Around the 1950’s a man named Loris Malaguzzi founded a fascinating preschool system in Reggio Emilia, Italy. It was and still is very different to the normal schooling systems around the world as it has a focus on child-driven learning and what Malaguzzi called the ‘100 languages of children’. In this essay I will discuss what the ‘100 languages’ of children are, with a particular focus on art, as well as why they are relevant to early learning. This essay will also include discussions of adult preconceptions of art, visual literacy and the teacher as the co-researcher.
A person’s image of child is what will inform them about what they deem to be the most important elements in a child’s education and thus the curriculum develops
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10). This means that rather than a facilitator and organizer of knowledge or a teacher in the explicit sense of the word, the ‘teacher’ (i.e. all the adults involved with the children at the preschool as well as the parents such as the pedagogista, the atelierista, the cooks, ground staff, etc.) is seen as someone who constructs knowledge with the child in order to make meaning (Miller & Pound, 2011, p. 9). They are there to help the child explore ideas and to arouse their interest, rather than impose a structured curriculum of what the child ‘should’ be learning. They are also tasked with documenting the children’s work and thus act as a memory of sorts, allowing the children to access that information again through the interaction with the documentation meaning that they can reflect and revisit information (Miller & Pound, 2011, p. 10). Two ‘teacher’ types that are present in every class are the pedagogista (or the person who supports children’s reflection and is the voice or communicator between the children’s ideas and learning and other staff and parents, they also maintain a co-coordinating role) and the atelierista (or the artist in residence, they are closely involved in the visual work and documentation) (Miller & Pound, 2011, p.