Unraveling the Status Quo Realities by Engaging the Participation of Super-Diverse Children and Families

• In Event: Confronting the Raciolinguistic Injustices Recycled in Early Childhood Spaces: Advocating With a Feminist-Abolitionist Approach

Abstract

The session reports our research on how the preschools and infant-toddler centers of Reggio Emilia and Reggio-Inspired schools in the U.S. have enacted and studied ways to engage and encourage participation of newcomer immigrant children and families as their communities and countries have experienced increased immigration and growing super-diversity (Vertovec, 2007). Historically marginalized and minoritized learners withdraw and become silent when dominant identities are projected onto these young learners without their consent through normalized schooling practices (Fyfe et al., 2023). Consequently, these children and families who are racialized and minoritized are underserved by the educational system (Chávez-Moreno, 2021). Rigney and Rinaldi (2023) note “pedagogy is intimately linked to power, politics, history and culture” (p. 209). The purpose is to examine how such approaches can work in contexts of super-diversity from the perspective of a Dean and Professor Emeritus at the School of Education.

This study and report are framed by the Reggio Emilia inspired principles of participation, collaboration, and pedagogical research (Preschools and infant-toddler centers of Reggio Emilia Italy, 2010) in conversation with culturally responsive pedagogy (e.g. Gay, G., 2000; and Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti, 2005). The 11 co-researchers of this qualitative study created and collected surveys completed by U.S. early childhood educators during a Five State Study Trip in Italy in May, 2019. The researchers conducted and recorded a group interview with a cross-section of Reggio Emilia educators during the visit. The findings were analyzed by the researchers. Themes and patterns emerged from the data. The findings were confirmed by multiple researchers and Reggio Children representatives for trustworthiness and credibility.

Data sources included: the recorded and transcripted interview with Reggio Emilia educators; journal articles and chapters of books written by Reggio educators; observations and notes taken in schools that were visited (both in Reggio Emilia, Italy and the U.S.); and surveys completed by Reggio-inspired early educators. The study revealed the ongoing efforts in the Reggio Emilia and the U.S. Reggio-inspired schools to value a plurality of points of view and of cultures, to give voice to difference and to promote dialogue among all the stakeholders in the educational project. It reveals cautions and concerns about guarding against stereotypes that could undermine relationships of trust and respect with individual families and their unique subjectivities. One of the most significant efforts to do this involved the creation of new paid positions of linguistic cultural mediators within the schools and community of Reggio Emilia. This very successful effort will be compared and contrasted with alternative efforts in U.S. schools to value families’ funds of knowledge (Gonzalez, Moll, and Amanti (2005). Reggio Emilia offers us “a mirror in which to reflect and reconsider American practices and perspectives (Seidel, 2001).

Our study provokes conversation and further study of the critical importance of cultivating early educators’ cultural humility (Hook, Davis, Owen, Worthington, and Utsey, 2013) and commitment to act to ensure families’ rights to ongoing dialogue, multilingualism, and interculturalism as schools encounter increasingly diverse populations of children and families.

Author

• Brenda S. Fyfe, Webster University