Values & Principles
Learning is constructed through relationships.
Reggio Emilia educators continually combine research in child development with daily observation and reflection alongside children. The approach understands education as a connected system of children, families, educators, environment, and community.
- The image of the child.Children are active, curious citizens with potential, rights, and an interest in constructing their own learning.
- Relationships and participation.Families are active, co-responsible partners—not consumers—in children’s learning experiences.
- Amiable schools.Thoughtfully designed spaces foster encounters, communication, relationships, and small-group engagement.
- Teachers as partners and researchers.Educators observe, listen, ask questions, interpret together, and invite learning rather than deliver a preset curriculum.
- Documentation and the hundred languages.Children’s words, work, photographs, and representations help guide learning and make it visible to all.
- Projects.Long- and short-term projects grow from questions, chance events, problems, and experiences, allowing children to revisit ideas in depth.
Sources and permission
Credit for this summary
Laurelwood has permission from Davis Publications to use the source text on which this concise summary is based.
- Insights and Inspirations from Reggio Emilia: Stories of Teachers and Children from North America, edited by Lella Gandini, Susan Etheredge, and Lynn Hill (Davis Publications, 2003), pp. 25–27. Lella Gandini, “Values and Principles of the Reggio Emilia Approach.”
- NAEYC’s reference and excerpt for Lella Gandini, “Fundamentals of the Reggio Emilia Approach to Early Childhood Education,” Young Children 49, no. 1 (1993): 4–8.
- Bibliographic record for Lella Gandini, “The Story and Foundations of the Reggio Emilia Approach,” in V. R. Fu, A. J. Stremmel, and L. T. Hill (eds.), Teaching and Learning: Collaborative Exploration of the Reggio Emilia Approach (Merrill/Prentice Hall).