Sacred Boundaries, Structured Agency: Reframing Inquiry in a Jewish Reggio-Inspired Classroom

• In Event: Sustaining Agency Across Social Contexts: How Young Children and their Communities are Reclaiming Agency

Abstract

Purpose and Theoretical Perspectives
Freire’s (1970, 1974) concept of critical consciousness emphasizes education as a means for individuals—especially those in marginalized or structured communities—to develop awareness of their social conditions and act to transform them. We apply Freire’s theory to a Jewish Reggio-inspired preschool where children’s agency is nurtured, but within defined cultural and theological boundaries. This results in mediated empowerment — a Freirean process where learners gain agency and critical awareness within the confines of specific cultural, social, or ideological frameworks. The Reggio approach encourages child-led inquiry, while educators subtly guide curiosity toward Jewish values, rituals, and stories, nurturing independent thought while reinforcing communal identity and shared knowledge. Rather than full critical autonomy, children develop directed consciousness—an awareness shaped by faith-based participation. This paper complicates a liberal reading of Reggio as open-ended, instead affirming Freire’s insight that all education is structured by ideology (McLaren, 1994). Agency in this religious schooling context is real but circumscribed; empowerment does not mean free exploration, but guided participation that builds identity through tradition.

Methods and Data Sources
We draw from a larger comparative multi-sited study interrogating how various cultural communities define, value and support young children’s agency. The data for this paper comes from a Jewish home-based preschool that was created out of an urgent community need to empower Jewish child identity. This paper draws on observational data sources including participant observations, field notes, teacher interviews, researcher reflections, photographs, and videos of young children from each classroom.

Results
Our analysis revealed that children’s agency in the classroom was both supported and selectively constrained. In many instances, children actively shaped their engagements—proposing ideas, collaborating with peers, and contributing to knowledge-making. However, there were also moments when children were expected to defer to adult authority, particularly when classroom decisions were made in service of communal or cultural priorities. We also found that curriculum-making was bounded by adult-defined frameworks. While educators valued children’s interests, they often introduced topics centered on Jewish holidays, values, and narratives, guiding inquiry in ways that aligned with the school’s religious and cultural commitments. These decisions reflected a prioritization of community cohesion and identity formation over open-ended exploration. Finally, a strong emphasis on Hebrew and Jewish ritual life structured the classroom. These findings illustrate how agency was negotiated—encouraged in some areas while circumscribed in others—to support both individual expression and collective identity.

Significance
This study contributes to critical early childhood scholarship by complicating dominant interpretations of agency in early learning settings. While agency is often framed as open-ended, autonomous, and child-directed, this paper demonstrates that it is always socially and ideologically mediated. In the context of this Jewish Reggio-inspired preschool, children’s inquiries are encouraged but shaped through religious tradition, cultural values, and teacher-guided participation. Rather than representing liberation from structure, empowerment here takes the form of bounded liberation: children develop a collective identity through structured rituals, narratives, and moral frameworks. This does not necessarily contradict Freire’s vision, but complicates it, as in this space of bounded liberation, agency is real but circumscribed.

Authors

• Shubhi Sachdeva, San Francisco State University

• Molly E. McManus, San Francisco State University