The myriad forms of research in children and adults

Your reading and viewing of the content of this professional learning toolbox can follow entirely personal and subjective directions, but the order we advise might ease the process of understanding and the pleasure of enjoyment.

• In Video 1, The Superpower of the 100 Languages, Vea Vecchi introduces the theory of the 100 languages, and takes time to consider related conceptual and knowledge nodes.
• Video 2, The Many Faces of the Assembly and the accompanying e-book both document a project of the same name with children in preschool.
• This is followed by a deeper investigation in Video 3, Diego, Rayan, and Francesca, which is dedicated to the relations between mark-making/drawing and clay. 
• Video 4, An Atelier for a Plurality of Languages reveals what happens backstage in the preparation of an atelier context in a school.
• Loris Malaguzzi’s words in Fragments, the first in a digital series dedicated to him, give us a framework of theory and meaning in which all the contents of the toolbox can be positioned.

This video introduces the theme of the 100 languages, widely recognised as a pedagogical manifesto of the Reggio Emilia Approach. The choice of defining what are generally known as fields of learning, or disciplines, as “languages”, is a choice that credits them with being possessed, from birth, by every human being, a biological legacy that develops and acquires potential in the encounter with other children and adults, and with the physical and virtual world. 

The reflections offered in the video highlight the importance and richness of processes that can be constructed by trying out and experimenting with connections between different languages, and how languages in reciprocal relations are a regenerative cultural and creative force

Year: 2020
Format: video
Duration: 19’

These two videos walk us through a project in the Iqbal Masih preschool in which the human figure is being investigated, with the aim of representing a morning assembly in which a class of 26 children come together. 

The investigation weaves together clay, photography, and drawing, and seeks, in the connections between the three languages, expressive and cognitive elements that are favourable to a deeper knowledge of the many identities of human beings, and to construct tools for evolving the knowledge further.

 The two videos are accompanied by an e-book containing deeper discussion of the following themes: 

• Crossing the boundaries between the poetic languages
• The many faces of the assembly
• Documentation and revisiting
• Making portraits
• The assembly: a forum of ideas
• Going deeper

Concept, video footage, editing and motion graphics: Sara De Poi, Mirella Ruozzi

Publishing project: Ilaria Cavallini, Sara De Poi, Consuelo Damasi, Vea Vecchi

Graphic design, booklet: Rolando Baldini, Mali Yea

Year: 2017
Format: video + e-book
Duration: 25’
Pages: 28 

Backstage is a montage - an edited assembling - of video material produced in infant-toddler centres and preschools during the school year

This video makes visible the processes leading to an Atelier layout, from initial reflections by teachers, to adjustments introduced after exchanges of points of view with children, and the final preparation of a context that lets each child and adult find the resources for identifying their own entry point in [re]search of new knowledge, and to extend it through the interweaving of multiple languages.

Year: 2020
Format: video
Duration: 60’ 

Commentaries for a code to reading the exhibition

If the Eye Leaps over the Wall_ 1981 

The Hundred Languages of Children_1987

The first in a new Fragments series of digital publishing dedicated to Loris Malaguzzi, and making available to a wider public his writings and talks during professional development, conferences, and conventions.

This first volume offers a reading of the commentaries, the first of which was written by Malaguzzi in 1981 for the exhibition catalogue If the Eye Jumps over the Wall, and the second in 1987 for the catalogue of The Hundred Languages of Children (a new name for an updated and revised version of the same exhibition). 

This book offers an opportunity for re-reading an evolution, the “shift in theoretical focus”, that testify a capacity for innovation in a pedagogy not frozen in time, but that continues to reflect and to modify.

Year: 2020
Format: e-book
Pages: 35