Responding to Reggio Emilia: Researching with Materials to Cultivate an Ecology of Practice in Early Childhood Education

Abstract

This article traces an artist/pedagogue’s work with materials, children, and educators in response to a Reggio Emilia study tour experience and how this work was understood, positioned, and activated at a children’s service in Australia. Through situated, collaborative, everyday materials practices, a group of educators generated collective responses to colonized, land-based, neoliberal conditions. Artist/pedagogue, educator, and material stories describe how inspiration and ideas were mobilized and reshaped into a context-specific ecology of practice with materials.