Developing critical thinking in early childhood through the philosophy of Reggio Emilia

Abstract

This paper presents a series of recommendations for the adoption of the Reggio Emilia philosophy in early childhood and primary education, to foster curricular developments in the arts to develop critical thinking in infants. To design a curricular model, an experimental project was carried out towards fostering the implementation of this philosophy in the Atelier classroom during a complete school year with a group of two-year-old students. This qualitative study is a design-based research and its focus is the behavioural monitoring of the developmental progress of capacities and activities in the classroom through a pedagogic experimentation. The results arise from the assessment of the practical implementation of the theoretical framework developed for this study through creative activities, by mapping children's behaviour in a fieldwork diary and also, as video footage. Our analysis provides a series of recommendations for teachers and schools for the adoption of the philosophical model of Reggio Emilia within curricular development in critical thinking and arts teaching, alongside with curricular guidelines for universities to train future teachers on arts teaching fostering critical thinking.