What Is Reggio Emilia Education? Art and the "Hundred Languages"
Why this topic is on your mind
“Reggio Emilia education”: you have heard the name, an art-focused kindergarten nearby describes itself as “Reggio Emilia-inspired”, and you have seen it introduced on social media as “the world’s most advanced early childhood education”. But,
- How is it different from Montessori or Steiner?
- The “Hundred Languages” sounds somehow poetic, but what is it, in the end?
- Are preschools that call themselves “inspired” the same as real Reggio?
- I hear it centers on art, but will they properly teach letters and numbers?
When choosing a kindergarten is right in front of you, the questions never end. Reggio in particular is one of the educational approaches whose information is hard to sort out, because there are almost no “real” Reggio preschools in Japan.
The origins and ideas of Reggio Emilia education
Reggio Emilia education was born out of postwar chaos, through an Italian educator named Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) and the citizens of the city of Reggio Emilia. Unlike Montessori and Steiner, which were systematized by a single educational thinker, a major feature of Reggio is that it is education nurtured “by the whole town”.
- 1945
Villa Cella: the first school is born from the rubble
Right after the end of the Second World War, in Villa Cella on the outskirts of Reggio Emilia in northern Italy, citizens built a school for their own children using bricks from buildings destroyed by bombing and money from selling tanks and horses left behind by the German army. Hearing about this, the young teacher Malaguzzi went to see it by bicycle and offered to take part. This became the starting point of Reggio.
- 1946
Malaguzzi earns a degree in pedagogy from the University of Urbino
He chose the path of education during the difficult postwar period in Italy at the time. While working as a psychologist at the city's psycho-pedagogical center, he continued to work with children.
- 1963
The city of Reggio Emilia opens a public preschool
The first municipal preschool, 'Robinson Crusoe', opens. Malaguzzi becomes a central figure in the movement to establish early childhood education as a city system. At the time it was rare even in Italy for a city to run preschools, and it was a reform that came with tension with the Catholic Church.
- 1970s
The atelier, the pedagogista, and documentation are systematized
A distinctive framework takes shape: an atelier (a room for artistic activity) and an atelierista (an art specialist on staff) at each preschool, a pedagogista (an education specialist) who visits several preschools, and 'documentation', which makes children's activities visible through photos, video, and records.
- 1991
Introduced by the US magazine Newsweek as 'the most advanced early childhood education in the world'
The reputation of the city's education spreads internationally, and researchers and educators from around the world begin to visit.
- 1994
Malaguzzi dies; Reggio Children is founded
Malaguzzi died on January 30 at age 73, and two months later, on March 11, 'Reggio Children' was founded with investment from the city and private sources. As the point of contact for spreading Malaguzzi's ideas to the world, it still runs training, publishing, and exhibitions today.
- Today
Preschools around the world practice it as 'Reggio-inspired'
In Japan, too, several preschools call themselves 'Reggio Emilia-inspired'. However, the 'whole town' structure of the original city-run preschools in Reggio has barely been reproduced in any country.
What matters here is the fact that Reggio Emilia education, too, was citizen-founded education, born at the hands of citizens of a poor postwar town. Its starting point is completely different from the image of “luxury education for wealthy families”. Rather, it was nurtured by a town carrying the memory of fascism, with the strong will “never again to raise obedient people who do not think”, as education deeply rooted in the city’s cultural tradition of wartime and postwar resistance and cooperation.
“Seeing children as capable agents”: the thinking at the base of Reggio
The key to understanding Reggio Emilia education lies in its image of the child, “how to see children”. Malaguzzi’s famous words, “children have a hundred languages”, symbolically express this image of the child.
- Children are “capable (rich) agents”: seen not as “immature, empty beings waiting to be filled” but as beings who, from birth, have the power to pose questions to the world, think, and express themselves
- Children have a hundred ways of expressing themselves: words are not the only “expression”. Drawing, clay, the body, dance, shadow, light, sound, construction, conversation: everything is a child’s “language”
- Children are “partners who learn together” with adults: not a relationship in which adults teach one-sidedly, but one in which adults also take children’s questions seriously and explore together
- The environment is “the third teacher”: teachers, parents, and the environment itself raise children. The light in the classroom, plants, furniture, materials: all of it is part of education
What it involves in practice: what goes on at Reggio preschools
If you look into the actual preschools of the city of Reggio (and Reggio-inspired preschools), you see a scene quite different from an ordinary kindergarten. Let’s look at it while drawing on a review of the key elements of Reggio Emilia education.
1. The atelier and the atelierista
Reggio preschools have a dedicated room for artistic activity called an atelier. Paintbrushes, paints, clay, fabric, natural materials, tools for working with light and shadow, digital cameras and projectors: it is stocked with materials children can use to express themselves in every “language”.
The person in charge of this atelier is an art specialist on staff called an atelierista. Rather than a teacher, it is often someone with a background in art, architecture, or design, who works with the teachers to support children’s exploration.
2. The pedagogista, an education specialist
Each preschool has teachers, and separately there are education specialists called pedagogistas who visit several preschools. They work with the teachers to look back on activities, interpret children’s development, and design the next project.
This structure, in which teachers, atelieristas, and pedagogistas work together as equal professionals, is a distinctive arrangement made possible precisely because Reggio was built as “whole-town education”.
3. Projects (emergent curriculum)
Reggio classrooms have no predetermined curriculum. Instead, “projects” that arise from children’s interests, questions, and observations unfold over several weeks to several months.
For example, if children at a preschool show interest in “shadows”, a long-term project about shadows begins, and exploration spreads in every direction: experiments shining light, drawing shadows, cutting out shadows, dancing with shadows.
4. Documentation
One of Reggio’s biggest features is its culture of record-keeping called documentation. Children’s conversations, photos of activities, the works they made, and teachers’ observation notes are “made visible” as wall displays, panels, and booklets.
Documentation has three roles.
- For children: it becomes a way to look back on their activities and link them to the next exploration
- For parents: it shares what is happening at the preschool and deepens dialogue with the family
- For teachers: it becomes research material for looking back on activities and interpreting how children’s understanding is deepening
Documentation is not “just a record”; it is a tool that lets teachers work as “researchers who study children’s learning”.
5. The environment as “the third teacher”
Reggio preschools place great emphasis on architecture and spatial design. Natural light comes in through large windows, plants are placed throughout, and materials are beautifully organized and placed at children’s eye level: the environment itself is designed to invite children’s exploration.
At the center of the classroom is a shared space called the piazza (square), where children from several classes can mix and play. This brings the structure of an Italian town’s “square” into the preschool.
Sorting out the differences from Montessori and Steiner
Reggio is often discussed alongside the other big alternative approaches, but the feel of its ideas and practice is quite different. It is accurate to understand that they are not something to line up and rank; each values different things.
Even with the same 'emphasis on art', Steiner leans toward supporting 'inner development' with set materials (wet-on-wet watercolor, beeswax modeling, etc.), while Reggio leans toward broadening 'outward exploration and expression' with every kind of material. Each has a different center of gravity.
Source: Editorial summary. Referring to Hewett (2001), McNally & Slutsky (2017), and official information on each approach
Roughly summarized:
- Montessori: children learn alone and with focus in “a prepared environment”. Teaching materials have correct ways of being used, and teachers quietly watch over
- Steiner: children grow up surrounded by a rhythmic daily life and art. Screens and ready-made products are kept down, nurturing imagination
- Reggio: children carry out projects collaboratively with peers and adults. They express themselves in every “language”, and the process is made visible through documentation
Looking at them as a contrast of “the individual vs. rhythm vs. collaboration” makes the differences among the three easier to see.
What does the research say? To be honest
There is something we want to tell you honestly first about the effects of Reggio Emilia education. The body of research is even thinner than for Montessori or Steiner; that is the current situation.
There are several reasons.
- Because Reggio has spread as “ideas” and “philosophy” rather than as a “teaching method”, it is hard to settle what should be measured as “the effect of Reggio”
- The original preschools in the city of Reggio are city-run with a whole-town structure, making it difficult for outsiders to set up a research design of “Reggio vs. a comparison group”
- The “inspired” preschools around the world vary endlessly in how and how much they adopt it, so they cannot be studied as one group
- Reggio itself does not value standardized academic test scores as “indicators of children’s development”
Even so, there are some studies that give clues.
Study A: Value as an environment that supports scientific inquiry
An ethnographic study that observed children “doing science” over one year at a Reggio-inspired university-affiliated preschool (published in the Journal of Research in Science Teaching)
carefully describes how a Reggio-style environment supports children’s exploration.
This study followed 18 children aged 3 to 5 for one year and analyzed their conversations with teachers, how projects unfolded, and how the children formed hypotheses and made observations. It concludes that the Reggio-inspired environment naturally drew out children’s scientific inquiry processes, such as “observing”, “predicting”, “comparing”, and “discussing”.
However, this study is qualitative research at one preschool and does not quantitatively show an effect such as “attending a Reggio preschool raises test scores”. The contribution of this study is a description of “how children’s exploration arises in a Reggio-style environment”.
Study B: An analysis that “the connections between Reggio’s elements” are the key
An analytical paper setting out the key elements of Reggio Emilia education (published in Early Child Development and Care)
points out that Reggio should be understood not as “an assortment of individual techniques” but as a system that works only when all its elements are organically intertwined.
For example, if you adopt only documentation, without a culture of dialogue with a pedagogista who interprets it, it ends up as just “a display of photos and works”. If you only set up an atelier, without a design in which teachers work together with an atelierista, it becomes just “a drawing room”.
In other words, the important point of this paper is that “adopting some of Reggio’s elements” and “practicing Reggio Emilia education” are not the same thing.
Study C: The perspective of a practice deeply rooted in cultural context
An essay interpreting Reggio as the practice of “cultural activity theory” (published in Theory Into Practice)
emphasizes once again that Reggio is deeply rooted in the history, culture, and civic consciousness of a specific town, the city of Reggio Emilia.
The culture of resistance in postwar Italy, the history of citizens fighting to create city-run preschools, the cooperative tradition of teachers, parents, and government talking as equals: Reggio’s practice stands on this cultural soil. The view of this paper is that even if you bring only the “forms”, such as the atelier, projects, and documentation, to another country, you cannot import the culture behind them of “raising children as a whole town”.
How to read the three studies
A, B, and C do not contradict each other; it can be said that they illuminate the education called Reggio from different angles.
- A: it can be confirmed through on-site observation that a Reggio-style environment draws out children’s exploration
- B: however, because Reggio’s effects arise from “the connections between elements”, the same effects cannot be expected from piecemeal adoption
- C: the essence of Reggio is rooted in the cultural context of the city of Reggio. Practice abroad is “inspired by” it and needs to be understood as something different from the original
Taking all of these into account, it can be summarized like this: “Reggio Emilia education is an excellent philosophy that sees children as capable agents and has greatly influenced early childhood education around the world”, but research cannot say definitively that “Reggio-inspired preschools in Japan produce the same effects as the original”.
An art-focused kindergarten nearby says it’s “Reggio Emilia-inspired”, and when I went to visit, it was really lovely. Big windows, materials neatly lined up, lots of children’s work on display… But I don’t really understand what “inspired” means, or whether it’s the same as real Reggio.
That’s a reasonable question. To be honest, the original preschools in the city of Reggio Emilia and the “inspired” preschools around the world are not the same thing. The original stands on a special structure: city-run, staffed with atelieristas and pedagogistas, and built by the whole town.
So the ones that call themselves “inspired” are just imitations?
There’s no need to dismiss them that easily. “Adopting elements learned from Reggio as far as they can” is what “inspired” means, and that in itself is an honest description. Reggio Children itself doesn’t expect preschools around the world to fully reproduce the original, and it recommends “drawing inspiration”.
I see, that’s what it means. Then what should I look at when I visit?
Let me give you a few points. (1) Whether children’s work is organized not as a “display” but as “a record of exploration (documentation)”, (2) whether teachers are eagerly writing down children’s words, and (3) whether the atelier and materials are placed so children can combine them freely, rather than with set ways of being used. If you can see these three to some extent, you can judge that it’s a preschool where the spirit of Reggio is alive on the ground.
Not a display but a record of exploration… I’m not sure I understand the difference.
For example, if only the works are lined up with “We drew cherry blossoms”, that’s a “display”. If “what the children noticed about the cherry blossoms, how they tried things out, and what they talked about” is put together as a set of photos, conversations, and works, that’s “documentation”. The latter always comes with the children’s own words.
Children this method suits, and children it may not
From the body of research and practice, the following tendencies are said to exist. However, they are not absolute; please read them only as a rough guide.
Children it often suits
- Children with lots of questions like “What’s this?” and “Why?”: Reggio is education that starts from children’s questions
- Children who like making things together with friends: projects are often carried out in groups
- Children who want to try all kinds of expression, such as drawing, clay, the body, and sound: it is an environment where all of the “Hundred Languages” can be used
- Children who want to talk with adults as equals: Reggio teachers value “listening seriously to children’s words”
Children who may need some consideration
- Children who like concentrating alone: Reggio centers on collaborative projects, so Montessori might suit them better
- Children who like moving within a set framework: projects are fluid, and what will happen tomorrow is often not decided in advance
- Children who feel comfortable at a quiet, slow pace: Reggio involves a lot of dialogue with peers, and there are many lively moments
- Children who love character goods: Reggio materials center on simple natural and art materials, and character goods do not appear
However, these do not mean “it doesn’t suit them”; they mean that “the closer your family’s values are to the preschool’s values, the more comfortable both your child and you will be”.
Closing dialogue: Reggio you can do at home
In the end, how should I think about whether to put my child in a Reggio-inspired preschool?
I recommend starting by going to visit. Keeping in mind the three points from before (documentation, children’s words, free materials), the best thing is to watch how your child reacts to the atmosphere of the classroom. In addition, if you ask directly, “Is there someone who serves as an atelierista or pedagogista?” and “What projects are under way?”, you’ll see how deep the preschool’s commitment to Reggio is.
If we don’t send her there, is there anything we can do at home?
Actually, much of the spirit of Reggio is especially easy to bring into the home. For example.
For example?
First, keep your child’s work instead of throwing it away, and display it. If you line up drawings and crafts in chronological order on the fridge or a corkboard, that alone becomes a small “documentation”. Second, instead of “What did you draw?”, ask “Tell me what’s here”. The former is a question that tries to guess the answer; the latter is a question that enters the child’s world. Third, don’t rush to answer your child’s “Why?”. Value the time spent sharing the question: “You’re right, I wonder why. Let’s think about it together.”
They’re all things we could do right away, more than I expected.
That’s right. The essence of Reggio lies not in “special teaching materials” or “an atelier” but in “the way of looking that sees children as capable agents”. You can develop that way of looking at home, starting today. One more thing I’d recommend, as a fourth point, is to provide materials “as they are” rather than as “kits”. Not a coloring set but white paper and a few colors of paint; not an assembly kit but scraps of wood and acorns. Just this sets your child’s “Hundred Languages” in motion.
So even if she doesn’t go to a Reggio preschool, we can have a Reggio-like way of looking at home. That makes me feel a bit more at ease.
That’s right. And these are things whose importance, children’s agency, dialogue, and exploration, has been pointed out again and again in recent developmental research too, not just “good because it’s Reggio”. Whether to send your child to a Reggio-inspired preschool is fine to decide based on your family’s values and your child’s fit.
Research details
Primary sourcesStudy design: A conceptual review paper on the key principles of Reggio Emilia education
Scope: Sets out the theoretical foundations of Reggio Emilia education (the image of the child, the role of the teacher, the nature of knowledge, the role of the environment, etc.), drawing on earlier literature by Edwards, Gandini, Forman, and others
Main results: As central principles of Reggio Emilia education, lists (1) an image of the child as a capable agent, (2) a view of the teacher as a “co-learner” and “researcher”, (3) a view of space that designs the environment as “the third teacher”, (4) a view of expression that respects children’s hundred expressive languages, and (5) making things visible and reflecting through documentation, and discusses implications for early childhood education practice in the US.
Limitations: A paper of conceptual summary that does not provide empirical data. It is not a study testing the effects of Reggio practice.
Study design: A one-year ethnography (participant observation, interviews with teachers and the director, qualitative analysis of records of children’s activities)
Participants: A Reggio Emilia-inspired lab preschool affiliated with a US university, 18 children aged 3 to 5, 10 teachers, and 1 director
Main results: The Reggio-inspired environment naturally prompted and supported children’s inquiry in the natural sciences (observing, predicting, comparing, discussing, forming hypotheses). Teachers’ documentation, atelier-style placement of materials, and the structure of project-based long-term exploration created a context that directed children’s “hands, heads, and hearts” toward science.
Limitations: Qualitative research at one preschool; it does not quantitatively prove effects. Relationships with standardized indicators such as academic tests were not examined.
Study design: A review paper on the key elements of Reggio Emilia education (an integrative summary of theoretical and practical literature)
Scope: Extracts the components of Reggio Emilia education (view of the teacher, image of the child, documentation, environment, atelier, pedagogista, projects, etc.) from international literature and analyzes their relationships with one another
Main results: Points out that the high regard for Reggio Emilia education derives not from individual elements but from its character as a “system” in which elements are organically connected. Elements such as documentation, projects, the atelier, and the pedagogista do not each function on their own; they exert educational effects only within mutually referencing relationships.
Limitations: A paper of conceptual summary, not an evaluation of effects based on specific empirical data.
Study design: An essay interpreting Reggio practice from the framework of cultural activity theory
Scope: The theoretical position of Reggio practice, in light of the historical and cultural background of the city of Reggio Emilia, the tradition of citizen-founded education, and the culture of resistance in postwar Italy
Main results: Sets out five features of Reggio Emilia education (seeing teachers as researchers, curriculum as long-term projects, symbolic expressive languages, the role of the environment, and practice that treats parents as partners). Argues that Reggio’s practice is deeply rooted in the specific cultural context of the city of Reggio, and that its application in the US and elsewhere needs to be understood as “something different, culturally translated”.
Limitations: A theoretical paper that does not provide empirical data. “Translation” in countries other than the US is outside the main scope of this paper.
Book category: The central edited volume on Reggio Emilia education (1st ed. 1993, 2nd ed. 1998, 3rd ed. 2012)
Content: An anthology collecting essays and practice reports by educators from the city of Reggio Emilia (including Malaguzzi himself), British and American researchers, atelieristas, and pedagogistas. Known as the book that spread the phrase “Hundred Languages” around the world.
Position: One of the most basic reference texts for understanding Reggio Emilia education academically and practically. The structure of this article also draws on the framework of British and American Reggio research, including this book.
Limitations: In anthology form, and does not include research that quantitatively tests effects. Because Reggio itself takes the position of prioritizing “description of practice and ideas” over “effects”, quantitative research is not the main purpose of this book.