Gather To-gather: The Practice of Revisiting in Living Inquiry Projects with Young Children
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Abstract
Reggio Emilia pedagogy situates curriculum as a circular, non-linear, relational and provisory co-construction of meanings. Within this orientation to curriculum, revisiting are recurrent and intentional meetings with small groups of children to attend to the documented processes that are foundational to the construction of projects with young children. .
Analogous to the movement of spiral, the practice of revisiting echoes the circular and non-linear nature of the experimentation carried out in project work, as connections approach and recede, re-occur, intermingle and twist.
This paper seeks to spin a conversation conversation about the practice of revisiting documentation with children, situating it as the force that proposes, nurtures and sustains long term projects with young children. To illustrate the process, I engage with excerpts from documentation crafted as videos, photographs and written notes that convey the processes of living inquire about an environmentally sustainable childcare building. This paper is theoretically animated by Reggio Emilia scholars, William Doll’s criteria for disrupting the fixities of curriculum as a modern undertake; and finally, we engage with David Jardine’s concept of whiling which situates revisiting practices as the nexus of living inquiry projects with young children. I propose that the cultivation of a culture of gathering to gather is essential to the co-construction of projects with young children.
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References
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