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Foundations of the Campus Children's Center

We draw our inspiration and guidance from many sources but three in particular are worth noting - the first two are the child development theories of Jean Piaget and Lev Vygotsky and the third is our continuing contact with the early childhood programs in Reggio Emilia, Italy.

Reggio Emilia is a city of 150,000 in north central Italy, about half way between Milan and Florence. It is in the most prosperous region of Italy and a walk around its streets to window shop clearly conveys both the sense of style and prosperity in the community.The schools in Reggio trace their origins to the end of World War II. There was a strong sense in the community at that time to establish a school which would have as its purpose instilling a sense of community and shared purpose in its children, i.e., a school system whose practices would prevent the return of Fascism to their community.

Today the Reggio schools, which are operated by the municipal government, provide early childhood services for several hundred children between the ages of a few months and six years.Our interest in Reggio grew out of our constructivist approach to the study of child which we have been pursuing since the early 1980’s. This interest has been furthered by several visits to Reggio by the faculty and staff of the Program, including a February, 1999 visit of the entire Center staff, as well as several visits of representatives of the Reggio schools to our Program. We believe that the most important thing about bringing Reggio home is that what you see in Reggio is not original to Reggio. What you see are ways of working with children that are consistent with what we believe to be the basic elements of a child-centered, constructivist, emergent curriculum approach.

• What is unique to Reggio is that you see early childhood education being done as it should be done. In particular, you see a program whose vision of the child comes as close to being perfectly translated into practice as is perhaps possible. In particular, you see wonderful examples of the importance of their maintaining continuity with their culture and environment. It is not by chance that the schools in Reggio place such a heavy emphasis on the esthetics of the environment, all Italians look to their cultural traditions.
• Second, you see multiple examples of the use of materials to enrich children’s learning experiences and imaginative practices in their use of documentation to support these efforts.
• Third, Reggio constantly pursues efforts to ensure close home-school ties.
• Fourth, perhaps most important of all, wonderful efforts in their practice of teaching. It is not mere coincidence that this high quality of teaching in turn reflects a respect for teachers which creates the advantage of being able to maintain staff continuity. Teachers are municipal employees, have salary and benefits more similar to American public school teachers than American early childhood teachers and not surprisingly the average number of years of employment is much higher than in the United States.

As is true of our work in Vermont, the work in Reggio is built upon a theoretical foundation reflecting, in particular, both the work of Jean Piaget and the work of Lev Vygotsky. Although both men were born in the same year - 1896 - their lives were very different. Piaget lived a long and distinguished life, being recognized world wide during his life time for his image of the child. Vygotsky, who died in his thirties from tuberculosis, has only more recently come to be recognized for his equally important contributions to our understanding of children’s development. For many years following his death, his work was repressed within the former Soviet Union.The emergent curriculum model used at the center as well as our early childhood teacher education curriculum both reflect a theoretical perspective which draws heavily on the work of both these theorists. Notwithstanding some theoretical differences in emphasis, Piaget and Vygotsky offer very similar views as to the characteristics of mature adult development and as such provide a direction for our educational efforts. In both cases, the emphasis is on the differentiation of form from content, that is, the ability to see the forest through the trees; in the effective use of metacognitive skills which allow people to reflect on and self-regulate their own behavior and thought; and in the recognition of the probable as a special case of the possible, a competency not always evident in the behavior of young children. For both Piaget and Vygotsky, the attainment of these mature adult thought characteristics is the fruition of a sequence of qualitatively distinct reconstructions of an individual’s cognitive or meaning making mechanisms.Further, for both Piaget and Vygotsky, progress through this sequence is strongly influenced by the quality of one’s social and non-social interactions.

There may be important differences between the two perspectives as to the specifics of the mechanisms regulating development but both are clear as to the interactive nature of the process. For both, development is a process of children constructing and reconstructing their understanding of their social and physical worlds. They do this by attempting to resolve the inevitable discrepancies which occur in their minds as they attempt to meld their understanding of the world with the new experiences they are almost always encountering. To both theorists, such disequilibria prompt children to construct more effective and adaptive cognitive structures, effective and adaptive in the sense that these new structures are better able to deal with the events which defines their lives.It is this interactive focus that has allowed us to use the work of the two theorists as the basis for the development of a theory guided program of early childhood education. It is this image of the child as an active and competent agent, one constantly trying to maintain an equilibrium between what he or she understands the world to be and how the world presents itself to the child that for us supports our efforts to base curriculum on children’s emerging understanding of the world.

Last modified January 08 2008 11:40 AM