eChapters
Insights - Chapter 1 - eChapter / An Overview of the Terrain: Roadmaps for Possible Journeys
By Alma Fleet, Catherine Patterson and Janet RobertsonAuthor(s): Alma Fleet, Catherine Patterson, Janet Robertson (click on the author's name for more titles)
This eChapter is in a PDF format.
Alma, Catherine and Janet have been professional colleagues for more than ten years at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. During this time they have had the opportunity to visit Reggio Emilia several times, to visit Scandinavia as part of an international delegation exploring the impact of ideas from Reggio Emilia and to work together in professional contexts.
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Insights - Chapter 10 - eChapter / At the Crossroads: Pedagogical Documentation and Social Justice
By Ann PeloThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
Ann writes this chapter from the perspective of a mentor to the staff at Hilltop Children’s Center, a full-day, urban child care program in the United States. The position of mentor teacher was created at Hilltop in 2003 as a strategy for creating a shared understanding of core pedagogical principles and establishing common teaching practices among the teaching staff. Hilltop had long been influenced by the teaching and learning in Reggio Emilia but, until this position was created, there was little institutional support for centre-wide efforts to weave these influences into daily practice. After 12 years of classroom teaching, which launched Ann on her journey into pedagogical documentation, she became Hilltop’s mentor teacher. In this work, she partnered with individual teachers, worked with classroom teaching teams, and facilitated centre-wide professional development gatherings, with a year-long focus on pedagogical documentation. This focused attention on the rhythm of observation, reflection, and planning, shook loose old habits and patterns, opened new possibilities, and sparked new participation by teachers who had long been on the periphery or entrenched in old ruts and routines. The experience described below confirmed for Ann the power of pedagogical documentation as a doorway into teaching that is full of zest, engaged awareness, and playful exploration.
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Insights - Chapter 11 - eChapter / Unsure: Private Conversations Publicly Recorded
By Sandra Cheeseman and Janet RobertsonThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
At the beginning of these conversations, Sandra was a parent with two children at Mia-Mia, a not-for-profit child care centre attached to the Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, where Janet taught the group of two and three-year-old children. Sandra was also the Staff Development Co-ordinator for SDN Children’s Services (a not-for-profit organisation operating a number of children’s services throughout New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory) and had visited the schools in Reggio Emilia. Janet and Sandra, teacher and parent, colleagues and fellow travellers to Reggio Emilia, were ideally placed to have these prickly, troubling and rich exchanges.
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Insights - Chapter 12 - eChapter / The Power and the Passion: Popular Culture and Pedagogy
By Miriam GiugniThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
Miriam Giugni has worked in the field of early childhood education for the past 12 years in both rural and urban contexts, including Australian Aboriginal communities. She is passionate about social justice. This passion is reflected in her research interests, which include media and cultural studies, feminist studies, ‘race’ relations and identity politics that are critical for the production of democratic early childhood praxis. This chapter draws on research Miriam completed for her Honours thesis.
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Insights - Chapter 13 - eChapter / Interrogating Diversity
By Alma Fleet and Janet RobertsonThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
In a book embedded in social justice, the need to name a chapter on ‘diversity’ may seem redundant. Nevertheless, the need for a named chapter seemed essential. Parts of this chapter were developed originally as a keynote presentation for the conference entitled Unpacking interpretation: Deconstructions from Australia, America and Reggio Emilia, in Sydney in 2001. The thinking has been revisited and recent stories have been added, including those from fourth-year student teachers in their final year of a university B Ed (ECE) teacher education program.
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Insights - Chapter 14 - eChapter / Three Narratives: The Sun, the Boat and the Flag
By Janet RobertsonThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
These stories take place in the playground at Mia-Mia, a not-for-profit child care centre attached to the Institute of Early Childhood at Macquarie University in NSW, Australia. Much attention has been paid to the aesthetic environment, both indoor and outdoor, to reflect the centre philosophy of education based on relationships. The playground is a garden with both intimate hideaway spaces and larger open ones, shady trees and a wide verandah. The space is used by 38, two to six-year-old children. One day a week, Janet, who is normally the two and three-year-olds’ teacher, takes the role of the outdoor teacher.
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Insights - Chapter 15 - eChapter / The Power of the Listened Word
By Alexandra HarperThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
The children in this chapter are seven and eight-year-olds in a public school in suburban Sydney, Australia. Most children in the school speak English as a first language. Their teacher, Alex, is now in an executive position in the school, having worked previously in teacher education and in a family-grouped, alternative school.
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Insights - Chapter 16 - eChapter / Provocations of Te Whariki and Reggio Emilia
By Chris BayesThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
At the time of writing, Chris was a professional development facilitator working with early childhood centres in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand. Chris continues to have an interest in creating curriculum with teachers, children and parents that engages them intellectually, emotionally and spiritually. She was granted a Winston Churchill Fellowship in 1999 and this took her to Reggio Emilia, Melbourne, Germany and London, to study the implementation of the theory and practice of Reggio Emilia in different cultural settings. Since then, she has been working alongside a number of teachers to provoke their thinking about teaching and learning and curriculum implementation.
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Insights - Chapter 17 - eChapter / Five Voices: Interrupting the Dominant Discourse
By Alma Fleet, Margaret Hammersley, Catherine Patterson, Lisa Schillert and Edith StankeThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
This chapter is based on conversations that were held to plan a presentation at a national conference. The power of the conversations inspired the authors to present them to conference participants as a Readers’ Theatre. At the time of the conference, Margaret, Lisa and Edith were working together in a child care centre when Alma and Catherine (colleagues from Macquarie University) invited them to share their experiences of pedagogical documentation. The centre was a community-based long day care centre for children from birth to five, located in a predominantly white, middle-class suburb of a regional area in New South Wales. The centre was well-known for exploring ideas emerging from Reggio Emilia.
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Insights - Chapter 18 - eChapter / Exhibit-on: Surprising Site for Conflict and Celebration
By Alma Fleet and Janet RobertsonThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
The catalogue for an Australian travelling exhibition that celebrates pedagogical documentation in New South Wales (Australia) lists Alma and Janet as the curators of Exhibit-on. The first version of this exhibit has some thirty panels developed into gallery pieces by graphic designer Michelle McDonald, from excerpts of investigations documented by staff in early childhood settings. What is not clear in the public documentation is the angst that shaped the process. As preparation begins for the second version of the exhibition, the issues that arose still generate tension and highlight this arena as a site of ethical debate as well as emotional and intellectual complexity.
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Insights - Chapter 19 - eChapter / Conclusion
By Alma Fleet, Catherine Patterson and Janet RobertsonThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
Alma, Catherine and Janet have been professional colleagues for more than ten years at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. During this time they have had the opportunity to visit Reggio Emilia several times, to visit Scandinavia as part of an international delegation exploring the impact of ideas from Reggio Emilia and to work together in professional contexts.
RRP $8.00
Insights - Chapter 2 - eChapter / No, It’s Not Okay: Drawing a Line in the Sand
By Jill McLachlanAuthor(s): Jill McLachlan (click on the author's name for more titles)
This eChapter is in a PDF format.
Jill McLachlan is a classroom teacher presently working in an independent school in Sydney, Australia. The school caters for children from three to eight years old, with approximately 180 students in total. Most of the children attending the school are from upper-middle class families, with many of the parents working in executive positions. The story you will read in this chapter relates to a Year One class at that school. The children were aged between six and seven when the conversations took place. It is with the support of both the children and their parents that the story is published.
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Insights - Chapter 3 - eChapter / Reconsidering Our Images of Children: What Shapes our Educational Thinking?
By Janet RobertsonAuthor(s): Janet Robertson (click on the author's name for more titles)
This eChapter is in a PDF format.
Following early exploration of the challenges of Reggio Emilia’s pedagogical experience to Australian education, in 1992 Janet took the position of toddler teacher at Mia-Mia, a not-for-profit child care centre attached to the Institute of Early Childhood, Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It was here she began to explore ‘the image of the child’ from a practical as well as theoretical position, becoming a researcher with children. An earlier version of these ideas was presented as a keynote address at a conference (Robertson, 1996).
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Insights - Chapter 4 - eChapter / The Disposition to Document
By Sarah Felstiner, Laurie Kocher and Ann PeloThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
Like many small child care programs in the United States, Hilltop rents space in a Church—in our case, a large Lutheran church with brick walls and a copper roof. Hilltop Children’s Center is a private, not-for-profit program offering full-day care for children aged three to five, as well as after-school and vacation care for those aged six to ten. There are about 70 children enrolled at Hilltop and most of them are preschoolers. Since 1971, Hilltop has been located on the top of Queen Anne Hill in Seattle, Washington. The seven small rooms on the top floor of the church house our classrooms and art studios for preschool aged children as well as our program’s administrative office. The ‘Big Kids’ use one large room in the basement of the church. Text taken from the Introduction of Insights Behind Early Childhood Pedagogical Documentation.
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Insights - Chapter 5 - eChapter / Stories from Aotearoa/New Zealand
By Kiri Gould and Lesley PohioThis eChapter is in a PDF format.
The examples from practice used in this chapter come from Akarana Avenue Kindergarten located in Auckland, Aotearoa/New Zealand.1 Akarana is one of 107 not-for-profit, sessional kindergartens managed by the Auckland Kindergarten Association. The kindergarten employs three trained teachers and has 90 children. It offers eight sessions a week with 45 children attending each session. The children range in age from three to five years.Text taken from the Introduction of Insights Behind Early Childhood Pedagogical Documentation.
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