The Early Childhood team were recently delighted to have the opportunity to attend some of the sessions from the Sightlines conference. The Sightlines Initiative is an organisation which, in their words, is ‘the UK reference point for Reggio Emilia’s preschools’. We thought you may enjoy hearing about some of the sessions we attended; in this post we asked Eleonora Teszenyi her thoughts on the session Walking on Threads of Silk by Marina Castagnetti.
Why did you choose this particular session Eleonora?
The title caught my attention because it sounded very much like one of those projects of the Reggio Emilia preschools that are documented and kept in the archives of the Loris Malaguzzi Centre. And sure enough, it was. Although the talk did not include references to this project, instead it was used as a simile for practitioner reflections: because it is like walking on threads of silk – delicate yet strong, interwoven with every fibre of practice and representing the very being of the early educators of the Reggio Emilia Preschools.
What are the key points you have taken away?
So many points were poignant for me and I will only list just a few:
- In documenting children’s learning (or making their learning visible), photographs are viewed as the language that captures the aesthetic dimension of communication ideas and which creates and strengthens relationships.
- The right to subjectivity. The right of the child, the pedagogue and the family to subjectivity and this was taken in the context or discourse of documentation, illustrated by a quote from Malaguzzi: “The discovery of children’s competencies is one of the greatest discoveries, most productive and most generative discoveries ever made, also in terms of subjectivity and right.” (This was a verbatim translation of a small section of one of his speeches.) Pedagogical documentation gives visibility to the capacities that we credit children with, and through this, adults are able to participate in the construction of children’s knowledge. Documentation captures the processes of how children build knowledge; it makes the intentions of the child visible when often these very subjective underlying thought processes are invisible.
- I loved how Marina referred to what could be seen as an ‘error’ or a ‘mistake’ as the representations of endless possibilities. Children privilege knowledge through transformative action. In the process of transformation the child anticipates, conjures, tries out and checks, co-ordinates meanings that are progressively born from actions, transgresses, negotiates, adjusts, issues things from hands and mind. We see things that truly belong to children.
How will your learning from this seminar impact on your future research and work?
Apart from feeling an urge to be back in practice with children, I will think about ‘right to subjectivity’, give it meaning in relation to our Children’s Rights in Hungary project. I think these sentiments just underscore how I understand the significance of listening to young children and see them as experts of/in their own lives.
Thank you, Eleonora!
Eleonora, you write beautifully, thank you for sharing your reflections – i too liked I ‘ how Marina referred to what could be seen as an ‘error’ or a ‘mistake’ as the representations of endless possibilities’.
and i agree about the significance of listening to young children, even more important during times of chaos and uncertainty
This sounds like such an inspiring session, Eleonora. I love the idea of errors and mistakes as endless possibilities. If we could establish this philosophy across every phase of education, what a different world we might build!
Thank you, Claire, I was truly inspired. Isn’t it interesting how this resonates with the talk we attended on ‘critical pedagogy’, too? There, we were encouraged to take risks, which inevitably includes errors – but you can choose to see them either punitively or as ‘endless possibilities’ for further exploration.