Reggio Emilia, Vygotsky, and Family Childcare: Four American Providers Describe their Pedagogical Practice

Abstract

This case study considers pedagogical techniques used in family childcare to promote children's learning experiences. Data extracted from an earlier study were used to inform this examination of four family childcare providers’ pedagogy. In the current study, I use socio-cultural theory and the Reggio Emilia approach to address the following research question: how do family childcare providers describe learning experiences of children in their care? Four themes emerged from the data: responsiveness to children, children's play, reflective thinking, and didactic teaching. The study indicated that providers’ work is informal, but nonetheless these caregivers follow a natural, experiential learning, along with more didactic practices common to traditional classrooms.

Notes

1. Family childcare is defined as the care of one or more unrelated children in the provider's own home that includes some form of reimbursement (Cohen, 1992).

2. “Provider” will be used to denote “intentional family childcare provider” in the United States—those who seek to improve their work through regulation, training, and networking.

3. In this study, pedagogy encompasses learning and teaching as an inseparable, non-linear process of investigation, with input from children's interests and experience.

4. Some providers’ homes function as Head Start sites, and as such may be accountable to a prescribed curriculum.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ramona Freeman

Ramona Freeman is an associate professor at Kent State University–Salem