Reggio Emilia

The needs and interests of the individual children are perceived and taken up in order to start where the motivation and enthusiasm are highest. The child is a creative designer, director and designer of his development, his skills and knowledge. The educator engages with the rhythm of the child’s research spirit and becomes a researcher himself. It is not the end product that is important, but the process of dialogue, perception, design and the amusing acquisition of knowledge.

Reggio pedagogy was developed after the Second World War in 1945 in a suburb of the northern Italian city of Reggio Emilia. From 1970 the educators were supported by the Italian educator Loris Malaguzzi. Since the beginning of the 1980s, groups of visitors from a wide variety of countries have been visiting Reggio in order to sit in on the urban children’s facilities. Reggio pedagogy can be understood more as an educational philosophy that combines a number of basic assumptions and flexible practical elements. Reggio pedagogy is now the most internationally recognized elementary pedagogical approach that was developed after reform pedagogy in the 20th century.

In 2010 UNESCO designated the Reggio pedagogical approach to education as the best early childhood pedagogy.