The following is taken from the book, Bringing Reggio Home, by Louise Boyd Cadwell
Children are strong, rich and capable. All children have preparedness, potential, curiosity, and interest in constructing their learning, negotiating with everything their environment brings to them. Children, teachers, and parents are considered the three central protagonists in the educational process (Gandini, 1993).
The child as collaborator
Education has to focus on each child in relation to other children, the family, the teachers, and the community rather than on each child in isolation (Gandini, 1993). There is an emphasis on work in small groups. This practice is based on the social constructivist model that supports the idea that we form ourselves through our interactions with peers, adults, things in the world, and symbols (Lewin, 1995).
The environment as third teacher
The design and use of space encourage encounters, communication, and relationships (Gandini, 1993). There is an underlying order and beauty in the design and organization of all the space in a school and the equipment and materials within in (Lewin, 1995). Every corner of every space has an identity and purpose, is rich in potential to engage and communicate, and is valued and cared for by children and adults.
The child as communicator
This approach fosters children’s intellectual development through a systematic focus on symbolic representation, including words, movement, drawing, painting, building, sculpture, shadow play, collage, dramatic play and music, which leads children to surprising levels of communication, symbolic skills and creativity (Edwards et al., 1993). Children have the right to use many materials in order to discover and communicate what they know, understand, wonder about, question, feel, and imagine. In this way, they make their thinking visible through their many natural “languages”. A studio teacher, trained in the visual arts, works closely with children and teachers in each school to enable children to explore the many materials and to use a great number of languages to make their thinking visible.