Continuity of the Reggio Emilia Approach to Education through Documentation

Being a teacher whose setting is the high school context attending a conference that is specifically focused on the elementary context initially posed a challenge for me, specifically connecting Reggio Emilia to my work. There are a number of aspects of the Reggio Emilia philosophy which are challenging to apply to the classroom of a high school. The content driven, high accountability testing environment of the secondary classroom is not conducive to the student centred inquiry education style of Reggio Emilia. Faced with the question of continuity, how can educators of the higher grade levels apply the Reggio Emilia approach? One aspect that stands out is that of documentation. Jaruszewicz (2006) recounts the transformative experience of using visual documentation of student learning within the context of a college teacher preparation program and the impact of her experience on her own teaching. "My original goal had been for the students to learn about curriculum. But I had encountered something entirely new related to teaching, learning and myself; only I did not know what it was" (p. 360). Documentation, I feel, is the transformational "in" for the Reggio Emilia philosophy.

The Reggio Emilia approach to learning offers a new understanding of the role of documentation in education. As described by Tizianna Filippini, Coordinator of the Documentation and Educational Research Centre of Reggio Emilia, "[d]ocumentation is not just a technical tool, but an attitude towards teaching and learning" (Turner & Wilson, 2010, p. 6). Documentation is about making learning visible, allowing others to see the learning process. Often it is not the learning process that is captured by teachers through standard practice of documentation. The documentation that Reggio Emilia promotes is that which allows all to gather an understanding of the learning that has taken place, making visible the process. ."Requiring students to document their own learning challenges them not only to selectively identify what is meaningful to them and how they learned it, but to consider and make subsequent decisions about how to communicate what children are learning, from a more sophisticated, layered orientation" (Jaruszewicz, 2006, p. 371). This is not captured in a simple pen or pencil test which provides a superficial snap shot of learning.

It is enlightening to know that documentation has been used with high levels of education and provides lessons for the future. Soble and Hogue (2010) in their exploration of the challenge of documentation in a high school highlight two key lessons on documentation: "1. Documentation is essentially about developing a pedagogy of listening, regardless of what the documentation looks like or how it is displayed. . . 2. Documentation is first for the learners. Although there are several potential audiences for documentation, the group of learners with whom I am working directly is the one most important to me." (p. 50). Soble et al. (2010) touch on one of the most difficult aspects of documentation, that of its practicality.

Supporting this problem is the program Project Zero out of Harvard University. One project specifically, Making Learning Visible, "draws attention to the power of the group as a learning environment and documentation as a way to see and shape how and what children are learning" (Making Learning Visible, 2010). In supporting the impact making learning visible through documentation has Stephanie Suarez (2006) highlights a comment from one of the participants in her study, "[w]hat I found was the most powerful learning I had ever experienced in a graduate seminar for pre-service teachers. I found that by making our learning visible, we created a collective body of knowledge. I found that our 'collective learning' may be even broader than our 'individual learning'" (p. 35). Tapping into such a resource provides inspiration and enlightenment for those who would like to tackle the problem of continuity.

References

Jaruszewicz, C. (2006). Opening windows on teaching and learning: Transformative and emancipatory learning precipitated by experimenting with visual documentation of student learning. Educational Action Research, 14(3), 357-375.

Making Learning Visible. (2010) Understanding, documenting and supporting individual and group learning. Retrieved from http://www.pzweb.harvard.edu/mlv.

Soble, J. and Hogue, J. (2010). From display to documentation to discourse: The challenge of documentation in a high school. Theory Into Practice, 49(1), 47-55.

Suarez. S. C. (2006). Making learning visible through documentation: creating a culture of inquiry amoung pre-service teachers. The New Educator, 2, 33-55: doi: 10.1080/15476880500486129.

Turner, T. and Wilson, D. G. (2010). Reflections on documentation: a discussion with thought leaders from Reggio Emilia. Theory Into Practice, 49(1) 5-13.