Inspiration not Cloning

May 22, 2025

The Reggio Emilia Approach™ has always been both a journey and a relationship for me, and this is precisely what I think it should be, a personal interaction with a pedagogical approach that comes from within and is expressed in how one teaches. The Original Learning Approach is most definitely inspired by my relationship and journey with REA.

In this post I explore of the pedagogical terrain of the third teacher to demonstrate that it is not just a “beautiful” space but in reality a reflection of the people who meet there to learn, play and teach and that a copy/paste approach to creating classrooms will have a tendency to miss the relevance and importance of the context. The physical learning space is interconnected with the whole approach and that it is impossible to just write about the third teacher. There is also a need to describe my theoretical, practical, and philosophical journey as a pedagogue.

The purpose of this post is to create a cognitive space for deeper reflection to work with The Third Teacher.

The context

I have had the privilege of traveling around the world and seeing how the Reggio Emilia Approach™ (REA) has been interpreted in various spaces and places, and the way educators reflect on their work. I have also curated a social media group for the last fifteen years where educators worldwide have come to learn and share their understanding of REA, play and the Original Learning Approach (OLA). I have noticed that there is often a considerable focus on how the space looks and that creating beautiful environments has become synonymous with being "Reggio." Rinaldi (2008) wrote that the layout of the preschools has been a crucial part of the Reggio experience and that Malaguzzi believed strongly in the relationship between a good quality environment and improving the quality of learning. In other words, the environment should enable the child and teacher to express and discover their potential, abilities, and curiosity.

REA requires us to examine our attitude, respect, and enthusiasm for children, where we look at the learning processes, the language of play, and more so that this can be reflected in the design of the third teacher. The aesthetic of the approach comes from our respect for the child; it is a reflection of the context we live and work in and not a pre-packaged idea of what the approach is or should be. Within the Original Learning Approach I have interpreted the word aesthetic as “full of feeling” - as in the opposite of anaesthetic. How does the space make us feel? Do we feel we are free to express ourselves, have permission to explore etc?

All children are impacted by their own context. For me, in Stockholm, the space I create for children will also reflect our local context; where outdoor play is a natural and expected part of our day, where gender equality is a priority, and social equity is reflected in the universal preschool (which ensures all children have access to early years education and that being wealthy does not mean accessing higher quality, better-equipped settings). The Swedish preschool curriculum is heavily influenced by REA. But, preschools here do not have the same structure of educators, pedagogistas, atelieristas, teaching assistants, lunch assistants, and cleaners that exist within the settings in Reggio Emilia. This means that not only do roles differ, but so do attitudes towards the outdoors and equity, as well as the time available for reflection and documentation. Even if some of the roles in Sweden are similar, or if there is an increasing number of individuals who have completed courses at university and/or The Reggio Emilia Institute to become pedagogistas or atelieristas, they still have a unique Swedish “flavour.”

All of this impacts how “Reggio” one can be and shifts the idea of cloning to interpreting. One of the reasons I have heard for “cloning” the beautiful spaces has been “it helps shift the way educators think.” I agree, it can be a start, but the journey must be continued and not remain only with the third teacher as a beautiful space but needs to evolve to the third teacher as a colleague together with the children. Cloning beautiful playing/learning spaces from the settings of Reggio Emilia will not guarantee a true shift in pedagogy. There is great value in taking inspiration from learning spaces to rethink why we provide the materials we do, or set up the room the way we do, but we must always consider what possible changes would occur to our context if we added the inspiration to our own space? It is important to take the time to reflect on why we think the settings in Reggio Emilia have made the choices they have.

Being and becoming - the competent child

I believe that being a co-researcher with children stems from viewing children as competent. Not competent in the way we use the word with adults, where we are competent or incompetent at something, but from the perspective that we view children as competent at being who they are at this moment in time. We see them for what they are capable of now and their potential. Ellegaard mentions that “children are seen as social actors participating in the formation of their social reality instead of merely objects of adult socialization” (2004, p. 178). How we view children impacts how we design the space.

This is our now. Young children are experiencing and learning so many new things all the time that each moment of “now" sees them transform and take another step into their own potential. As an educator, I observe this journey in each child, the community of learners, and myself. Instead of focusing on what the children do not know yet, I focus on how I can provide the skills and support the children in what they need now to keep taking steps on their path, and offer a myriad of new possible paths to choose from. I see the classroom like a garden (Axelsson, 2021, 2023), where the emergent curriculum is perceived as the children planting seeds that grow. The educators pick the flowers (the children’s ideas) that emerge to create the curriculum. We need to remember that the soil the children are planting their seeds in is created by the adults. How we design the space, the materials we choose, the words we use all impact the fertility of the soil and whether all seeds can grow.

Sometimes, I think there is a hurry to make children competent using the adult interpretation of the word. We encourage children to engage in adult things, such as scraping their own plates after lunch from the age of one or putting on their own clothes. We work hard to make the children independent (adult competent) not realizing we might be usurping the time the children would otherwise use in play. Maybe this actually reduces children’s real learning, their play, because we want them to be “competent”? In Stockholm, where winter clothes are needed for seven months of the year, encouraging children to learn how to dress themselves actually results in more time playing outside. It shortens the transition from indoors to outdoors and back. This means supporting the children to help each other, develop the skills and strength they need to pull on overalls, fasten zips, work out how to get wiggly fingers into gloves, learning about what they can manage themselves, and what they need to ask for help with, is what they need now.

My observations of one-year-olds scraping their leftover scraps from their lunch plate into a bucket, missing it daily, because it is a routine rather than a process, means the child is competent at missing, learning that missing is fine, and is not being scaffolded to acquire the skills needed to get all the scraps in the bucket. I have also noticed that few of these one-year-olds, and older children, are interested in doing this daily, which adds to my questioning this practice. The process and the scaffolding, not the routine, support the competent child in their journey. Routines are formed to create a comforting rhythm for the preschool; the teachers sing the tune, and the children choreograph the dance that we all participate in. The steps to the dance come from the teacher, children, and parents; and are inspired by the context, the third teacher, and the experiences in the world around us. Alison Gopnik (2016) says that there is a correlation between the amount of time birds get to play when young and brain size, more access to play means bigger the brain, and that this applies across the animal kingdom. From this perspective, we need to be creating routines that maximize how much time children access play and ensuring transitions are effective and that all routines are meaningful to the children. Some children love to scrape plates, as this is an active part of their schema at this moment in time. Providing a container with a wide circumference will make it easier, maybe even designing a frame for the one-year-old to place the plate at an angle while scraping, or an adult holding the plate. I have observed many young children struggle with holding the plate at the correct angle and height and holding the scraping tool at the correct angle, and moving it with the appropriate strength while concentrating on aiming into the bucket. Another possibility is to design fun activities the young children can engage in, where scraping, holding, and angling are all part of the game to develop the skills, muscle strength, and hand-eye coordination needed to be proficient plate scrapers. The third teacher can be designed to scaffold a budding skill combined with the adults’ time, patience, and ability to nurture that skill. The third teacher helps with the transition from the child needing adult help to managing on their own.

Designing spaces that allow children to be competent, feel empowered, and be enabled in their own processes is something that is at the heart of my dialogues with my third teacher; how do we collaborate so that I minimize using the word “no” and maximize the children’s rights to play, express their ideas and opinions, as well as access to information, rest, and to take part in creative activities (Articles 12, 13, 17 and 31 UN Convention of Children’s Rights)?

The story of a sofa

At one of the preschools I have worked at, we had a sofa positioned against a wall in a large room. It created a huge open space for the children to construct in, something we had observed the children were interested in. The problem was that when we moved the sofa, a new interest arose, one that came into conflict with the construction interest. The sofa now invited the children to run across the room and launch themselves onto the sofa with great excitement. The constructions created by the children in this enlarged area were being continuously destroyed causing enormous frustration. Instead of policing the runners, and saying no all the time, we relocated the sofa so that it could still be used as a hidey-space or something to launch onto. This meant the change achieved the goal of no longer disturbing the children engaged in construction, whilst not stopping the children’s sofa play. Later, we relocated the sofa once more. The children's need to launch themselves onto the sofa was now met, and the need to sit somewhere cozy with a book was now needed. The sofa found itself now in a small room surrounded by books and small figures for storytelling.

These were not big transformations; they were small adjustments that tweaked the third teacher to give all children the freedom to play. We supplemented this indoor play with equivalent outdoor play so that the children could attain the speed they desired and the sense of flying and crashing that they were seeking. Collaborating with the outdoor third teacher is equally important and does not occur in a vacuum of “outdoor play” but as an integral part of the play ecosystem (Axelsson, 2019b, 2023).

The third teacher and risk

As mentioned earlier, my experience of being an educator in Sweden has exposed me to various local flavours that have been woven into my “Reggio” fabric; outdoor play and risk being two of those flavours. Over my adult years, my relationship with "risky play" has evolved as an early years educator and as a parent. Being the mother of twins forced me into a whole new relationship and understanding of risky play, an understanding that this kind of play is the children’s autonomous play. Before my daughters turned two, they seemed to have a “divide and conquer” approach to play. It is like they instinctively knew that to maximize their explorations, they should go in two different directions as it would be impossible for me to be in both places at the same time. There were lots of falls, bumps, and grazes, but not a single serious accident, and by the time they were 20 months old, they were, for a time, the most competent toddler “playground navigators” at their preschool. Observing my own children and the skills they mastered by trying, making mistakes, trying again, gave me the confidence to take a step back and trust the children I worked with. Instead of focusing on making the environment as safe as possible, I focused on making the third teacher as safe as necessary.

Sandø et al. (2021) write about how risky play boosts well-being in children due to it being connected with child autonomy and joy and define risky play as that which contains elements of speed, heights, rough and tumble, dangerous tools, dangerous elements (fire/water), deliberate crashing, vicariously, and the risk of getting lost. Using this research, I design spaces for play and learning that allow children to safely explore speed, heights and the other categories using my knowledge of the children I work with, gained by observation and interaction, to know where that line between appropriate challenge and danger lies. Adventurous play is filled with joy, creating opportunities for deep learning, a sense of belonging through collaboration, allowing the children to know their capabilities and limits, and overcoming their fears. Cloning a play environment could mean that the space is either not challenging enough or dangerous, and this is why it is essential that we always, always reflect on the capabilities of our children.

I have appreciated living in Sweden, where outdoor play and learning are an expected part of the pedagogical day, come rain or shine. And, as the Scandinavian countries are beginning to become more risk-averse (Ball et al., 2008. Sandseter & Sandø, 2016), I am grateful for my connections with AnjiPlay in China to counter that. I actively search for research, theories, and practices that allow me to make informed decisions about designing the play-ecosystem.

Bias and stereotypes

“Statements about what a child is, do not only say something about the child but also reflect the adult’s perspective of the child. Even if the perspective may be based on many concrete experiences about children, there is also an interpretation screen influenced by cultural ideas, values and the view of humanity” (Sommer, 2005 pp. 82-83). The context is our interpretation screen, the fact that I was born and raised in the UK, moved to Sweden after my first degree in history and ancient history, that I married a Swede, and am a mother to identical twin daughters and a son, all three with autism and ADHD, that I am autistic, that one daughter identifies LGBTq+, and that my husband is a neuroscientist/psychologist researcher all greatly impact how I view children and equity. It is impossible to be objective, so I strive to be aware of my own subjectiveness and its roots, and aim for intersubjectivity.

My observations in other countries have revealed:

that not all children with “special” needs are seen as competent, and in some places are seen as sick or deviant and are othered;
in areas where LGBTq+ is viewed as a disease that needs to be cured, this will impact how free/limited children feel to express themselves;
racism in far too many countries is rife, which will negatively impact the lives of some children more than others;
gender is far from being equal in many countries;
the belief children will catch colds by being outdoors in cold weather will limit how much time is spent outside;
taboos about getting messy limit children's access to play.

There are many more ways our context impacts how we see the child and how we behave as educators, and how we design our settings than there is space in this post. The context in Reggio Emilia, Italy, is uniquely theirs and has influenced the approach since the end of World War II, which has constantly been evolving. It is their journey, and why the approach has the city’s name. They deal with the bias, stereotypes, and needs found in their society to create an educational approach that allows the children, teachers, parents, and community to evolve. Their spaces and their interactions with the children will reflect their approach and their work in these areas I listed above.

The journey

We all strive to create our own journey as educators. My journey with REA as my companion led me first to philosophy with children and then to the Original Learning Approach (OLA), where I have now let go of the REA hand and wander the paths with OLA as my companion. I would not be where I am without Malaguzzi and the pedagogical approach he founded in Reggio Emilia. Over the years, I have switched from calling myself “Reggio Emilia inspired” to “Malaguzzi inspired” as it better suited my journey as an early years educator, director, and consultant here in Stockholm.

What has always attracted me to the approach, apart from the deep respect for children and democratic play/learning environments, is how Malaguzzi pieced together elements of research that was available to him at the time to create a pedagogical mosaic that suited the context of the city of Reggio Emilia, and that this mosaic evolved. The pieces changed as research revealed new understandings or became irrelevant due to the changing needs of society and the various cohorts of teachers and learners over the years. This is what has fuelled my journey. Using research to illuminate how to best respond to children, and observing the children illuminates which research areas I need to explore and learn from.

Original learning

From the OLA perspective, the research are threads that I weave into my fabric. I am not just choosing threads from education research but also neuroscience, psychology, nutrition, social anthropology, and art, just as Malaguzzi did in Reggio Emilia. I am also seeking out anti-racist, decolonizing, and equity methodologies as a way forward to create inclusive and accepting classrooms. As the children present me with a new situation, whether it be alternative educational needs or children reacting to a peer having same-sex parents, I need to find out:

What do the children already know, and how do they feel about it?
What do I already know, and what are my feelings and attitudes?
What research is available? Seek out multiple perspectives.
How does this change how I feel?
How does my attitude impact the children?
Does my attitude, or the way other adults respond, negatively impact how children might view themselves?
Can I change how I teach or respond to the children that will enable all the children to achieve their potential?

Answers are important. But more important is learning to ask questions that will lead to information that will provide change for your own context. Designing for inclusion requires finding out what the children already know about a subject, how they learn, what they are interested in, and what skills they are currently mastering is essential in order to plan:

what kind of experiences,
what sort of questions,
what sort of stories, and
where to find information that will best suit the learning needs of the children, as individuals and a group.

This will provide clues to how the classroom should look. Does the aesthetic include or exclude? Does the third teacher reflect the inquiry occurring in the classroom, or is it merely a standardized copy of something seen elsewhere? Can all the children see themselves reflected in the resources, materials, and aesthetics of the space? What changes can be made so that all children can participate fully and reach their full potential?

Interaction is an important and strong word

As teachers, we should not be intermediaries ensuring we fill the children with knowledge and skills; instead, we should be on a learning journey together with the children, using our experience and amassed knowledge to serve as guides. Ideally children should be active, not passive, learners. This means we have to create interactions that enable the children to learn, by believing in their competence to learn. If we do not believe a child is competent, then teachers are likely to expect the child to acquire it through instruction. This is how I describe teacher-down education, where the focus is on the content being transmitted, the teaching, rather than facilitating the child in their learning. The play and learning environments, as third teachers, are also involved in this process. We should avoid creating spaces for information transmission, where walls are filled with verbs, nouns, the spelling of the week and times tables, and instead create spaces for exploration, wonder, and curiosity that appropriately challenge the children physically, cognitively, socially, and emotionally.

Malaguzzi said that “Interaction must be an important and strong word. You must write it at the entrance to the school. Interaction. That is, try to work together to produce constructive interactions, not only for socializing but also for construction language, for constructing the forms and meaning of language” (Rankin, 2004, p. 84). This was the main reason for choosing the word “interaction” as part of my blog name. It has inspired me to think deeply about creating interactions with the spaces, materials, each other, knowledge, imagination. It has gone on to be one of the ten essential threads of Original Learning.

Returning to the flower metaphor, where educators are providing the best kind of soil for seeds to grow. I feel strongly about creating a collaborative garden where the children are engaged in cultivating their own flower as well as all the other flowers in our collective garden. Together we ensure that all seeds get what they need, whether that be shade, plenty of light, lots of water, warmth and so on. This interaction, or togetherness, is a part of community building and belonging; valuing all ideas that are grown and experiencing joy when the ideas of others are chosen, as all the children are invested in all ideas. It is also about composting ideas so that new ideas can grow, or terraforming (changing the third teacher or attitudes/bias) to enable new or ignored seeds to thrive.

Localization not globalization

The more I learned about the competent child, being co-researchers, the pedagogy of listening, working democratically with children and so on, the more I realized the importance of localization being the driving process. While I strive to have global solidarity, I have found globalization is starting to feel like a unilateral standardization of childhood, play, and education. When I first started working philosophically with children, I attended courses and training sessions, I researched and read widely and found some wonderful philosophy with/for children methods already available. Yet, none of them felt completely right for my circumstances working with one to five-year-olds in a Swedish context. Inspired by Malaguzzi when he said, “Our Vygotsky” (Malaguzzi, p. 83), where he took the parts that were most relevant to his context at that time, I decided to do the same with philosophy. I cherry-picked the elements of different methods and approaches that would work the best, based on my understanding of the context and my observations of the children and tweaked them with our own ideas. Together with my colleague, we created an approach, which included reflecting on how to create listening environments that were meaningful, joyful, and appropriately challenging for the children we worked with. This approach continues to evolve as I learn more. It is not a static method set in stone, but more like water, flexible and fluid to adapt to the needs of the children, but sometimes hard as ice when the children need structure, with the understanding, it will melt as soon as that scaffolding is no longer needed.

The art of listening

Working philosophically with children required the third teacher to help the children with listening. I realized quickly that it was impossible to do philosophy with young children if they did not know how to listen to each other. I have dedicated much time learning to listen to children and value their opinions, but I still sat with most of the power, no matter how good I was at listening to the children, until the children knew how to listen to each other.

My journey of creating a pedagogy of listening started with the physical space.

How should we sit?
What room should we sit in?
What distracted the children?
What helped the children?

Sitting in a circle was the natural inclusive way to sit; there is no hierarchy, and we can all see each other's faces, which helps with non-verbal communication. We started on the floor, around a mat, as is common in Sweden. However, with this new group of two to four year olds, the need to know where their own body ended and the body of the person sitting next to them started was so consuming that there was no remaining energy to listen. Instead, I placed chairs in a circle, with a small gap in between so that each child could feel safe in the knowledge they had their own space. I dimmed the lights and placed candles floating in a bowl of water in the centre of the circle to create a special atmosphere and something to focus on. Success, ten whole minutes of listening. It might not seem much now, but at the time, it was monumental. Over the years I have used mats, chairs, cushions, and sat around tables; there has not been one single way that has been the best way. There have been a series of best ways of responding to the children's changing needs and different group needs. It has been about my ability to respond. I learned quickly that the fabulous massive wall mirrors made listening hard, as the majority of the children spent lots of energy interacting with their own reflections! Curtains to cover the mirrors during the philosophy sessions solved that energy black hole. Ensuring we had a room with a door that could close out the distractions of the world, and not a space people would casually walk through was important. The walls were kept clutter-free so that there was space for one’s own thoughts and minimising distractions while listening to the opinions of others.

Of course, creating a listening environment is not just about the physical space. The social environment is equally important, and I have invested a great deal of time and energy into creating a safe and brave environment, providing activities and experiences that enable the children to develop the physical, cognitive, social, and emotional skills needed to listen (Axelsson, 2019c, 2023).

The art of observation

Observing and listening to children, and valuing their actions, words, and struggles have been key in mapping out my journey as an educator, as well as mapping out the third teacher's journey. “We teachers must see ourselves as researchers, able to think and produce a true curriculum, a curriculum produced from all the children” (Malaguzzi, 1993, p. 4). I do not simply interpret this as teachers following the children who are the sole producers of the curriculum but, as I suggested with the seeds and flower analogy earlier, that it is more complex. I am mapping the learning journey of the children, the space, colleagues, context, and myself. It is a play and learning ecosystem (Axelsson, 2019a, 2023) where everything intra-acts. Malaguzzi (1998, pp. 88-89) used the word “reconnaissance” to describe acquiring wisdom about how children play, how individual and group identities develop by gathering intelligence and overviewing the situation with the children, the preschool, the family, the town, and beyond; not just the one story of the child, but the multiple stories that impact every child.

My understanding of children’s interests, needs, and development inform me where to seek inspiration, when to seek more knowledge, and how to design the third teacher specifically for the children I work with. I have visited many beautiful settings, and some have filled me with a sense of “I want this.” However, deep down, I have known that it would not have functioned with the children I worked with, at least not at that moment in time. Returning to the idea of being and becoming, if I saw a space that I knew would potentially benefit the children I worked with, I would not simply dismiss it because it would not function (due to cost, lack of access to the same resources and so on). I would spend time reflecting on how I could make it function. What could I use instead, what would I need to be able to tweak it, what skills would the children or I need? In this sense, it would cease to be a non-functioning space and become one filled with potential. Then, the questions would be, is this feasible, sustainable (environmentally, economically, and socially), or contextually meaningful?

The third teacher and climate justice

My life as a mother has been greatly impacted by the Fridays For Future youth movement, where Greta Thunberg and my daughters, and other activists, have been school striking and protesting to raise awareness of the climate crisis. Being sustainable has been something that has always been important to us in our family, so it has not surprised me that my daughters chose to stand with Greta outside the Swedish Parliament and that they organised strikes, actions and collaborated with youths around the globe. Their actions have increased my awareness of how important it is to reflect on the materials we use, our relationship with consumption, our relationship with nature, and how all of this is conveyed to children. Optimally, we are choosing locally sourced resources made from materials that are sustainably grown and manufactured; we are up-cycling and recycling materials where we can, and choosing fewer but better quality items that last longer. This approach will naturally create a unique, local feel to each setting. It will reduce the amount of mass-produced items manufactured on the other side of the planet being delivered to just about every school supplier worldwide.

In Sweden, there is a large focus on toxic-free preschools. The Swedish Society for Nature Conservation (Naturskyddsförening, website) writes that 75% of the communal preschools in Sweden are now working with the toxic-free concept. This impacts what is purchased and how preschools are built and what recycling materials may be used. In Reggio Emilia, the “ReMida” spaces are designed to inspire educators and children to recycle and upcycle and turn junk into “gold” (see ReMida film from 2020 for more information). There are two certified ReMida centers in Sweden, and many local interpretations with their own names, as only certified places may use the official name.

In her online workshop for educators, Roberta Pucci (2021) shared how allowing children to really get to know materials can be a part of this sustainable approach. The children can play, arrange, explore, and investigate the materials in the atelier for long periods before adhesives are introduced. Allowing the children to understand the grammar of the materials, she writes (online), enables them to make informed decisions when it comes to using adhesives. Once adhesives are used, it can make recycling and upcycling impossible. Having intentionality can reduce waste, and creating time for loose parts exploration means materials can be used and re-used for much longer. In this sense a third teacher rich in carefully curated loose parts can be a sustainable approach.

Decolonizing

In recent years, I have been focusing more energy on researching Indigenous knowledge and how to weave this into my teaching and designing my third teacher, where the land/nature becomes a teacher. Reconnecting with nature, storytelling, and decolonizing my pedagogical approach has required me to slow down and take notice of the land around me.

Often when we talk about the competent child, educators tend to think about REA, but the idea of children with their own inherent competence is much older. In the Sámi culture, children must become self-dependent as soon as possible by learning through their own experiences, and not being continually directed by an adult, for their own safety; there is a trust in children’s ability to learn (Kuhmunin & Sarri, 2008). When I presented at the conference “Land as the First Teacher'' (Toronto, February 2020), that focused on weaving Indigenous knowledge into the early years curriculum, I learned about the transference of knowledge from Elders and Indigenous researchers. I noticed a connection to REA with its pedagogy of listening, the competence of children, and an awareness of knowledge as a process. Knowledge is passed down through storytelling from generation to generation, evolving, responding to changes in the climate, technology, and needs without compromising their Indigenous culture. It is not the Eurocentric way of viewing knowledge as a product that is owned and static. Loris Malaguzzi chose not to write down the pedagogical philosophy of Reggio Emilia, as he felt that the written word created a finality and would lock the approach in a specific direction. Instead, he wanted the approach to evolve and be responsive to new research, new technologies, and the changing norms of society and avoid creating a static pedagogy (Barsotti, 2005; Edwards et al., 1993).

Decolonizing my thinking connects with many post-humanist theories, and I find myself drawn to "worlding" (Osgood, 2021) and how this will impact me as an educator and also my relationship with the third teacher as it extends beyond the walls of the classroom and into the world. This is not globalization, but an understanding that my local context is not in a vacuum but is constantly interacting with the myriad of contexts that exist in the world one way or another. Urban, rural, artificial, natural, digital, analog, they are all interconnected like the mycelium network connects the forest.

Border crossings

This interconnection was something I observed in the REA exhibition “Border Crossings” where the juxtaposition of the digital and analog, and the artificial and natural create new spaces where borders are blurred. This is something that I have been using actively together with my third teacher, deliberately creating flexible spaces that can evolve with the children and are "undisciplined" because they are not confined to a teaching-by-subject-design with a math corner or literacy table. Instead, rooms have been designed to meet the learning and play needs of the children.

Spaces where children can be autonomous.
Spaces that require guidance to master skills, tools, and resources.
Spaces for teaching.

I look at the affordances of the materials to understand the interactions. Opting for materials with multiplicity rather than a specific use. The rooms reflect children’s capabilities, based partly on my understanding of early childhood development and observations of the children using the space. Sometimes I have a group where the need for big movement is a priority for both learning and well-being, so creating space and thinning down the furniture is a natural response. Some groups/classes have been sensitive to noise and big movements, so adding furniture to create rooms within the room to limit the input allowing small manageable groupings was the best third teacher. Some groups have had a higher sensory play need than other groups, so then there have been more sensory tables, and, for example, opportunities to explore paint with the whole body were more frequent with a carefully thought through structure to allow autonomy without being overwhelming. Each of these designs will allow the children to explore the whole curriculum that I am required to follow by meeting the needs of the children, appropriately challenging them, with areas of autonomy and self-learning through play and areas for more challenge where adult guidance expands the children's skill and knowledge repertoire.

The hundred languages of learning and play

Thinking in terms of complexity will enable the hundred languages of the play and learning environment to become visible. I describe in OLA that learning and teaching are threads woven into a loom, where the warp threads represent play. Play and learning are not seen in competition but in symbiosis; learning will not happen devoid of play, and play will not evolve without learning. But the weaving is not the whole story. How we select the threads is important to avoid bias, stereotypes, and prejudice; these threads are also tangled, not neatly bundled up in disciplines. If you pull on one thread, it will tug on others. For many, the threads are so tangled that they need to be detangled carefully and, far too often, not enough time is spent on this process, and they get broken, and incomplete threads get woven into the warp. This leaves holes in the fabric that will impact how the children can access and process future threads. Teaching that follows the time schedule of a curriculum rather than the child will likely produce more holes because there lacks the time to adequately detangle the complexity of each child. Some children will lose the ability to weave in multiple threads because all their effort is placed in trying to detangle and weave the specific threads of the curriculum. The fabric becomes uniform, and the rich diversity, the hundred languages are lost (Axelsson 2023).

As educators, we have the responsibility to slow down, look closely, and listen deeply to provide a wide selection of “thread baskets” to avoid bias, to teach the children strategies to detangle threads, to teach multiple ways of weaving, and to ensure there are enough warp threads of play to process all the learning.

The three “R”s

Response-ability
Reflection
Reimagine

There is a tendency to just recreate what someone else has done, the copy/paste culture of social media, because it looks great or the idea is brilliant, but the thinking behind it has not been fully processed. From my global travels and images, I see that the “third teachers” are beginning to look more and more alike, almost as if there is a template for early childhood education play and learning spaces. While there will always be similarities, as we are all influenced by research in child development, there needs to also be an ability to respond to the context and the children, resulting in each setting being unique and constantly evolving.

Using the three “R”s to guide our relationship with the third teacher can be useful. For example:

How does the space enable us to respond to the children’s play, needs, and interests? (Response-ability)
How do photos of play and learning environments inspire us? (Reflection)
How do we understand the process of the environment rather than the product of the space? (Reflection)
How should we adapt the inspiration to meet the needs of our space? (Reimagine)
Have the children used the space as expected? (Reflection)
Do we need to adjust the space so that it works in our context right now? (Response-ability)
Are the children involved in this process? (Response-ability, Reflection, Reimagine)
How do we document the use of the space to make informed decisions? (Response-ability, Reflection)
How do we analyze the evidence collated to put plans into action? (Response-ability, Re-imagine)
How much time do we invest in understanding our third teacher? (Reflection)

These are just ten questions to kick-start the process. Each question can lead to further questions of why, how, when, and what. If we are thinking in terms of complexity and multiplicity, then examining the third teacher in this way can also reveal children’s interests, capabilities, play preferences, knowledge, and the skills the children need to learn to continue with their learning journey.

The destination

Being “Reggio” is not the destination. It cannot be cloned. It is a personal and collaborative journey with multiple destinations to reach and explore. Developing a good working relationship with the third teacher is an ongoing process, and it is likely that this is a never-ending journey. REA can offer inspiration that can contribute to how we evolve as an educator, a team, and a learner by exploring the processes rather than the products of the pedagogical philosophy. It can be one hand of many that support you in your process, just as Malaguzzi held the hands of Vygotsky, Gardner, Hawkins, Montessori, Dewey, Bruner, and more, as guides in his pedagogical voyage. I held the REA hand tightly for a long time, and it feels exciting to have let it go and trust myself. But, really, I am never on my own. I feel the hands of trauma-informed pedagogy, Indigenous Knowledge, neuroscience, and many more, supporting, challenging, and directing my thinking so that I do not forget to look for new paths, new ways to see familiar paths, and new possible destinations to explore. And, to be honest, I think the spirit of Malaguzzi will never leave my side.

The playarista course is one of my current journeys. It possible to watch the films - but the certification is full and 2026 will be the start of the next cohort
https://courses.wunderled.com/playarista

Original Learning by Suzanne Axelsson

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