As Matariki rises once again, it invites us to reflect on the past, celebrate the present, and look with hope towards the future. The REANZ Trustees extend their warm wishes to all kaiako and hope you enjoy a meaningful Matariki with the tamariki and whanau in your settings.

Winter is here, and we bring news of recent experiences to nurture our spirits and inspire us. This June newsletter offers items of reflection, provocation, and encouragement for your work with tamariki and colleagues. Before long, Spring will be upon us. We hope you will be able to join us in Auckland for the REANZ conference in October; a marvellous opportunity for primary and early childhood kaiako to gather in person to continue shared professional learning.

The conference title, ‘The Mauri of Materials - Encounters with materials that transform thinking,’ captures the notion of materials as active participants in the learning process. Conference participants will explore materials seen as having their own agency, shaping children's thinking, relationships and experiences as much as children shape materials themselves.

Materials are not simply resources to be manipulated; they are collaborators in learning. By paying attention to what materials are, how they invite action, and how they affect children and educators, we will deepen our understanding of teaching, learning, and curriculum.

Conference speakers will support participants to view materials as active partners rather than passive tools, and to see new possibilities for inquiry, creativity, and relationship-making in educational settings.

Early Bird rate before 24 July - $495.00

The online REANZ Leadership Series has sparked rich discussion and reflection among participating kaiako, offering new perspectives on leadership and what it means to lead through a Reggio-inspired lens. It has encouraged participants to consider how Reggio pedagogy can inform and underpin their leadership practice.

Leanne Mits from Pope Road Kindergarten, who many of you will have met through our Melbourne study groups, invited us to explore leadership through the lens of the principles that underpin the educational project of Reggio Emilia.

Vicki, one of the participants shared comments from their group discussion:

“We were thinking about co-construction of learning with children and learning with teachers - how we’ve had to deconstruct the role of the teacher in co-constructing learning with children and it’s the same processes with leading - we need to deconstruct that idea that the leaders should know what to do all the time. I guess this is leadership as co-ordination, making space for the leadership of others”. 

Vicki Hargraves.

Kelly Goodsir discussed, challenged and provoked us to consider:  ‘What does it mean to Lead at the edge of Certainty?’

Kelly unpacked the complexities of leading within a Reggio-inspired framework and explored practical strategies for doing so. She discussed the capacities, skills, and dispositions that leaders need to cultivate in order to lead in ways that are collaborative, reflective, and responsive.

A central concept in Kelly’s presentation was confronto—an Italian term that refers to the deliberate exchange and comparison of ideas. She invited participants to consider confronto as a process of engaging with difference, listening to multiple perspectives, and embracing robust dialogue as a pathway to deeper understanding. A concept that is not always a comfortable fit for Kaiako in Aotearoa New Zealand.

Kelly framed this thinking through three leadership paradoxes:

Paradox 1: Clarity and Curiosity
The challenge of holding a clear sense of purpose while remaining open to new questions, possibilities, and ways of thinking.

Paradox 2: Expertise and Humility
Balancing confidence in our knowledge and experience with a willingness to acknowledge what we do not know. As Adam Grant (2012) reminds us, “If knowledge is power, knowing what we don’t know is wisdom.”

Paradox 3: Ambiguity and Intolerance
Learning to sit with uncertainty, complexity, and multiple interpretations, while also recognising when we must take a stand at times and be clear about values, ethics, and expectations.

These paradoxes offered a compelling framework for thinking about leadership as an ongoing process of inquiry, reflection, and dialogue rather than a fixed set of answers.

As we reflect on how our leadership styles shape the culture of our educational settings, it is valuable to consider more deeply the principle of participation. Participation invites us to view leadership not as something exercised by a few, but as a shared and relational process. It challenges us to create conditions where diverse voices are heard, perspectives are valued, and meaningful contributions are welcomed. Through participation, leadership becomes a collective endeavour that strengthens relationships, fosters a sense of belonging, and supports a culture of ongoing learning and collaboration.

The following quotes from The Role of the Pedagogista in Reggio Emilia (Giamminuti at al, 2024) arise from thinking about the meaning of ‘participation’. In general in Aotearoa NZ, people understand ‘participation’ to mean ‘joining in’ and,perhaps, ‘contributing to a discussion’. Here, a deeper look at the meaning reveals the idea of participation as a democratic and reciprocal responsibility, as a public space where communication and  the sharing of ideas and ‘ways forward’ are valued and welcomed; as a trusted space in which to share ideas with other adults and with children; as a space where tension and confronting tension (confronto) are a positive and necessary part of the learning/teaching process.

Participating in the idea of Education Commons therefore proposes nidi and scuola dell’infanzia as public piazzas for discussion. It is the idea of a living school, in a social body that is attentive to all the subjectivities inhabiting it, to their well-being, identities, and life stories. These are public places, where doing things together, and discussion between adults, between children, and between children and adults, deepens a knowledge of the world we live in, builds human relations, and makes it possible for us to share values and purpose. This tension of doing and thinking together tends towards making values a lived reality, first and foremost the value of equal rights and respect for all differences, and it safeguards their existence, never giving up the horizon of utopias (p.270).

In other words, if we see participation as everyone’s prerogative, and as a willingness to make our points of view and thinking available in the dialogue, so that they become part of the dialectical play of analysis, confronto, and evaluation, it encourages us to be open to the new, to research, to elaborate unexplored thinking and strategies that tend towards greater inclusivity, to recognise the right to subjectivity, to respect differences and everyone’s right to a voice, and a re-composition of the fragmentation that is typical of children’s and adults’ lives. These are specific traits of Reggio Emilia’s project, the value of which is not only pedagogical, but above all political and cultural (p.271).

Don’t forget the REANZ library has a number of wonderful books for you to borrow: Check the books available and the instructions about how to order them, from the website