On Thinking Together
Patti Loftus

Patti Loftus B.A., M.A., is a retired early childhood teacher whose career included twenty-eight years in the Pre-K program at Blake School (Minnesota). She’s been interested in the Reggio approach since 1992 and has served as a RINM Board member. She’s currently a RINM Communications Committee member.

As described in Fundamentals, one of the central ideas of the Reggio approach is “participation,” the relatively non-hierarchical involvement of many stakeholders – children, parents, teachers/pedagogistas/atelieristas, other school personnel, community members and various civic organizations – who bring different points of view, and each perspective is valued.

“... it develops in a multiplicity of occasions and initiatives for constructing dialogue and the sense of belonging to a community…Participation generates and nurtures the feelings and culture of solidarity, responsibility and inclusion; it produces change and new cultures that contend with the dimension of the contemporary world and globalization.”

–Indications

There are many dimensions to participation – convening meetings, listening carefully, asking thoughtful questions, offering a point of view. In Reggio-inspired practice, thinking together is an essential dimension of participation, a quality of engagement/dialogue that moves toward an undetermined outcome.

  –Reggio Children, Shoe and Meter (1997)

Participants who think together come up with ideas that they might not have anticipated. It’s unlikely that Loris Malaguzzi and the people he worked with at the time imagined that leveraging the leftover rubble of WWII – a tank, six horses and three trucks – would launch a world-wide and evolving educational project. 

This aspect of participation involves deep thinking about values, working to align theory and practice. Through documentation, referencing a common trace – text, drawing, video, images or narrative – participants pose, revisit, refine and relaunch questions that fuel next steps. Playing generously with ideas prompts new thinking.

The Reggio-Inspired Network of Minnesota has supported “thinking together,” from its inception. Since its early days, the Network organized Monthly Gatherings open to everyone interested in Reggio-inspired theory and practice. Offerings grew over the years to include Book Studies, Community Conversations, Documentation Labs, Loose Parts Lab and an unstructured get-together called “Let’s Talk,” all of which have provided the possibility for in-person and virtual spaces for participants to share perspectives and ponder questions together. This quarterly newsletter, which we have been publishing for more than thirteen years, is another place for the meeting of writers’ and readers’ minds and the exchange of ideas. 

Books can be powerful resources for thinking together. Many find that writing from Reggio is difficult to understand and remote from our context. In their 2018 book, From Teaching to Thinking: A Pedagogy for Reimagining Our Work (Exchange Press,) co-authors Ann Pelo and Margie Carter, both with deep roots in Reggio study, invite readers to join their process. Pelo and Carter’s thinking, firmly lodged in the U.S., is deeply grounded in Reggio principles, yet very approachable.

They reflect on their decades of work in a back-and-forth format, “Ann offers theory, story, and core concepts in her writing, and Margie offers a response that speaks to the ideas that especially stand out to her, and the questions for practice with which she wants us to engage,” (p. 29). They encourage the reader to “join the conversation” and invite colleagues to read and think together. 

They pose questions for their readers, starting with: 

“What kind of people do we want to be?
What kind of world do we want to live in?
What is the purpose of education?”

They describe: 

The authors agree with Peter Moss “that new stories are necessary, that ‘offer hope that another world is possible, a world that is more equal, democratic and sustainable, a world where surprise and wonder, diversity and complexity find their rightful place in early childhood education, indeed all education.’” 

Pelo and Carter ask the question, “What convictions drive your work?” (p. 28).

They discuss the importance of “creating a culture of inquiry” that prizes questions and the process of investigating them, more than arriving at answers. It “values complexity, not-knowing, uncertainty, divergent and contradictory ideas.” These ideas remain fresh, relevant and more important today. 

Thinking together requires intention on the part of participants – first in finding time and space to gather and then determining productive questions and resources as the subjects for consideration. Ongoing dialogue is an avenue through which multiple perspectives can encounter one another to build/deepen understanding and chart next steps. Participating in RINM events, discussing books, such as From Teaching to Thinking, and focused dialogue among interested colleagues can be starting points.

References

Pelo, A., Carter, M. (2018). From Teaching to Thinking: A Pedagogy for Reimagining Our Work. Exchange Press.

Reggio Children (2010). Indications: Preschools and Infant-Toddler Centres of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia.Reggio Children.