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lead “into an expanding world of subject matter, a subject matter of facts or information
and ideas” (1969, p. 87).
Piaget, like Dewey, believed in education as construction, with two fundamental
elements being the genuine activity of the students and the individual experience (Piaget,
1973). Piaget emphasized the use of “active methods which give broad scope to the
spontaneous research of the child or adolescent” (1973, p. 15). Reggio educators believe
as Piaget and Dewey did that children construct ideas for themselves (Rankin, 2004).
However, Piaget’s attention to cognitive development focused on internal, invariant,
sequential, and hierarchal stages of intellectual development. While Piaget recognized the
importance of the social setting, his focus remained on the internal development of
cognition (Rankin, 2004). Reggio educators disagree with Piaget’s view of invariant,
sequential stages; however, they do find that all children go through the same stages of
cognitive development (Malaguzzi, 1998).
The Reggio Emilia approach according to Malaguzzi (1993) “has gone beyond
Piagetian views of the child as constructing knowledge from within, almost in isolation”
(p. 10). It places a strong emphasis on children’s social construction of knowledge
through their relationships within the context of collaboration, dialogue, conflict,
negotiation, and cooperation with peers and adults (Malaguzzi, 1998).
Inspiring the development of the Reggio Emilia approach have been the writings
of Lev Vygotsky. Vygotsky believed that cognition is always socially mediated or
influenced by others. Higher mental functions, such as memory, attention, and selfregulation,
occur in the context of shared tasks between individuals. Thinking begins on
the interpersonal or social plane before it is internalized as intrapersonal knowledge