The Scottish Learning Festival 2009
Professor Carla Rinaldi – University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
The Adult Role in the Early Years Setting
I want to really thank you very much, everybody here, for this opportunity. It emotional, believe me, it is my first time in this festival, fortunately not my first time in Scotland. And as I was presented, I am actually the President of Reggio Children, but first of all I am a pedagogista since 1970 in the Infant and Toddler Centre and Pre-schooling at Reggio Emilia, Reggio Emilia is Italy, the north part of the country.
First of all, before I start my speech, I want to apologise for my English, as you know it is very well known as Italian/English, and I really need your help and support in being good listeners as we like to stay. To stop me when my words are not ... talking with my good friend Part quite often there are some misunderstanding, and I am telling her that she should learn my English/Italian because the words do not function in the same way. But with all my effort, and for sure with all my heart, I will try to introduce some reflections that I prepared for this moment, and for this speech.
The title is The Role of the Adult, and I thought a lot about this topic, because it is a topic that is so important to me, so important to all of us; so important for each of you as teachers, you as parents and you as citizens. So I decided to bring some reflections. I don’t know if they are those that you are waiting for, but this is my way to develop now this topic that is so crucial nowadays, that is to talk about the role of the Adult and also to talk about the role of the child. And to try to answer the famous question, who is a child? Now I would like to quote Loris Malaguzzi, the pedagogista who started the experience in Reggio Emilia many years ago in 1963. Loris Malaguzzi - I was the first pedagogista after him, so we were the two of us together in the same office - and he used to look at me and say, remember always that all the children are intelligent. I remember very well the first time I heard him say this, I felt confused and perplexed, what did he mean? All the children are intelligent? Even those with the problem, those that are disabled -what we define as handicapped children - those who were, and are, different from the others, also those that have trouble to learn? But I started to think a lot about this statement and that is what I want to share with you.
What was such a provocative statement supposed to mean - something that I now think so true - what does it mean? I would like to share this with you. I think what he said was essentially a metaphor, the declaration that a child is intelligent, as is each man and woman, is also a metaphor, and I would like to add a cultural, social and political choice. All the children are intelligent is a declaration that should not only find justification in the world of science, but essentially in the world of ethics. This statement is a value based choice, and therefore an ethical choice. In fact it means to choose the risk, and to accept responsibility. To risk does not mean to choose the certain for uncertain, but which is favourable, which we believe is valuable to risk for. That is why I want to ask you to take this responsibility. Risk and responsibility become two fundamental categories to the world today, and we must try to build upon a new ethic, a new education.
All the children are intelligent from the moment of birth, is a challenging provocation. What does it mean? It means that all the children, as all human beings – because when we talk about the children, we talk also about ourselves – can be competent from the first moment of birth. Competent in what? In living, because they want to live, competent in learning, because they want to learn, and they are waiting to learn about the world in which they live. They want to be a part of it, they want to feel a part of the world because they are human beings. They want to feel part of our common world, no differences, they are all human beings. So this child, when he or she is born, they are competent and powerful, what they need is an environment, a community, a context able to welcome them. And at this point, as usual, I want not to talk about the competent child, I don’t want to talk about the role of the adult without asking for the support of one of my best friends. Many of you have maybe met her at another time, Laura, we are inviting Laura to come here. Laura is a ten month old child, her name you can choose, the name of your child at home, the name of the children in your infant/toddler centre, or in your school, Laura is a symbol of the children all over the world wherever they are, and Laura can teach us what it means to be a teacher, and what it means to be an educator. Laura here is a ten month old, you have to imagine being in one of our infant/toddler centres, and you can see in the picture Laura and the teacher. And you can imagine another teacher, taking the picture, documenting this moment, trying to make this moment alive and joyful for all of us, as a way of recognising Laura, and to recognise also our role as a teacher.
This is one of our infant/toddler centres, it can be wherever you want in the world. It is in the morning, every morning something can happen. It can happen if we are there with the child, trying to make him or her intelligent. Laura is reading a book full of images, I am allowed to use the word “to read” yes. This is another important step in our vision about children. To read does not mean to read alphabet; to read is the first thing that we do when we are born, to read the faces, to read everything we have around. So Laura in this is case is reading this newspaper. But when I invite you to observe is, we say Laura is a child that “does not speak”, we define Laura the child as “does not walk”, and she is not able to do a lot of things.
But this definition of the needy child, the child that is not able to do, does not help us to remember how many things they are able to do. Look at the face of Laura, look how she is concentrating, how can you say this? Look at the expression on the face – how she is concentrating – and look that she is moving the hand for moving the page, from one page to another. I remind you she is only ten months old, who is a child of ten months old? When I was a student I was making a list of what a child of ten months old is not able to do; he is not able to talk, he is not able to walk, he is not able to ... he is defined for what he is not. You know that we use the famous word infant, I don’t know if you ever reflect on this, but infant comes from French, and it is a definition of a person that is not able to speak. So it is a social category defined by what they are not able to do. Infant, those are that not able to do. It is something that we have to change, we have to move and come out of this picture, because look at Laura, what she can do.
So you have now to use all your hundred ways of listening; you have to listen to the words that are in this picture, you have to listen to the communication that is going on in this situation. Don’t use only hearing, what happened here, there were no sounds, only the sound of the other children, no words but something important happened. And it happened with the other languages that these two people were able to use to code into de-code.
Can you see what happened? Be careful; use the hundred languages that you are able to use. Decode, read the picture, can you see? If you look carefully you can see the body of Laura moving in the direction of the body of the teacher. That means that the teacher moved in direction, and she understood that Laura now is ready to do something; something is happening there. Very sophisticated communication, but look at that. And you have also, not only to look at the face of Laura that has changed, and look at the movement of the head of the teacher that is able to say Laura I am here, I am able to listen to you, I am here, but also you have always to look at this finger. When you have a baby in your house or in your school you learn very soon the importance of this finger. They can order everything to everybody – to the grandparents especially – and back to the mum and to everybody. Only with this finger, this finger changes the life of humanity, and the child can, with this finger, change your life where you are, because he can ask for everything. So we are using, now decoding, very sophisticated language that children are able to use. We say that children have a hundred languages, that is a demonstration. In fact look what happened here, Laura is asking a question, ready to ask something we believe ... no doubt, you see? Why no doubt? Look at the expression of the face, the intensive and beauty of this face, and the dialogue between the two. And the little finger.
And now you are these teachers, each of you, whether you teach in the infant/toddler centre, or you teach at the university. The human being has a huge potential that is to ask questions, to construct questions, to be able to surprise, to wonder. They want to know; we as human beings we want to know, and when you are born you are born with this attitude. Not only to find a solution but to ask, to build questions. Laura now she is full of curiosity, she is full of wonder, she wants to know. And the teacher, that is you, has to choose, you can have two or three possible actions to tell Laura it is a watch, done. For each question there is an answer, so you are able to organise their life and your life to be sure that for each question there is an answer, and the adult can give the answer to the child.
The second possibility is to start to search for an answer with the child, and to support the child to find the answer to the question. That is to support the student to find the answer. But there is a third position that is the most difficult one, but I think the most generous one to the child, that is to expand the question; to put the question into complexity, to invite the child to understand that not only for each question there is an answer, but each question can put us in touch with many other questions, in touch with the entire world, in touch with the universe; to help us to feel that we are part of something much larger. And we have the opportunity; we are unique all over the world, for now, to have the possibility to build and to construct a question, and to reach an answer, and to find a new solution, to be creative. Creativity starts from this moment, creativity is not something separated by the way in which we think, to think in a creative way is what we have to support if we want to have a future, not only for our children, but for us as human beings.
What the teacher chose to do was this third position, to expand the question. You will remember that this picture was taken many years ago, and that time, I don’t know if there are people in the audience who can remember the watch was doing tick-tock, tick-tock, you remember for sure, and that is why the teacher moved from this image to the real one and looked at the concentration, no words. You see the little question, you have to use the metaphor, was an expansion. It is like when you have a child and you say what is this, it is a flower, or you bring the flower into the field under the sky, and the relationship between the field and the sky. We are talking about systemic approach and complexity, it is the same. And here I always say that this is the metaphor of the competent child. I don’t know how much you can remember from my speech, but please bring home the image of Laura, because Laura is a real competent, intelligent, powerful child; not because of what she will do, but because she is able to remind us forever that children really can construct their own knowledge if we can support it. And we can be good teachers if we can support their own learning processes. So the relationship between teaching and learning is that teaching has to support the learning processes of the children, this is the definition that the teacher is the supporter of the learning processes of the children. That does not mean that the teacher has to do whatever the child wants to do, it means to be able to recognise the most important step that the child is now discovering, the child is developing.
Now you can see in this picture the surprise, the wonder, and the challenge is to maintain this human being able to wonder also when he is ten years old, twenty years old, eighty years old. To wonder, to be surprised, to enjoy life, to discover the real meaning of life, this is what we have to try to do. It is not only to teach him or her history, but their curiosity to know, to maintain this curiosity, to maintain an open mind. And now we know, and we know seriously that what happens in the early years of life is definitely the most important that can happen in our life. Now we know as teachers, now we know as a society, know we know as politicians, what happens in the early years of life are the most important things that can happen in our life. So now, as a society, we have to take this responsibility.
But lets go back to the surprise of Laura, and what I would like to say is that Laura in this moment, she is developing what is the human attitude, she is making an hypothesis, she is making a theory, she is thinking, thinking means to make an hypothesis. It is not important if it is right or wrong, it is to maintain this capacity to make hypothesis, to make a theory. What is a theory? It is a good organisation of elements that you have in your hands. The Darwinian theory, or Einstein’s theory are new organisations of elements, and this attitude is a typical attitudes of human beings that is present at this time of life. What the school should do is to maintain, because the future will be full of unknown, what we know now will never be useful for the future. The future is here in the moment in which we decide to prepare ourselves, and with the support of the children, to be able to a future that nobody can know, because for the first time in the history of humanity the big switch is happening and we are responsible for this. And we are responsibility for each Laura, that in the morning was so surprised, so wondered, able to do a theory. Are you able know to listen to Laura; that means to look with your eyes carefully?
Nothing after, but something absolutely, she is making theories, you know what I mean? That means connection between what she saw, she said that this is like this, so if this makes ... and this is the problem that we have, in general we define this as misunderstanding and we have to correct, and to teach to the child what is right and what is wrong. Instead the big problem that we have is to become able, as the teacher was, and the other teacher taking the picture, was to be on path, to dance with the dance that the learning music of the child is now sounding. So the difficulty will be to prepare the other steps, to interpret what Laura is travelling with, which other opportunity can you offer? Laura can be, Mario, can be Peter, can be whatever you want; can be ten months old, ten years old, that is the big revolution I think [unclear-00:26:19] revolution. From a school based on teaching, to a school based on learning; that is the learning of the children and the learning of the teacher. So the role of the teacher is to learn, to learn from the learning processes of the children to become a better teacher. That means to be in love with the children, with the learning processes of the children, and to learn not to be only scientifically prepared, but to be emotionally prepared to discover the joy of a moment like this. Or, after many years, can you understand what happened here? Laura, yes, she is Laura coming back to the infant/toddler centre with her son looking at the picture of her with the mother; so Laura, her son, the mother and the teachers together. Just to tell you that there is huge gratitude started in moments like this; the gratitude between the teacher and the child, but also the gratitude of the family involved, a true documentation in sharing a moment like this and emotion like this. Look at the company; this is Laura that you met before, now Laura, so this episode happened in the 80s, and I always like to go back to this, because it was the moment in which I understood what it means, the image of the child, the competent child. The competent child exists if we are competent, and the intelligent child exists if we are intelligent.
I know that there are a lot of problems, I know, I don’t come from heaven, but I come from reality where we are still struggling every day to try to justify the presence of this school, and the presence of the competent child. But when you have a moment like this you understand; the mother, you see, was there, now it is the grandmother. The gratitude of the family, the gratitude of the families, the gratitude to the infant/toddler centre, because they bring not only a social service, but they bring culture into the community, the culture of human beings, the remind what it means to educate, they bring new knowledge in you. That is why I think, after many years, I totally understand Loris Malaguzzi meant when he was talking about when he said all the children are intelligent.
And perhaps you can understand also the value of documentation, this way of taking pictures with the notes, and other tools that we offer to our teachers for documenting; their own surprise, their own curiosity as an act of love. It is not a tool it is a relationship documentation, it means to go into the experience of the children, to be involved, and also documentation means solidarity. And also remember that every picture you are taking notes. You are not taking notes of what I am telling you, you are taking notes about what you know about what I am telling you, so it is not what I say, what I say is here, you give meaning to what I say, you give values to me, but also you are taking notes and you know what you know about what I say. If you write or not is not important, what is important is that every time you take a document, a picture or a written note, you are writing also what you know about what you have in front of you. So the tool of documentation is there.
So all the children are intelligent if we - we as adults, we as societies, we as educators, we as politicians, we as human beings are able to welcome them. And that is why I am today talking about the role of the teacher.
I want to talk about the schooling which the teacher has to express, the school of education. I am talking about infant/toddler centre in the school, but in general as a place of education. Not simply of formation, for us the most important is to use the verb education. The term education is in fact the key term because it is strongly correlated with the term values. Education has something to do with values, so school is a place where values are transmitted, challenged and renewed. So it is first of all a place of value, but what is a value? In my definition values are ideals to which men and women aspire to in their own life. Values are not forever, values are challenged, and values are historically defined, and can be historically redefined. And to talk about values is important when you talk with a teacher, especially with an early childhood education teacher, it is not that values come later. Values are in our daily life, in our school, in our body, we are values and we bring values, every day when we go to school, when we walk around, values define culture, and are fundamental in culture. Values are not something written on the wall, but something that allows us to behave in a certain way or not. Values are those that inspire our behaviour as teachers, and we are first of all people that have to express values, and to teach values, not with the words but with the daily life way.
I tend to say that when we talk about assessment and evaluation, what we are we talking about with evaluation if not about values? What does evaluation mean if not to be focussed on certain values more than others. What do you value in your school? What is the value that you don’t only teach, but you dress, you are, you bring every day, when you drive, when you go into school, and at every moment in your school? That’s why it is so important to have the possibility to reflect on values when you are talking about the role of the teacher. It would be easy to say a teacher has to do this and this and this. Unfortunately Reggio Approach, where I have been living for more than forty years, is not a place where they can teach you what to do, but they support your learning processes, with colleagues and with the children and the parents, to find your way of teaching with that group of children, those families and that community. That is why to talk about values is the first step if you want to talk about the role of the teacher.
Which value do we tend to value in an experience like Reggio? The first value is the value of subjectivity. Subjectivity means to underline the uniqueness of each human brain. Now we know, we are sure, that each of the children that we have every morning in our school is different from all the others that we have had before in the same classroom, or will have. This is a value; it is not only a knowledge, this is a value. How can we develop this as a value? How do we teach? How do we connect with this essential? And it is something that has a lot to do with a lot of implication, because this is the reason why we have to revisit our idea that we are more equal if we let the children do the same thing at the same moment in the same way, this is the challenge. This is why we are [unclear-00:36:47] of value. I repeat, if you agree that school is a place of education – you can agree or not – but if you agree about this you have to talk about values, because you cannot talk about education without values, is that clear? And if you talk about values I am telling you that from our experience, and many other confrontations, one of the first and most important values that is challenging, not only our teaching nowadays but our whole society, is the value of uniqueness of subjectivity, that means of the uniqueness of each human being; that means that in this room there are not only three or four hundred people, there are three or four hundred unique human beings.
So that is the big challenge that we have as teachers, could we continue with the same way of teaching, that means to say to ask the same thing at the same moment to everybody, or which kind of switch we should do, and which kind of environment we should have, and which kind of strategy we should develop. This is didactical pedagogical issue, but it is also a culture and political issue obviously. I think that education is not neutral, it is a political choice. So that means that if we say that each child is different recommendation becomes the first tool that we have to have in our hands, but also maybe our classroom has to change organisation, and our time and our space has to become different to welcome the twenty, twenty-five, thirty Laura’s that we have in our classroom. I know that it is difficult, I know that it is challenging, but I know also that it can be, not only joyful, but integral as a value, if we know that each of us is different. But I don’t know if you know that really each human brain is unique. If we know this how can we continue? How can we allow that they ask it to continue? And this is also challenging the way in which our schools are organised, the way in which our curriculum is asked to do it, and the way in which we talk about tests – tests and testing – so if we bring this as a value in our school, it is not simply that we are able to talk in front of people that we have value like the subjectivity, but we have to behave, or ask to have the possibility to behave in the daily life with coherence with this value. And if the other value that comes as a consequence is the value of differences, because if each of us is unique it means that the differences are not only gender differences, not only ethnic differences, but are the differences that each of us bring to the other. I don’t know if it is clear.
So each of us is different, then you can have a certain religion, a certain culture, but the value that we have is that each of us is unique, is different. So the value of difference is absolutely another element to bring into school, and to see in our curriculum that it can be supported. And how can the differences become a real value? Because differences in themselves are not a value, although they can become one if - remember Laura and if, because we are the if - we manage to create a context, a culture, a strategy, a school based on differences. What can we do with the differences? How can we avoid the enormous risk of homogenisation? Globalisation is the big risk that we have in front of us in terms that make everything similar everywhere. And we know that if we have the value of uniqueness of the value of differences ... it is not that I am telling you that the globalisation is the risk, but we have to be aware that globalisation tends to homogenise; hamburger, fast food, McDonalds, is the style that we have, and so as educators since the early years we have to have this as one of the main.
So how can we avoid the risk of homogenisation? Are all the differences acceptable? If not, which ones are not? And which kind of concept of equality are we elaborating? What is equal nowadays? I said before, we cannot continue to ask the same performance of the same children at the same time, this is the big challenge. I would like to tell you that you have to do this and this and this, but I cannot because you are in your classroom with those children. There are some strategies that can support you, but the enormous joy and the enormous risk is that what you are doing, what you can do in your classroom, is something that is unique and you can find only in the alliance of your colleagues, of the children themselves and of the community around. So this is why I think differences are another enormous element that we want to take in our hands.
But the key for valuing these two elements that are uniqueness and differences, that is what we have in front of us every day in our classroom; what we discovered as a fundamental tool was the pedagogy of listening. Listening is a key word, a key verb, listening as a metaphor not only describing to hear, but describing to this position of welcoming this uniqueness and these differences that we have in front of us. Listening for us is the metaphor for documentation as a tool that helps us to bring in our hands the uniqueness of each process of learning, and try to give back the possibility to find a context that can support the uniqueness of each child.
Obviously it is not so simple, obviously we work as a team, obviously we have time for reflection, and we want to have time for reflection about what we document. To document means to think about, it means to support, but what seems to be indispensable is to have the possibility. Our role as a teacher can be defined, in our experience, by a description, by a recipe. It can be a role that accepts being challenged every day because it is a role of a learning community. The role of the teacher is the role of a researcher; the teacher is a researcher because the children are researchers. And based on this value we can also have the courage to value doubt, mistakes – not only for the children, but also for us as teachers - the value of uncertainty, the value of friendship, the value of being a school open to the community. So the curriculum that we try to construct is a curriculum based on certain values and principles that look to a school not only as a place where the children can go in safety, but it is a place where ourselves and our culture can be challenged; they have the courage to look at the future. What humanity is losing is the courage of the future. We have to have the courage of the future because if we have children they bring the future; they not only are the future but they are the future in the present. That is why, I think, in a country like this, so able to challenge, so able to be close to the courage of changing the curriculum, so inspiring for all of us, the really big possibility that you can offer is really to write a curriculum and to write the pages about the role of the teacher, not as somebody that has to apply description didactic made by others, but as a role of a person that wants to be a protagonist as a citizen, as a researcher of the present and on the future, of the children and community.
Thank you very much.
[End of Recording]
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