Children's Rights: Teacher's as Researcher AISWA Early Childhood Project - By invitation only

Description

The aim of the project is to engage participating teachers in a shared investigation focused on children’s rights.  The educational project of Reggio Emilia offers an alternative to the dominant image of children as vulnerable beings in need of protection. Instead, children in Reggio Emilia are viewed as citizens with rights, as competent, strong and intelligent social beings, active protagonists in their own lives and the lives of others (Malaguzzi, 1994, p. 56):

It's necessary that we believe that the child is very intelligent, that the child is strong and beautiful and has very ambitious desires and requests. This is the image of the child that we need to hold. Those who have the image of the child as fragile, incomplete, weak, made of glass, gain something from this belief only for themselves. We don't need that as an image of children. Instead of always giving children protection, we need to give them the recognition of their rights and of their strengths.

The seminars will include presentations by Dr Stefania Giamminuti, based on her research in Reggio Emilia (Italy) and Australia, interspersed with invitations to group dialogue amongst seminar participants. Each invitation to dialogue will be guided by carefully designed questions, with the aim to contextualise the experience of the educational project of Reggio Emilia in each school’s particular cultural milieu. 

Particular emphasis is placed on the image of the teacher as researcher, with each participant exploring the tools and attitudes required to implement a research project with children customised to their unique context. Dr Stefania Giamminuti invites participants to embrace an image of teachers as knowledgeable researchers, artists, inventive thinkers, cultural actors, going ‘beyond the information given’ (Bruner, 2006). She proposes an image of teaching as:

A profession that cannot be permitted to think small, or allowed to forget that our first choice is that of renouncing a school which talks and acts only on commission, thus neglecting its functions of critique and reform. This is what saves you from being or becoming simply a melancholy implementer. (Malaguzzi, nd, cited in Strozzi, 2014, p. 39) [translation by Dr Stefania Giamminuti]

The seminars will create opportunities for teachers to: explore research questions; define research contexts; consider approaches to data collection, analysis, and dissemination of the research (pedagogical documentation); and refine the goals of the shared research project. 

The initial seminars will lay the groundwork for the project, with the second part of the year dedicated to examining pedagogical documentation and considering ways to disseminate the research to audiences of families, children, and educators. In collaboration with the AISWA team, Dr Stefania Giamminuti will act as a ‘pedagogical coordinator’ and ‘research choreographer’ throughout the course of the project. The pedagogical coordinating team in Reggio Emilia “has responsibility for research and innovation” and “enacts functions of cultural and pedagogical connection” (Scuole e Nidi d'Infanzia Istituzione del Comune di Reggio Emilia, 2009, p. 16) [translation by Dr Stefania Giamminuti]. This implies a more far-reaching and systemic approach, with a strong focus on research and innovation, than traditional understandings of early childhood leadership and educator professionalism in Australia. In Reggio Emilia the professional identities of the pedagogiste are constructed in relationship to the professional identities of educators (Cagliari, Filippini, Giacopini, Bonilauri, & Margini, 2012, p. 137). This is the approach that underpins to the collaboration between AISWA, participants in the seminars, and Dr Stefania Giamminuti.
REFERENCES

Bruner, J. S. (2006). In search of pedagogy volume I: The selected works of Jerome S. Bruner. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
Cagliari, P., Filippini, T., Giacopini, E., Bonilauri, S., & Margini, D. (2012). The pedagogical coordinating team and professional development. In C. Edwards, L. Gandini & G. Forman (Eds.), The Hundred Language of Children: The Reggio Emilia Experience in Transformation (third ed., pp. 135-146). Santa Barbara, CAL: Praeger.
Scuole e Nidi d'Infanzia Istituzione del Comune di Reggio Emilia. (2009). Regolamento scuole e nidi d'Infanzia del Comune di Reggio Emilia [Indications preschools and infant-toddler centres of the municipality of Reggio Emilia]. Reggio Emilia, Italy: Author.
Strozzi, P. (2014). I nidi e le scuole dell'infanzia come luogo della ricerca e del pensiero progettuale: Appunti per una ricostruzione storica dell'idea e della pratica della progettazione [Infant-toddler centres and schools as places of research and 'pensiero progettuale': Notes for a historical reconstruction of the idea and practice of 'progettazione']. Bambini, Marzo(3), 39-42.