the image of the child

‘It's necessary that we believe that the child is very intelligent, that the child is strong and beautiful and has very ambitious desires and requests. This is the image of the child that we need to hold.’

Loris Malaguzzi (1993)

‘A new picture of childhood and human nature emerges from the research of the past decade. Far from being mere unfinished adults, babies and young children are exquisitely designed by evolution to change and create, to learn and explore. Those capacities, so intrinsic to what it means to be human, appear in their purest forms in the earliest years of our lives.’

Alison Gopnik (2010): How babies think (Scientific American)

the image of the child / children as researchers

see more

the image of the child / body and mind

  • learning through the senses

  • moving the body to move the mind

  • integrating abstract concepts and physical experiences

  • transferring and translating ideas

  • being actively and emotionally involved in research

  • combining multiple perspectives and ways of knowing

  • exploring and investigating the world and ourselves

  • interpreting details and patterns

  • engaging with uncertainty, contradiction and surprise

  • sharing ideas and building over-arching theories

  • using imagination, creativity and critical thinking

  • contributing to bodies of knowledge and culture

see more

the image of the child / languages, literacies

  • exploring and learning symbolic systems

  • connecting sounds, graphics and meanings

  • discovering multiple ways to communicate

  • hypothesising, explaining, investigating

  • translating and imagining words and numbers

  • becoming fluent

see more

the image of the child / identity and belonging

  • discovering who we are and what we love

  • connecting and collaborating

  • daring to be different

  • being and belonging in many worlds

  • working with a collective purpose

  • expressing our ideas, knowledge and imagination

  • telling our stories

see more