Tuesday, July 19, 2011

The Reggio Approach and teaching teams

from the Minnesota Reggio blog:

University of MN Philosophy Camp
Reggio-inspired work is not limited to young children. Dr. John Wallace from the University of Minnesota’s Philosophy Department writes, “The ‘documentation’ we do at Philosophy Camp might better be characterized as reflection, where every week there are at least three scheduled occasions on which students in small group conversations with an instructor, or in one-with-one conversation with an instructor, reflect on the meaning they are making of their experiences; there are also countless informal interactions between students and instructors in which instructors get insights into the meaning students are making. The ‘traces’ that these conversations leave are spoken-words heard and remembered, and so are somewhat ephemeral and not (at least, not systematically and regularly) physical artifacts. The instructors meet for an hour every morning (except Sundays) of the course, and the traces gathered in conversations inform and guide our framing of the activities for the coming day and days, and so function in somewhat the way that physical artifact traces do for Reggio-style teachers.
From time to time in the natural course of things students produce physical artifacts that express the meaning their experiences have, and these traces the instructors also study and learn from… Here is a ‘comic book’ reflection on Philosophy Camp that a student, Martha Megarry, did a couple of years ago. It is a concrete example of these unplanned (by the instructors) documentations.” Philosophy Camp \"comic strip: (0)

Hope everyone is having a great summer!

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