The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia

The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia offers unparalleled insight into dialectic encounters between teachers, pedagogistas, and atelieristas in the world-renowned municipal early childhood services of the city of Reggio Emilia. It sheds light on the system and culture that cares for and sustains an enduring educational experience, for the common good.

Emerging from a collaborative research project with Reggio Children and the Preschools and Infant-toddler Centres – Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, this book features in-depth observations of pedagogistas, teachers, and atelieristas, as well as interviews with key figures in Reggio Emilia. Children’s learning is thoughtfully emphasised, as the authors render the inextricable connection between theory-practice-research, framing documentation and progettazione as artful collective experimentation.

The authors illuminate how Reggio Emilia’s system sustains reciprocal professional formation through progettazione, contesting dominant marketplace discourses of early childhood education as a commodity and re-imagining settings driven by values of reciprocity, artistry, culture, and the common good.

By troubling conventional views on education and care, professionalism of teachers, and educational leadership, this book will appeal to all those who long for something different and hope to shift the field of possibility for early childhood education culturally, socially, pedagogically, and politically. It will be a key resource for teachers, leaders, policy makers, and scholars in the whole field of education.

Authors: Stefania Giamminuti, Paola Cagliari, Claudia Giudici and Paola Strozzi.

“This book is very important for the whole field of education. It is essential reading for anyone wanting deeper understanding of the extraordinary education project of Reggio Emilia, delving into its underpinning pedagogy, politics, ethics, culture and philosophy as well as the ‘competent system’ that enables it. It contests the impoverished education of the neoliberal hegemony, with its standardised criteria and predetermined outcomes. It leaves the reader with hope that another world is possible as that hegemony passes.” Peter Moss, Emeritus Professor, UCL Institute of Education

“A city that cares and collective research – these enchanting concepts are the opening words and ethos of this book that describes the role of the pedagogistas in Reggio Emilia. However, the book does not only describe the role of the pedagogistas, it also demonstrates how this role is constantly put into play, into the not-yet – ‘mettersi in gioco’ – through the pedagogistas’ lived experiences together with the children, the teachers, the parents, and engaged others. In tune with Reggio Emilia’s tradition of systemic and pragmatic thinking, the role of the pedagogista is placed in an ecology of practices, which opens up towards speculative pragmatic thinking; towards events, affect and minor gestures, and towards life in its widest sense. The book also sends a message of hope and a call for an education commons, which is so important when education systems internationally are experiencing the dissolution of collective action.” Gunilla Dahlberg, Emeritus Professor, Stockholm University