REGGIO EMILIA:

a pedagogy sustained in children's rights interview with maria mercedes civarolo

Abstract

This article presents an experience carried out in the Iberoamerican Interdisciplinary Network for Studies and Research on Fundamental Rights and Policies for the integral well-being of Children and Young People – Red Emili@ (RE), in the format of dialogues about childhoods from different epistemologies, research perspectives and practices. In this case we summarize the dialogue with Dr. María Mercedes Civarolo and members of RE.

The full interview was published online on the Rede Emíli@ channel. The general objective of this series of interviews is to produce and disseminate dialogues with references in the field of Social and Human Sciences who have ongoing research based on the rights and vindication of the role of girls and boys in society.

The specific objective of the dialogue with Mercedes Civarolo has been to identify the features and the particularity of the Reggio Emilia Pedagogy in the consideration of the principality of children and their rights. Together with the author, we identify the axes directly linked to the rights of girls and boys, their educational conditions and the particularity of the Reggio Emilia Pedagogy in considering the principality of childhood.

The axes have been, to begin with, the relevance of Loris Malaguzzi and the Reggio Emilia pedagogy, in the academic trajectory of the interviewee. Then the relationship between the Spectrum Project and the Reggio Emilia approach is raised. The documentation process is also addressed within the framework of this pedagogy and its experiences, the relationship with its anthropological perspective.

 To close the dialogue, the interviewee synthesizes the image of childhood that she refers to in her work, the resignification of the educational act no longer centered on the voice of the teacher or the school, but on the voices of girls and boys. This approach puts in practice pedagogics’ principles with the centrally to the rights of children. To broaden the record of the experience, we present a series of images that accompany the conversation and illustrate its content with the protagonist of the girl, boys, their experiences, actions and “Reggian’s territories”.