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Witold Generowicz is an architect and Senior Associate who has been with Swanbury Penglase since 1994. While he has experience in a wide range of projects he has a long standing interest in educational design, with a particular focus on the Reggio Emilia approach to education.

In November 2017, Witold attended the Re-Imagining Childhood conference at the Adelaide Convention Centre, and we thought we’d take the opportunity to find out more.

Briefly, explain the Reggio Emilia approach?

Rather than seeing children as helpless empty vessels needing care and passively waiting to be taught, the Reggio approach sees each child as a fundamentally competent agent actively building an understanding of the world through investigation, hypothesizing and experimentation.

Essential to this is an enquiring and receptive approach by educators who build an understanding of each cohort’s interests, abilities, understandings and pre-occupations. On that basis, educators seek to provoke curiosity, stimulate investigation and extend students’ growing understanding of the world.

The educational process is highly visible and collaborative, with educators documenting their observations of students through a wide variety of media, sharing observations and insights with each other and with the parent community, as well as developing tailored ‘provocation strategies’.

Documentation also plays a key role in recording and communicating students’ activities. The emphasis is on process rather than on outcomes or deliverables.

The environment plays a critical role in this approach. Materials are deployed selectively to facilitate current investigations. Spaces are configured with a high degree of interconnectivity and variety. Students’ activities can take the form of projects that are sometimes long running, remaining in place and developing over days or weeks.

The approach is dynamic and evolving rather than didactic and static. As interest in the approach has burgeoned across the globe in recent decades, one of the key challenges for educators to deal with is how to develop an approach that works within the socio-cultural context of each community, which inevitably is different from the original context of Reggio Emilia.

What are its origins?

A young educator called Loris Malaguzzi was inspired by the initiative and dedication of villagers in a small northern Italian town called Villa Cella. Following World War Two and the fall of fascism, the villagers had dedicated themselves to the building of a school as their first priority of the reconstruction.

Malaguzzi drew on his training in education and psychology to formulate an approach for early childhood education that uncannily anticipated the revolutionary ideas sweeping through education today.

As Malaguzzi’s ideas attracted recognition and were taken up by increasing numbers of schools, the focus for development became the nearby city of Reggio Emilia, from which the approach takes its name.

How/when did you first come across it?

I had the great privilege of working with David Woolnough in 1994 on the development of an Early Learning Centre at St Andrews School. David had taken a keen interest in the approach, having visited Reggio Emilia himself in the preceding years.

The project was a golden opportunity both in its own right as a prominent building, and also in terms of developing the beginnings of understanding how spatial environments can support the approach.

How did this influence/impact the design and its outcome?

One of the key characteristics of the Reggio approach is an emphasis on community, both in terms of the children and parents, and connections between the school community and the wider community.

In Reggio environments, this element is given expression in the notion of the ‘Piazza’, a space within the centre that fosters community.

These considerations were behind the development of a large central communal space as a focus for the centre with large windows facing the street.

What are the benefits for users?

The central space is large enough to host functions and provides strong visual links between the street and the centre whilst maintaining security. It is also generously scaled and visually interesting, acting to draw attention to the activities of learning.

What are some lessons learned from the projects undertaken?

Our work on a number of Reggio projects, attendance at conferences, visits to other centres and a visit to Reggio itself have resulted in a greatly enhanced appreciation of the nuances involved with Reggio environments.

Reggio is not a dogma, either educationally or in terms of environment. Every centre is a unique expression of the particulars of its own context and community.

Where to from here?

Reggio inspired projects continue to make up a rewarding and exciting field to work in. It is particularly interesting to observe how contemporary developments in education reflect many of the principles that the far sighted Malaguzzi developed over fifty years ago.

Whereas Reggio originated as a model for early childhood, it is being widely embraced as a model for education more generally. With its intrinsic value, proven track record and the ongoing development of the approach across the world, we see it as being an invaluable frame of reference for many years to come.

What are some resources for those who want to find out more?

The Reggio Australia Information Exchange:  https://www.reggioaustralia.org.au/

The South Australian Collaborative Childhood Project: https://www.decd.sa.gov.au/department/research-and-data/south-australian-collaborative-childhood-project

The 2017 Re-imagining Childhood Conference: http://reimaginingchildhood.aomevents.com.au/

Reggio Children: http://www.reggiochildren.it/?lang=en

The Reggio Foundation: http://reggiochildrenfoundation.org/?lang=en

The Loris Malaguzzi International Centre: http://reggiochildrenfoundation.org/607-2/story/centro-internazionale-loris-malaguzzi/?lang=en

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