In Dialogue with Reggio Emilia

Rinaldi started working in Reggio Emilia in 1970, first as a pedagogista under Loris Malaguzzi, then as his successor as pedagogical director of the municipal early childhood centres — the schools built by the women of Reggio Emilia from the proceeds of a sold Nazi tank, which became the most celebrated early childhood education system in the world. This collection of her most important articles, lectures, and interviews — organized thematically and contextualized with full introductions — is the most complete account of the Reggio philosophy in its living form. Where The Hundred Languages of Children documents what the schools look like, Rinaldi explains why they work: why listening is a political act, why documentation is a form of research, why creativity is not a subject to be taught but an orientation toward the world that education either nourishes or extinguishes. She takes on the questions that every DoCR facilitator will face: what does it mean to participate rather than deliver, to research rather than instruct, to be in dialogue with a child rather than in authority over one? The most authoritative contemporary voice on the Reggio approach and the essential companion to The Hundred Languages of Children for anyone building a program in the Department of Childish Revolution tradition.