Page 3 - To know things we have to have the world inside us

Beginnings…..

We belong to a large group of pedagogical explorers from around the world who have been substantially challenged,
inspired and mystified by the educational project in Reggio Emilia. Reggio speaks to different people in different
ways, generating experimentation and reflection in many aspects of pedagogical theory and practice. For us (Chris
and Margo) the Reggio image of knowledge as relational, of the teacher as a researcher in relation, and of the school
as a place of research and relations has been influencing our own research for quite some time now. Through this
research, with materials, with each other, with colleagues in Reggio Emilia, our own colleagues, with thinkers and
writers and with teachers, we have come to understand and support Carla Rinaldi’s proposition that “working as
teachers as researchers can’t be taught. It is only possible to feel it. It must be experienced. It is a real part of life”.
(2012)

Our research has brought us to a stage where we feel confident in proposing that professional learning for teachers
grounded in relations must be relational in practice and that professional learning that advocates an image of
teachers as researchers, must be research based. This experiential approach to professional learning creates, in our
opinion, opportunities for “forming oneself, increasing sensitivities and sensibilities, letting poetic sensibilities
emerge. The important thing is to put ourselves in the shoes of the child; to try something out - ‘in our own skin’, it
must be a lived experience” (Elena Maccaferri, 2012).

So it was with great excitement that we accepted the invitation from Reggio Emilia Aotearoa New Zealand (REANZ) in
2016, to participate with them in a joint research project on the value of professional learning experiences for
teachers that incorporate shared, lived, professional research.

This project presented the possibility for us, in relation with the teachers, to continue to investigate our ongoing
research question: how do adults change the shape of their knowing and become more sensitive to their own
knowledge building processes so that they can become more sensitive to those of children?

Questions…

When we look at the professional learning for teachers in Reggio Emilia, we observe that theory and practice, mind and
body, doing and thinking, rationality and emotion, imagination and aesthetics are always connected; as are the
protagonists, the environment, the town, the culture…. These are not seen as opposites or separates but as part of a
complex, reciprocal, relational system that intentionally seeks to sit on the border between the known and the unknown.
As we prepared for our work in New Zealand we tried to articulate our questions.

How could we (all of us) become sensitive to our own knowledge building processes as a way of becoming more
sensitive to those of children?
How can we shift the shape of our knowing from the dominant discourse of disconnection and simplification towards
a pedagogy of relations?

How could we become more conscious of the difference between mental concepts and the ‘actuality’, the ‘reality’, that
is experienced?
How could we become more sensitive to the influence of our unconscious on how we ‘see’ the world?

How could we become more comfortable in being part of a way of learning that is understood as an ongoing process
of ‘becoming’?
How could we embrace uncertainty and questions as the drivers of learning; ours and that of children?

How could we come to understand things~objects~materials as having agency, influencing not just actions but also
thinking?
How could we (Chris and Margo) create a shared lived experience for a disparate group of adults, from disparate
educational settings and disparate locations around New Zealand that would provide a context for this research?

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