Abstract
The founders of the Reggio Emilia preschool approach started from the conception of children as rich, competent beings, and thus presented an alternative to the conception of children as vulnerable beings that are primarily protected through education. They also moved away from the conception of children as beings that become social solely through education. According to experts in this field, kindergartens that operate in accordance with the Reggio Emilia preschool approach, represent one of the highest quality preschool institutions in the world. Many countries include elements typical of the Reggio Emilia approach in their preschool programs. In our country, experts in the field of pedagogy have also recognised some advantages of this approach, which could sensibly be included in the functioning of public kindergartens. With this conviction, they carried out a project entitled “Profesionalno usposabljanje strokovnih delavcev za izvajanje pedagoških načel koncepta Reggio Emilia na področju predšolske vzgoje v letih 2008-2013”, which was attended by quite a few preschool practitioners during its run between 2008 and 2013. In the theoretical part of this assignment we present the starting points of the work of preschool institutions in our country, which are written in the “Kurikulum za vrtce”. In the following section, we present some theoretical starting points of the Reggio Emilia approach, like ethics of care, ethics of personal encounters, concepts of inclusion, participation and recognition, and pedagogy of listening. We also present elements of the RE approach. Consideration was also given as to which of these elements could be included in the work of Slovenian public kindergartens. In the empirical section, we conducted a survey among preschool practitioners employed in public kindergartens, with which we made a research about their views on RE elements and their knowledge about them. Furthermore, we researched whether they include these elements in their work in public kindergartens and whether they are interested in attending a course on Reggio Emilia approach. We learned that preschool practitioners know most of the RE elements and that they know them well. On average, they consider educational elements of the Reggio Emilia preschool concept useful. Most also include them in their work. Also, most of them are interested in attending the previously mentioned course. The obtained results were also analysed according to the previous participation of the respondents in training on this approach, and according to the amount of time the respondents have worked in this field.
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