through manipulation, the child will make her own discoveries about the nature of reality.
  • No external rewards are offered for the accomplishment of a task and children are permitted to make choices about what they are going to do.
  • Give students the opportunities to classify and group information, use outlines and hierarchies to facilitate assimilation of new information with previously learned knowledge.
  • According to Piaget, assimilation and accommodation require an active learner, not a passive one, because problem-solving skills cannot be taught, they must be discovered. Within the classroom, learning should be student centered and accomplished through active discovery learning. The role of the teacher is to facilitate learning.
  • Repetition  of  a  task is encouraged, if  the child wants  to   do.

Piaget influenced educational psychology because he was the first to believe that cognitive development was important and should be paid attention while providing education to the children.

 

REGGIO EMILIA

 

The Reggio Emilia Approach is an innovative and inspiring approach to early childhood education. It was developed by Loris Malaguzzi, who was a teacher himself, and the parents of the villages around Reggio Emilia in Italy after World War II. It was developed for children below six years. It values the child as strong, capable and resilient; rich with wonder and knowledge. Every child brings with them deep curiosity and potential and this innate curiosity drives their interest to understand their world. In this approach, there is a belief that children have rights and should be given opportunities to develop their potential. Children are believed as “knowledge bearers”, so they are encouraged to share their thoughts and ideas about everything they could meet or do during the day.

 

The heart of this system is the powerful image of the child. Reggio educators do not see children as empty vessels that require filling with facts. Rather they see children as full of potential, competent, resourceful, curious, imaginative, inventive, desire to interact and communicate with others and capable of building their own theories. The Reggio Emilia Approach to early childhood education draws from the ideas of many great thinkers, yet it is much more than an eclectic mix of theories.

 

15. 3 Principles

 

The aim of this approach is teaching how to make the children useful in everyday life.

The Reggio Emilia philosophy is based upon the following principles:

  • Children must have some control over the direction of their learning; they are capable of constructing their own learning.
  • Children must be able to learn through experiences of touching, moving, listening, and observing.
  • Children have a relationship with other children and with material items in the world that children must be allowed to explore.
  • Children must have endless ways and opportunities to express themselves.
  • Teachers, Parents, children and community are involved. They work together to build firm relationships so that the children feel comfortable and get guidance from adults.
  • The curriculum is child centered. The program is based on the principles of respect, responsibility, and community through exploration and discovery in a supportive and enriching environment based on the interests of the children through a self-guided curriculum.
  • The Reggio Emilia Approach takes a child-led project approach. The projects aren’t planned in advanced; they emerge based on the child’s interests.
  • The Reggio Emilia Approach emphasizes hands-on discovery learning that allows the child to use all their senses and all their languages to learn.
  • Teachers organize environment that involved the children to explore and solve problems.

15. 4 Fundamentals of the Reggio Approach

  • Children form an understanding of themselves and their place in the world through their interactions with others. The adult is not the giver of knowledge. Children search out the knowledge through their own investigations.
  • Children are communicators. Communication is a process, a way of discovering things and asking questions, Children are encouraged to use language to investigate and explore and to reflect on their experiences. They are listened to with respect, believing that their questions and observations are an opportunity to learn and search together. It is a process; a continual process and a collaborative process rather than the child asking a question and the adult offering the answers, the search is undertaken together.
  • There is a strong focus on social collaboration, working in groups, where each child is an equal participant, having their thoughts and questions valued. The adult is not the giver of knowledge.
  • Education is based on interrelationships. A network of communication exists between the children, parents and teachers of Reggio. These three protagonists work together to create the spirit of cooperation, collaboration, and co-construction of knowledge. They work together, interacting toward a common purpose: the building of a culture which respects childhood as a time to explore, create and be joyful. Each of these three protagonists has rights within the school.
  • Parents are a vital component to the Reggio Emilia philosophy. Parents are viewed as partners, collaborators and advocates for their children. It is not uncommon to see parents volunteering within Reggio Emilia classrooms throughout the school. Teachers respect parents as each child’s first teacher and involve parents in every aspect of the curriculum.
  • The environment is the third teacher. The environment is filled with natural light, order and beauty. Classrooms open to a center piazza, kitchens are open to view, and access to the surrounding community is assured through wall-size windows, courtyards, and doors to the outside in each classroom. Entries capture the attention of both children and adults through the use of mirrors (on the walls, floors, and ceilings), photographs, and children’s work accompanied by transcriptions of their discussions. Open spaces free from clutter, where every material is considered for its purpose, every corner is ever-evolving to encourage children to develop their interests. The space encourages collaboration, communication and exploration. The space respects children as capable by providing them with authentic materials and tools. The space is cared for by the children and the adults. Most Reggio classrooms include a studio, or“atelier,” which is filled with materials such as clay, paint and writing implements. Children use these materials to represent concepts that they are learning in a hands-on way.
  • The adult is a mentor and guide. Our role as adults is to observe the children, listen to their questions and their stories, find what interests them and then provide them with opportunities to explore these interests further.
  • The Hundred Languages of Children is probably the most well-known aspect of the Reggio Emilia Approach. The belief that children use many different ways to show their understanding and express their thoughts and creativity. The term “hundredlanguages of children” refers to the many ways that children have expressing themselves. Reggio teachers provide children different avenues for thinking, revising, constructing, negotiating, developing and symbolically expressing their thoughts and feelings. The goal is for the adults and children to better understand one another. As children proceed in an investigation, generating and testing their hypotheses, they are encouraged to depict their understanding through one of many symbolic languages, including drawing, sculpture, dramatic play, and writing. They work together toward the resolution of problems that arise.

A hundred different ways of thinking, of discovering and of learning. Through drawing and sculpting, through dance and movement, through painting and pretend play, through modelling and music, and that each one of these Hundred Languages must be valued and nurtured. These languages, or ways of learning, are all a part of the child. Learning and play are not separated.

  • In the Reggio approach, the teacher is considered a co-learner and collaborator with the child and not just an instructor. Teachers are encouraged to facilitate the child’s learning by planning activities and lessons based on the child’s interests, asking questions to further understanding, and actively engaging in the activities alongside the child, instead of sitting back and observing the child learning. As partner to the child, the teacher is inside the learning situation only. The Reggio teacher is a keen observer, documenter and partner in the learning process who allows the children to:
  • Ask their own questions and generate and test their own hypotheses
  • Explore and generate many possibilities, both affirming and contradictory.
  • She welcomes contradictions as a venue for exploring, discussing and debating
  • Use symbolic languages to represent thoughts and hypothesis
  • Communicate their ideas to others
  • An emphasis on documenting children’s thoughts .There is an emphasis on carefully displaying and documenting children’s thoughts and progression of thinking; making their thoughts visible in many different ways: photographs, transcripts of children’s thoughts and explanations, visual representations such as drawings, sculptures etc. are all designed to show the child’s learning process.
  • Documenting children’s daily experiences and ongoing projects give meaning and identity to all that the children do. It is through the documentation that the teachers are able to gain insight into the thoughts of the children, determine further investigation for working on topics, create a history of the work, and generate further interest.

The purposes of documentation are given below:

  • The process by which teachers gather information about children’s ideas and their thinking processes
  • Done daily so teachers can discuss their curriculum, keep it fluid and emergent, and develop rationale for its course
  • Data for Study
  • A facilitator of continuity across a given activity, because new activities evolve from earlier experiences
  • Offering a research orientation to instruction
  • Allowing teachers to revisit with children
  • Being concrete, active and reflective
  • Providing the right amount of support to enable children to perform a task
  • The heart of each project or experience
  • To serve as a lesson planner
  • One of the highlights that often first attracts educators to the Reggio Approach is itscomplex, long-term exploration of projects which are Vehicles of Learning, the projects undertaken by Reggio educators may derive from the children’s and teachers’ ideas and interests, thoughts and theories. Teachers often work on projects with a small group of children while the rest of the classroom continues to involve itself in other self-selected activities and explorations.
  • The child as an active participant in learning. The Reggio approach sees a child as a very competent protagonist and initiator who interact with their environment.
  • The teacher, parent and child as collaborators in the process of learning. Parents are not seen as part of the educational process in an authentic way. But the Reggio approach views the parent as an essential resource for the child’s learning. To foster community, Reggio schools host a variety of events throughout each school year, including conferences and special lectures for parents. For example, a teacher observed that a lot of parents were complaining that their children weren’t sleeping well. The school responded by bringing someone in to speak to parents about the issue.
  • It makes the learning visible. The teacher observes and documents the daily life of the school to make learning visible. In Reggio-inspired classrooms, teachers use a variety of documentation methods, such as cameras, tape recorders and journals, to track children’s thoughts and ideas as they play together or work with materials. For example,each child has a portfolio binder, including photographs of their projects, quotes from the child, artwork and writing samples. It is like a narrative of what the child learns at school, noting that the children take great pride and satisfaction in their portfolios.

 

10.15. 5 Conclusion

 

Piaget’s ideas on cognitive development have been of practical use in understanding and communicating with children and also in the education of children.

 

The Reggio Emilia Approach to educating young children is strongly influenced by a unique image of the child and deeply embedded within the surrounding culture. It is not a model or recipe with a set of guidelines and procedures to be followed; therefore, one cannot and should not attempt to simply import it to another location. Rather, it must be carefully uncovered and redefined according to one’s own culture. It is the best preschool in the world.

 

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Web links

  • http://www.aneverydaystory.com/beginners-guide-to-reggio-emilia/main-principles/
  • http://www.reggiokids.com/the_reggio_approach.html
  • http://www.education.com/magazine/article/Reggio_Emilia/
  • http://www.education.com/reference/article/jean-piaget/