Dancing With Reggio Emilia

Foreword by Jerome Bruner. Epilogue by Claudia Giudici

P/B
ISBN 9781876138387

Metaphors for Quality

Stefania Giamminuti spent six months researching in the municipal infant–toddler centres and schools of Reggio Emilia, Italy. Her unique experiences are vividly recounted in this rich book, with its seductive images and lyrical storytelling drawing the reader into daily events in these world-renowned places for young children. The voices and contexts of children, teachers, atelieriste, pedagogiste, and families in Reggio Emilia come alive in this important and impressive book — an invitation to encounter the beauty and complexity of this exceptional social and cultural project of early education. Stefania proposes a new key for interpreting the educational project of Reggio Emilia in international contexts by exploring the ‘local values’ that emerged through her observation of life in Nido Arcobaleno and Scuola Pablo Neruda and relating these to ‘connective values’ to inform the philosophy, policy and practice of early childhood education and care internationally. Stefania engages with the construct of ‘quality’ in early childhood education and care, proposing new approaches to theorising quality as a metaphor and complex cultural and value-laden construct.

Your book stands out in that it gives a genuine feeling for the schools and the community while also speaking to the already published literature.

Howard Gardner, Hobbs Professor of Cognition and Education,
Harvard Graduate School of Education (USA).

This is a book about the philosophical basis of a mode of early, preschool
education. But that philosophical basis
is not only set forth abstractly but
explicated concretely by well observed examples of the daily life of those
preschools. I happen to be a cittadino honorario of Reggio Emilia. And I
confess that I am further honoured by the appearance of this book. For it brings that city and its pedagogical efforts into
a universal context that honours us all.

[from the Foreword] Jerome Bruner,
University Professor, New York
University, NYC (USA)

As I read this book, the story emerged of a special educational project, seen and narrated through the eyes of a
researcher who has positioned herself as a listener and observer of daily events in the municipal infant–toddler centres and ‘schools of childhood’ of Reggio Emilia. Stefania has narrated the possible which this experience
attempts to bear witness to, proposing education as a primary and inalienable right of all children throughout
the world.

[from the Epilogue] Claudia Giudici, President, Preschools and Infant—toddler Centres —
Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia