REANZ October 2024 Newsletter

Kia ora

As we look forward to summer, REANZ Trustees have enjoyed touching base with many of you during the year at our professional development initiatives. In our last newsletter, we shared that Brenda Soutar and Leanne Clayton would be presenting ‘Tino Rangatiratanga - Reflections between Reggio Emilia and Te Ao Māori’ in Wellington. It was a highlight for the Trustees to meet together to share the presentation with REANZ Network members and other Kaiako from Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch.

Natalie Thomson, an Educational Leader at Daisies Education and Care Centre, has been reflecting on an aspect of the presentation that stood out for her. She shares some thoughts on the principle of ‘Listening’ that Brenda talked about.

Listening is a key component of both the educational project of Reggio Emilia and Te Ao Maori; listening between the children, adults and the environment around them. This mutually cooperative attitude is ongoing and stimulates dialogue and dynamic learning.

Brenda encouraged us to see listening as being of a spiritual nature that incorporates your eyes and your heart. If something touches you, like a piece of art or a scenic view, you feel it in your heart and it is a spiritual connection. We must listen to that feeling within us and recognise the impact that it is having - listening carefully and mindfully with intent, is a learning process.

Natalie has continued to reflect on the idea of listening and that it is more than what we

hear, but listening with emotion and with our whole being.

In the following link you will be able to read an article written by Carlina Rinaldi in 2016

after the terrorist attacks in Washington and New York. Carlina shares her insights about

the integral part listening has on our lives.

Carlina Rinaldi says “Listening is emotion. It is generated by emotions; it is influenced by the emotions of others; and it stimulates emotions.”

On the Sunday following the seminar, the Trustees met for the Annual General Meeting of the REANZ Charitable Trust, where we reviewed our past years progress and looked forward to the next year. This work will continue when we meet in person again in November.

Would you like to get more involved with one of our Networks? If yes, we’d love to hear from you. Click the button below to connect with our Network Liaison. Kerri and Diti will get in touch with you, or if you prefer, check out our Regional Networks on our website. We are currently keen to re-establish the Te Tai Tokerau Network so would love to hear from anyone interested.

Collectively Creative Series

One of the successes of our 2024 year to date, has been the seminar series Collectively Creative with Kirsty Liljegren, that drew together over 200 Kaiako at seminars being held in Auckland, Palmerston North, Wellington and Christchurch. We were very grateful to have the support of Network members from these places to ensure the seminars ran smoothly. Thank you to each and every one of you!

Kirsty Liljegren and Kelly Goodsir of the Creative Collection, have provided a window into the different ‘languages’ of children in a selection of booklets entitled ‘Reimagining Teaching Through The Arts’.

These booklets will support Kaiako to explore, innovate and think about creativity in new ways. To view and purchase these booklets on painting, wire, clay, open ended materials, textiles, digital, paper, light and drawing, click here.

Included in the booklet on Paper, is a delightful letter from ‘Paper’, written by Kelly Boucher. Here is a snippet. It begins…

To find out what that ‘something else’ is, go to the original version which is available for download at their website via the publication tab. 🙏Thank you Kelly!

Recently Dr Anne Meade shared a Playcentre Journal from 1971 focusing on Art. There were contributions from academics and teachers who played pivotal roles in education in Aotearoa New Zealand at that time. Dr Marie Clay, in the article she wrote, talked about the varied experiences that children arrive at school with, and suggests that if teachers present children with ‘simple tasks’, we won’t know if the child has anything else to give.

Dr Anne Meade has often talked about teachers needing to be ‘warm demanders’.The pedagogy of Reggio Emilia shows us that by presenting children with challenging and interesting ideas, we see their potential to reach beyond the boundaries of possibilities and allows them to dig deeper. Many of the ideas being explored in this early Playcentre Journal continue to be discussed today and it brings the notion of ‘everything has changed, and everything has stayed the same’ to light.

What does it mean to be Reggio Emilia Inspired as an individual and as an organisation? What can we learn from the Reggio Emilia educational project that we can translate in meaningful ways into our own contexts?

We believe that a critical component is to ensure that teachers and leaders engage in professional learning that enhances and deepens their understanding of this pedagogy.

Joining a study group to Reggio Emilia, Italy is a unique opportunity for Aotearoa New

Zealand kaiako to see and directly experience the history, the pedagogy and the

cultural context of Reggio Emilia.

Be inspired by new possibilities and provocations for how we teach in Aotearoa New Zealand alongside international groups from around the world, from as many as 30 different countries.

For all those thinking about Melbourne Study Group in 2025, enrol early so as not to be disappointed. Places are limited so register your interest in participating by clicking here . The study group gathers in Melbourne in the first week September 2025.

Studio for Playful Learning - Matt Karlson and Susan Harris Mackay - access website here

A recommendation from Margie Carter, author and well known mentor.

“Recently I re-listened to a podcast, ‘Awakened to Reggio’, which featured a conversation with Matt and Susan “Finding the Third Door”. I recommend taking a listen to get a sense of their thinking, experience and human spirit”.

Sensory Play for Infants: Listen here to the Spotify podcast

This book will be welcomed by all those seeking a deeper understanding of the Reggio Approach, an approach that is still, all too often, embraced by teachers who work within a context of traditonal, familiar, known and unchallenged approaches to education, leading to what has been critiqued as  ‘installing light tables without knowing why’. As Peter Moss states in the preface, “This book is very important for anyone wanting deeper understanding of the extraordinary education project of Reggio Emilia”. 

I have only just purchased this recently published book while on my 8th Study Group trip to Reggio Emilia in April 2024. I have by no means yet read the whole book! However, I have delved into each chapter to gain an overall impression of the book’s direction. The Role of the Pedagogista sits in amongst many other outstanding publications in Routledge’s Contesting Early Childhood series. These books all have in common the desire to offer alternative narratives and ethical and democratic practices to those working in early childhood. In the preface of this book Peter Moss challenges “the impoverished education of the neoliberal hegemony” and Gunilla Dahlberg comments on the ‘enchanting concepts’ of  A city that cares and collective research,  and on the book’s call  for an education common,  reflecting the call to return to and support ‘collective action’.The preface and the introductory chapter by Stefania Giamminuti (Reciprocal formazione in Reggio Emilia) set the scene for the rest of the book.

For me, the key messages from an initial reading are:

1. The call to ongoing change to the fundamental ideas and thoughts that underpin everyday practice, the challenge to see early childhood education as democratic, political and ethical, and actively seeking alternative practices that reflect shared ideas and values.

2. The Reggio Emilia Approach is, at heart, about social, political, democratic, ethical and cultural ideas and values, resulting in a deep, moral, and rights-based reflection on one’s everyday practice.

3. THINKING, in order to consider/reflect upon one’s TEACHING. 

4. Engaging in collective action and facilitating the flow of formazione, the flow of thoughts between the organisation, the teachers and the children.  

Some may be wondering about the term dialectic in the title. To make the meaning of the term dialectic clear, Stefania Giamminuti writes in chapter 3 about ‘the value of relationality’. She explains this word as an embedded action which creates ‘response-ability’. She says that the idea of ‘relationality expands the field from the individual to the collective’ (p.58). In chapter 4 Paola Strozzi writes that relationality underpins the concept of dialectics  and dialectic encounters. Personally, I have always drawn on the idea of dialectics in order to explain the polarised and abstract nature of education, and so it is exciting to see this term described so clearly in this chapter and directly linked to collective action. Paola Strozzi describes dialectical processes as ‘in essence, processes of creating meaning’. A dialectical way of thinking addresses the inherent turbulence and opposition of ideas that often exists in early childhood settings, with a ‘purpose that has the children, and their wellbeing and knowledge, at its centre’; a dialectical process is constantly seeking for ‘a common framework and shared premises of values’ (p.89). ‘Relations between people, ideas, and environments are multiple and intense, so as not to run the risk of avoiding complexity or reducing it to something simpler but, instead, of trying to explore it’; ‘complexity is therefore a constituent part’ of being human and ‘therefore a value’ (p.89). Further, on page 125, Strozzi writes ‘A dialectic of doing and making...is the shared tension towards understanding and researching the best learning contexts for children and adults’.

I am now looking forward to reading the whole book, and engaging in discussion with other readers!

In late November 2023, I had the pleasure of attending a seminar and academic forum in Sydney hosted by Semann and Slattery. Professor Peter Moss was the ‘Thinker in Residence’ at this event. I have been particularly intrigued with Peter Moss’ book ‘Beyond Quality - Languages of Evaluation’ over my career and now that we are 25 years down the track, I was interested in how this book has travelled through time. It was an opportunity not to be missed!

In the mid 2000’s, the book opened up my thinking about moving beyond the notion of quality being able to be described and applied across contexts. This idea that quality education could be defined and applied was problematic and this book helped me to understand things that were confusing me at the time. As I listened to Professor Moss and the speakers on the day, it became abundantly clear to me that all of us look at education through our own values and beliefs and of course this limits what we can filter and see. As we think about the culture of education here in Aotearoa New Zealand, defining a local curriculum, a contextualised pedagogy, practice and valued learning, we too recognise that there are many ways, multiple ways of talking about and describing what matters.

The academic forum presented multiple perspectives on the three themes coming through in the book. Democracy, with references, voices and documentation, highlighting what we're choosing to make visible and therefore open for discussion. Documentation is something that everyone can participate in and shows the complexity of learning together in relationships. Ethics that require us to consider the greater good in decision making about what matters. How is the way we are designing education encounters reflecting the real lives of children, their whānau and the world around them? Care, bringing into view what we're curious about as well as a sense of responsibility and attention.  Considering children’s rights and an openness to a wider view of care that includes society, the world and beyond. The speakers at this academic forum brought rich and researched perspectives and I've come away with a renewed sense of responsibility and intention. 

One particular tension I want to share that really got me thinking was the influence of an economic narrative to guide decision making about what matters in education, rather than an educational discourse and an appreciation of the purpose of education. Professor Peter Moss commented ‘It is time to rethink the narrative in education’, almost challenging the education profession to reclaim our rights to have a voice in education alongside children and whānau. I have been reflecting on the gradual move towards decision-making that foregrounds budgets instead of outcomes and I to have caught myself out using economic comparisons rather than staying grounded in education and the rights of children. Of course we need both, and what I've been considering is the dominance of an economic imperative over the greater ‘social good’ of education where democracy, ethics and care guide our actions and we return to our values.

I invite you to check out Professor Peter Moss’ new book ‘Early Childhood in the Anglosphere - Systemic Failings and Transformative Possibilities’ (2024 - free download) co authored with Linda Mitchell (Waikato University) and revisit ‘Beyond quality - Languages of Evaluation’  as you consider these themes in your own contexts. Now more  than ever we need to reclaim the narrative of our profession.

Beyond Quality in Early Childhood Education and Care. 2013. Gunilla Dahlberg, Peter Moss, Alan Pence

Kia kaha, kia maia, kia manawanui

The REANZ Trustees