Implementation features of Reggio Emilia courses

Implementation Characteristics of Reggio Emilia Curriculum

The following is an article I collected and compiled to explore the characteristics of Reggio Emilia in curriculum and teaching implementation. Interested students should read it. Have a look, hope it helps.

1. Flexible plan

?Flexible plan? (progettazion, Italian), that is, the teacher sets the overall educational goals in advance, but not for each project or activity Instead of setting specific goals in advance, they rely on their knowledge of the children and previous experiences to come up with various assumptions about what will happen. Relying on these assumptions, they form goals that are flexible and tailored to the needs and interests of these children. The child's needs and interests include both those expressed by the child during the project and those inferred and elicited by the teacher as the project develops.

In Reggio Emilia’s curriculum, educational goals are not abandoned or ignored. Goals are of course important (goals here refer to general goals) and are always kept within the teacher’s field of vision. , but more importantly why we have these goals and how to achieve them. Only when teachers truly understand and understand these, can the teaching process become natural, smooth, effective, and full of wisdom and creativity.

Reggio Emilia does not set specific goals for each project or activity in advance. This does not mean that teachers have no plan before the activity is carried out, but this kind of plan is not the specific goals and procedures of the activity. Rather, consider the children's possible thoughts, assumptions, and symbols, and the directions they can lead, "hypotheses" about multiple possibilities. Educators at Reggio Emilia believe that if a teacher has 1,000 assumptions, then he or she is more likely to accept the 1,001st or 2,000th different responses from a child. Only when teachers themselves have imagined enough possibilities will it be easier to accept the unknown and be more open to new ideas. Therefore, Reggio's lesson plan is a compass when traveling, not a train with fixed routes and timetables.

? Flexible planning? Not only allows teachers to fully prepare for the next development stage of the activity, but also leaves space for children’s participation, curriculum development, and unexpected educational opportunities. Enough space.

In Reggio Emilia, the progress of activities does not depend to a large extent on initial plans (hypotheses), but on children's reactions and teachers' flexible strategies. Based on their careful observation of children, teachers sensitively capture the huge learning value contained in their reactions and provide timely and appropriate guidance. It can be said that children and teachers work together to guide and promote the occurrence, progress and end of the curriculum. In this way, the curriculum resides in activities, in generation, and in the interaction between teachers and students.

2. Cooperative teaching

In terms of teaching, Reggio Emilia’s outstanding feature is its emphasis on teachers and students’ cooperation in researching a certain issue. Reggio compared the teaching process to teachers and children playing table tennis. Teachers must catch the balls thrown by children and push them back in some form to make them want to continue the game with us, and Continuing the game at a higher level, perhaps developing other games? (Filippini, 1990). This kind of game is due to the unequal experience levels of both parties, but Reggio Emilia teachers never try to control or limit children's behavior or replace children's research and exploration; on the contrary, they place great emphasis on children's own active exploration and free expression. Therefore, Reggio teachers use more tentative questions or discussion-style suggestions to stimulate children's own exploration and expression. In addition, in the process of this kind of cooperation, as a teacher who has expectations for the results of the activities and has more self-consciousness, one of his important tasks is to focus the children's interests and efforts on a theme so that the children are willing to Continuing on, to achieve this, how to push the ball back to the child is very important. Reggio's teachers do not rely on explicit control and norms, but through teachers' care, support, and guidance for children's activities. Suggestions and assistance to enable continuation and extension of activities.

When the teacher

found that there was an inconsistency between the child's narrative and the painting, she did not tell the child directly or push it back to the child, but thought about how she could respond to it. This method made the children aware of this inconsistency, so she asked the children to re-listen to the recordings of previous group discussions and then discuss them against their own paintings. The purpose of teachers spending more time and energy to complicate problems is to help children focus on a certain problem, explore and discover their own problems. Soon, the children discovered the problem and found a solution. Method: Learn how to draw people from the back and side. This is a very typical example of teacher-student cooperative research: the child had a conflict in the process of understanding, but did not realize it. The teacher supported the child's research by designing a certain situation to make the conflict clear. At the same time, it further reveals children's enthusiasm for active exploration and thinking, making it possible for the continued development of children's research activities. This method of collaborative research between teachers and students permeates Reggio Emilia’s educational and teaching activities and has become an important feature of its teaching.

3. Archive support

The archives (Docurmentation) mentioned by Reggio Emilia teachers strongly support the process of project activities. Archives refer to the systematic record of the educational process and the results of the collaborative work of teachers and students, including: children's own visual representation activity works and records of specific examples of children's work processes, such as recording specific examples of children's work processes. , photos of children at work, marginalia written by teachers, short comments about children’s arguments written down by their families, explanations of the intention of the activities, and comments from parents, etc. This kind of archive is not a simple written record, but is expressed in various forms such as pictures, objects, photos, audio recordings, videos, slides, text descriptions, etc. It runs through the project activities and continues after the end of the activities. The archives are also It does not mean a final report, a collection of works in a folder, or a document to help remember, evaluate or create; rather, it is a process of interactive learning between children and teachers, the result of their joint work.

A high-quality archive should have the following functions:

(1) Promote children’s learning. Archives provide children with concrete, visible memories of their actions and behaviors. When "reading" and "re-reading" things that have been understood by them, children become more curious, excited and confident; they (perhaps at a subconscious level) summarize the experiences they have gained and feel the development they have made, And use this as a starting point to move to the next step of learning. In addition, the exhibition of this kind of archives is conducive to children's mutual influence and mutual learning, encouraging other children to participate in a topic that is new to them, adopt the representation techniques that can be used for their own use, and use it under the teacher's guidance With help, children gradually learn to seek advice from those who have experienced it. At the same time, the way adults take their work seriously encourages children to take responsibility for their work, actively participate in it, maintain a good mood throughout the work, and actively evaluate their own and other people's achievements.

(2) Support teachers’ teaching. The recording process in Reggio Emilia is an excellent opportunity for teachers to observe children and reflect on themselves. At the same time, the recorded system results make the educational process "visualized" beyond the limitations of time and space. Each child's characteristics, attitudes, needs and interests, and behavioral performance are presented through extensive and detailed records and documentation, which enables teachers to You can re-listen, re-watch, re-understand and discover children; you can also calmly and objectively reflect on your own educational strategies and capture upcoming learning opportunities; you can also communicate, discuss, and generate new hypotheses and plans for next steps with colleagues. Archives became the primary educational resource.

(3) Stimulate parent participation. The most direct effect of archival records is that it makes children’s learning processes and results clearly visible and shareable with everyone. With the help of archives, parents can recognize children's learning situation and the results they have achieved, which allows parents to share their learning process with children, not just their works. As a result, they are quietly changing their original high or low expectations, causing them to re-examine their parents' functions and concepts about children's life experiences, and then have a deeper understanding of the entire school experience. Adopt a more positive attitude.

(4) Win the understanding and support of the community. Reggio has also actively expanded this archive formation to the community and the public, presenting a multi-level and multi-style learning form to the public in a detailed and complete way, allowing more people to understand it from a new perspective. , evaluate the image of children. At the same time, this kind of archival record reflects a democratic spirit and is conducive to the school's social integration process by disclosing the content of school education to the society. Of course, this also provides a strong example for the Reggio Emilia education program itself, winning more understanding, support and participation from the public.

4. Group work

Reggio’s project activities generally take the form of group work. The group size is usually 3 to 5 people, sometimes 2 people. Reggio believes that this type of group work is conducive to ensuring collaborative research among peers. Peer cooperation in project activities is reflected in many aspects: for example, children with strong abilities can provide guidance and support on experience or skills to their peers, etc. But what Reggio Emilia values ??more is the children's adjustment to each other in different activities: on the one hand, with the help of the teacher, one or several children's questions or observations can trigger other children to explore things they have never been exposed to. , areas that have never been doubted; on the other hand, children gain self-identity or discover contradictions and conflicts in the process of cooperative exploration and communication, and then re-evaluate or change their own understanding. This is what Reggio said children A true "cooperative activity" between the two countries. This kind of peer cooperation provides each child with the opportunity to realize that their own views are different from other people's views, thereby realizing their own unique ideas and developing a sense of self-identity; at the same time, they can communicate and discuss with their peers. It also enables children to discover other people's different perspectives and realize the diversity of the world. In this process, they gained not only friendship and emotion, but also cognitive satisfaction.

Reggio also believes that the difference in development level between peers in the group should not be too large, and there should be an appropriate distance that allows exchange of views and discussion due to differences, but does not lead to Too large a difference creates excessive imbalance. Judging from Reggio's experience, the development levels of peers within a group should be different, but at the same time, this difference should not be too large.

5. In-depth research

Reggio’s project activities are not a hasty formality, but in-depth and time-effective learning. Reggio's project activities are in-depth research on a certain topic. This in-depth research is prominently reflected in the children's comprehensive understanding of the same phenomenon and concept from multiple angles and their repeated understanding of the same phenomenon and concept on multiple levels. It can be seen that Reggio's project activities are not a straight line, but there are a lot of cycles and iterations to make children learn more fully. At the same time, this in-depth and expanded learning of specific topics will gradually develop children's tendency and ability to explore issues in depth and broadly, and this extremely transferable tendency and ability will benefit them throughout their lives.

6. Picture Language

In the process of research in small groups around a different "project", Reggio encourages children to use their natural language and expressions Style, free expression and mutual communication? Including words, actions, gestures, postures, expressions, paintings, sculptures, etc. Among them, symbolic visual representation activities (called image language by Reggio) are particularly concerned. In the exhibition titled "One Hundred Languages ??of Children" that caused a sensation in the West, children expressed their understanding of things using the language of images (including drawings, paint paintings, paper crafts, clay crafts, collages, sculptures, etc.) And the feeling of the world moved and conquered almost all visitors. The work of Reggio children shows that children’s ability to express, communicate, and gain cognitive development with the help of picture language is much easier to perfect than we assumed. This makes us realize that to a certain extent, we have underestimated children’s pictures. Image representation ability, and the value of image representation to children’s cognitive and physical and mental development.

In Reggio Emilia, children’s image language is not taught as a subject, course or set of separate skills, but is integrated with children’s work and study. Reading and writing children's other language permeates the entire program activities.

Image language provides children with a means of representation that they can control to record and communicate their thoughts, observations, memories and feelings. This not only opens a window for teachers to understand children's existing knowledge and experience; it also allows children to explore knowledge. , constructing existing understanding and constructing understanding together with peers provides a simple, fast and effective communication tool, thus effectively assisting and promoting the development of project activities. In the process of exploring topics that are interesting and meaningful to them, children actively, actively and naturally use image language, which in turn greatly practices and improves children's ability to express images.

The key to the success of Reggio Emilia education lies in its educational philosophy and practical practices, which are very consistent with the high requirements for human subjectivity, especially creativity, in today's high-tech era, and are very helpful in solving the problems that plague early childhood education in the world. The big question? What exactly should be taught in kindergarten, what can be taught, how should it be taught, and what kind of experience is most valuable to young children? It provides a reference and inspires us to think deeply.

Evaluation of Reggio Emilia Early Childhood Education Curriculum

The so-called curriculum evaluation is to judge the value and characteristics of curriculum plans, activities, results, etc. based on certain methods and approaches. process. The objects of course evaluation mainly include: course setting, course content, teaching process and methods, teachers, students, teaching materials, etc. However, the usual course evaluation often only evaluates students' learning results.

The orientations of course evaluation mainly include goal orientation, process orientation and subject orientation. Different value orientations directly affect the models and methods of course evaluation. Goal-oriented course evaluation focuses on judging whether the teaching results achieve the predetermined goals. In order to facilitate evaluation, predetermined goals are often expressed in explicit, graspable, and specific behavioral goals. Goal orientation pursues the objectivity, accuracy and consistency of evaluation results, and mostly adopts scientific quantitative methods. The latter two evaluation orientations advocate qualitative evaluation in terms of methods, that is, through observation, recording, dialogue and other methods, various rich materials in the teaching process are collected and analyzed in detail, so as to evaluate the teaching content, methods, results and other aspects. Make an assessment. Qualitative evaluation focuses on the learning and exploration process rather than the learning results. It is closely related to teaching activities and neither destroys nor interrupts the teaching process. The evaluation process itself is a teaching process full of fun and vitality, accompanied by multiple possibilities.

Influenced by process and subject evaluation orientations, Reggio Emilia’s curriculum evaluation mainly adopts qualitative evaluation methods, focusing on the achievement of performance goals and emphasizing the development of children’s cognition, emotions, values, behaviors, etc. Evaluate the situation; focus on the overall evaluation of curriculum development, content and other aspects. Recording rules provide good conditions for this kind of evaluation. It is the core method of Reggio Emilia’s qualitative evaluation and the characteristic of Reggio Emilia’s early childhood education. During the teaching process, the teacher pays attention to listening and observing the children, and records the children's learning process, methods of constructing knowledge, emotional changes and relationships through various description methods such as notes, observation sheets, diaries, audio tapes, photos, slides, and video tapes. Detailed information on peer, teacher relationships, etc., and organize, analyze, and explain the data. In order to reflect the activity process comprehensively, objectively and truly, Reggio advocates that teachers must discuss and reinterpret the records with others, especially colleagues. ;