The philosophy behind the Reggio Emilia approach could be applied in the UK, with a bit of thought, says Nurseryworks director Susan Hay
The biggest single threat to the development of early childhood services is the tightening labour market on which it relies. It's not simply a shortage of students opting for nursery nursing or primary teaching. There is a real skills shortfall, even among qualified individuals, being reported by employers and parents.
Nursery nursing students can take a variety of qualifications, but it is the quality of their work experience that usually defines the breadth and depth of their knowledge of their subject. Teachers must embrace the National Curriculum first, and early years only later, in order to work with pre-school children.
Nursery providers and parents want to see an understanding of young children and of their learning disposition as well as maturity in professional judgement.
The parallel trends of fewer qualified candidates for jobs in a rapidly expanding sector and parents becoming more discerning, is having a huge impact on providers' ability to deliver their services. It is hard to see how this will improve unless a radical new approach is taken towards staffing.
The Reggio Emilia way
Perhaps, to help us see a way out of our impending staff crisis, we could draw on the experience of the innovative early years centres in Reggio Emilia, Italy, which I visited on a study tour in April last year. The relationships among staff members there are as striking as their roles. There is no hierarchy among adults; no one individual has more or less responsibility than another. Each has a commitment to their active responsibility for teaching and learning.
It is an enviable way of working and one which any true believer in teamwork can sign up to, for on the surface it shows little difference from a regular nursery team who debate issues and work for the nursery together.
However, in the UK our tendency is to then 'layer on' the techniques that we believe motivate and challenge staff, such as promotion, professional development opportunities and extra pay. We do this in order to offer a visible career structure within a profession where people have low status and earn low salaries.
Independent thinkers
In Reggio Emilia an essential part of the shared pedagogical approach is to promote the autonomy of staff. This does not permit some people to be promoted over others within the team, because it would require some to 'supervise' and 'brief' others.
In Reggio Emilia, staff don't only debate and discuss nursery matters, they decide everything together. Early years expert Mary Jane Drummond (in Reflections on Early Childhood Education and Care, available for 5 inc p&p from BAECE, 020 7539 5400) calls this 'professional self-respect'. She notes the Italians' professional self-confidence to enjoy autonomy over their thinking, being less concerned with following doctrines laid down by others. Reggio is an approach, not a curriculum or methodology.
However, the teams are supported in three critical ways:
- The atelierista is a full-time member of staff trained in art education, whose role is to support staff in developing their curriculum.
- The pedagogista looks after a number of centres and is a co-ordinator/ advisor on all aspects of provision.
- The central administration of Reggio Emilia Pre-schools and Infant Toddler centres deals with all administra- tion, from temporary staffing through to food ordering.
The wider organisational arrangement protects the team's freedom to think and reflect.
Training by deficit
Teacher training in the UK is concerned with how they perform against the criteria of maintaining discipline and ensuring the National Curriculum is covered.
Nursery nursing students seem to be focused on deficit models - what if a child needs protection? What if they have learning difficulties? What if they have an accident? What if they don't want to join in? What if they have an illness?
Getting through local authority registration and inspection, and meeting Ofsted requirements, means following a directed pattern of activity and not letting it go where the children wish, for as long as they wish.
Perhaps, on the other hand, we should have the highest expectations of children and organise our service around their achievements and well-being, rather than failure and illness.
Compared with the busy timetable of a UK nursery, the organisation of the day in Reggio Emilia is strikingly simple. It's about making connections between people, the interests of children, and the activities planned and undertaken that day. The reference points for all this are the observations and records of children in the centre.
The ability to observe and record and share is the only specialism that students are asked to bring to Reggio Emilia. Students are young and inexperienced with only token formal training. They are inducted into a high-quality workplace where the prevailing attitude is that anything is possible. This is a research-based, action-learning approach. Observation skills are of fundamental importance to the whole provision.
Observation in the UK, on the other hand, is added on when other skills have been accomplished, and frequently falls off the list of things to be done.
Managers and teachers
UK nurseries that belong to a group generally benefit from a regional manager or operations manager who has probably been a centre manager, and should, but often does not, have wide experience to draw on. Her role is usually defined as an advisor to nurseries on all aspects of provision.
Clearly the priorities of the job will reflect the priorities of the group.
This may be a highly commercial organisation, which will have to run as a viable business. Or it may be a local authority-supported or voluntary-aided network which is concerned with the needs of the local community.
In Reggio Emilia the priority is the promotion and development of the pedagogy, whereas our regional or operational managers are unlikely to be educationalists or to have developed their own pedagogical approach.
In the UK this gap is sometimes filled with a part-time teacher, who helps staff to develop the curriculum and takes sessions with children. But this frequently leads both staff and parents to depend on the teacher to teach, implying that learning only goes on when the teacher, as distinct from the nursery nurse, is present.
Very important people
I have described two ways in which we have tried to use some of the influence of Reggio Emilia at Nurseryworks (see below) with our Professional Friends and artists in residence. These, we hope, add depth, rigour and quality to our programme. They also help us to stop being fixated on meeting only the minimum requirements.
Conformity to externally imposed constraints and perceptions undermines the professional role, and would not be tolerated in Reggio Emilia. To quote Mary Jane Drummond again, 'The importance of our work is recognised but we do not think of ourselves as important people'. This is what needs to be changed.
Susan Hay is managing director of Nurseryworks Family Solutions
Bringing the Reggio approach home
Professional Friends
Nurseryworks Family Solutions, which has nine nurseries, is in its first year of a new initiative called Professional Friends. Four highly-experienced early years teachers support two nurseries each in curriculum development.
These Professional Friends work to the nursery coordinator's agenda, empowering her to motivate, update and develop the staff team to meet children's learning entitlements. Each Professional Friend spends a day each month with the co-ordinators in the nursery, and also takes part in parent sessions on early learning as well as staff training.
The whole group of Professional Friends also meet quarterly to identify training needs across the company and to share good practice.
Artist in residence
Providing a full-time atelierista is a greater challenge in terms of staff ratios and space, but as Nurseryworks centres are all in London, the children and staff from one nursery are able to visit others in the group. We have recently introduced a way for nurseries to collaborate on projects under the guidance of an artist in residence.
To give one example, we invited a sculptor, Barbara Sandler, who has recently made a sculpture adjacent to our Spitalfields Children's Centre, to join a group of children and staff from Spitalfields, Broadgate and Floral Place nurseries. The children had read the poem 'The Crinkum Crankum Tree' at each of their own nurseries and the plan was to re-create the tree in the form of a sculpture. The children and staff talked to Barbara over several days about how this could be done.
