March 19, 2024

One Definition of Learning

A few years ago, I turned my friend Will Richardson onto Seymour Sarason‘s great book, And What Do YOU Mean About Learning? Ever since, Will has been asking people to define learning.

Earlier this week, I had a meeting in Reggio Emilia, Italy where I picked up a pamphlet explaining their awe-inspiring approach to early childhood education. It looks like the sort of document you might see scattered at the DMV or local health clinic, but its contents are profound.

Here is how the infant-toddler centers and preschools of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia define learning:

Learning as a process of individual and group construction

Each child, like each human being, is an active constructor of knowledge, competencies, and autonomies, by means of original learning processes that take shape with methods and times that are unique and subjective in the relationship with peers, adults and the environment.

The learning process is fostered by strategies of research, comparison of ideas, and co-participation; it makes use of creativity, uncertainty, intuition, curiosity; it is generated in play and in the aesthetic, emotional relational, and spiritual dimensions, which it interweaves and nurtures; it is based on the centrality of motivation and the pleasure of learning.”

Infant-toddler Centers and Preschools Isituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia. (2011). Indications – Preschools and Infant-Toddler Centres of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia. page 11.

Interested in learning more about the Reggio Emilia Approach to education?