In Chapter One of this study, I consider the image of the child. Specifically, I
trace how the image of the child in Reggio Emilia intersects with the image of the child
in contemporary educational theory. In my discussion of the image of the child I hoped to
revel how a construction of the child is both a relational and productive concept. It is my
thesis that images of the eternal child predominate contemporary educational contexts;
effectively edging out the historical child as coagent (Hawkins, 1974). My supposition—
based in both research and teaching experience—is that the image of the poor child is
pernicious and restrictive. Furthermore, the conflation of the eternal child with idyllic
educational concepts devalues the knowledge that children build and use within social
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and intellectual contexts. In using the term “the child,” I did not mean to perpetuate a
construction of the child as rational and male (Walkerdine, 1997) or to dismiss the
complications of class, gender, race, and other identity markers that complicated the lives
and identities of individual children. In realizing that my project was ambitious, I may
have unintentionally simplified a discussion of specific children to a discussion of the
metaphor of the image of the child. I did, however, discuss that metaphor intentionally
because in its breadth, it allows further space to consider individual children within the
idea of the image of the child in Reggio Emilia and in contemporary educational theory.
In Chapter Two, I hoped to reveal ways in which both the processes of negotiated
curriculum and pedagogical documentation reveal how children negotiate meanings and
construct knowledge and identities through play and through making. In particular, I see
the need for further interrogation about ideas of girlhood, boyhood, and race and class in
making. Further, I think there is a need for further work on children’s desire and fantasy
to more eloquently map why fantasy and narrative hold such pleasurable appeal for
individual children and for groups of children. Finally, I see a need to further study how
children’s making in multiple media challenges assumptions about the both the directions
and experiences of development. Corsaro’s (1992) conception of development as
reproductive is an especially useful lens for this consideration. In conclusion, the process
of negotiating curriculum and documentation complicates studies that consider how
children interpret, receive, and appropriate forms of adult culture in their making by
positioning children and adults in a relationship of co-construction where they make
meaning together.
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In Chapter Three, I sought to begin to articulate some of these ideas and to
represent making within a theory of the visual languages. In doing so; I built upon the
metaphor of the “hundred languages of children” as Loris Malaguzzi conceived it as he
led schools in Reggio Emilia. I considered the aesthetic concerns of looking at children’s
making and the physical spaces of schools from a culturally reproductive perspective.
Again, there is a need for further interrogation of the ways in which aesthetic is used,
how children’s making is valued, and the issues of taste and class that produce spaces for
children and a visual construction of childhood. Finally, I began to discuss relationships
between art and childhood that perpetuate a safe distance between children and
contemporary art practices and culture.
In this chapter, I hoped to contribute to the idea of pedagogical documentation as
a research methodology that not only positions teachers as researchers within the spaces
of their classrooms but that also positions teachers and children in a horizontal
relationship as negotiators and distributors of meaning. Further work on documentation
could consider the roles of older children as I have begun to by looking more thoroughly
at the confluence of words and images in documentation. For example, older children can
read, understand, interpret, critique, and clarify meanings from their own words and
words teachers write about them. More work could also consider ways in which teachers
can construct, share, and access local forms of knowledge and localized theories. This
work would need to address issues of surveillance, privacy, and dissemination.
Throughout the study, I see possibilities for future work. One of these themes
concerns teacher preparation and teacher education: this includes both pre-service and in-
service programming for teacher and the constraints of access to meaningful professional
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development. As I mentioned, without the gracious support from and credibility of a
university affiliation, I would have never undertaken this work to this extent or have had
the opportunity to share it in this form. The constraints of the public educational
system—a lack of time, of resources, construction of teachers and of children as
“poor”—produce a system that leaves little room to entertain possibilities and to
conscientiously serve some of the most vulnerable children.
Some of the ideas in this chapter that would benefit from additional studies
beyond both the scope of a study this size and the capabilities of a teacher working with a
group of children over the course of a single school year.
Those include, but are not limited to a more nuanced and fully developed
investigation of the relationships between documentation and pedagogical action,
constraints upon and challenges to working with documentation in contemporary
classroom situations. In those contexts, like my own, school infrastructure is not designed
to support teachers’ intense and collaborative investigations into teaching and learning.
Furthermore, most public schools, especially those that the Federal government defines
as low-income, do not have access to the visual and digital materials that support such
documentary efforts. Beyond this, teacher workloads and accountability are already
incredibly demanding. There is little time left in the day for documentation and for
reflection, unless the teacher has access (as I did, only through my university affiliation)
to a tremendous amount of professional, intellectual, and emotional support. In my
situation, too, as I revealed at the beginning of this study, the families of the children with
whom I worked showed me unparalleled trust and generosity.