Principles of Reggio Emilia: Teachers as Partners and Guides

By Stephanie Rino, Director of Curriculum and Learning

Think about the best teacher you ever had. Chances are, they did not simply stand at the front of a room and deliver information. They listened. They asked questions. They noticed what made you curious and found ways to follow that curiosity somewhere meaningful.

That memory captures something essential about the Reggio Emilia philosophy.

In a Reggio Emilia classroom, the role of the teacher looks fundamentally different from what most of us grew up experiencing. Teachers are not the sole source of knowledge in the room. They are not directors of a script that children follow. They are partners and co-researchers in the learning process. 

As Director of Curriculum and Learning at Little Sunshine’s Playhouse, this is the principle I return to most often. At Little Sunshine’s Playhouse, it shapes how we hire, how we train, and how we think about what it means to do this work with excellence.

The Traditional Model Versus the Reggio Emilia Philosophy

In many traditional early childhood settings, the teacher is positioned as the expert. They determine what children will learn, when, and how. Children receive the curriculum that has been prepared for them, and success is measured by how accurately they absorb it.

The Reggio Emilia philosophy asks us to set that model aside entirely.

In a Reggio Emilia classroom, teachers view themselves as learners alongside children, and they co-construct learning with children. They bring deep knowledge and experience to the room, but they hold it lightly, remaining genuinely open to being surprised, challenged, and led somewhere unexpected. As Loris Malaguzzi, the founder of the Reggio Emilia approach, wrote, the teacher’s role is not to give answers, but to help children ask better questions.

What the Research Tells Us About How Children Learn Best

Before exploring what this principle looks like in practice, it is worth grounding it in what research actually shows about the kinds of teacher interactions that produce the best outcomes for young children.

One of the most significant bodies of evidence comes from the UK’s landmark Effective Provision of Pre-School Education study, one of the largest longitudinal studies of early childhood education ever conducted. Researchers identified a concept they called Sustained Shared Thinking, defined as episodes in which two or more people work together intellectually to solve a problem, clarify a concept, or extend a narrative. Crucially, they found that this kind of deep, collaborative thinking between teacher and child was one of the strongest predictors of positive cognitive and social-emotional outcomes.

The Researching Effective Pedagogy in the Early Years project, which built on that original study, further confirmed that sustained shared thinking is a key feature of high-quality early childhood settings, and that it is directly associated with positive learning outcomes for children.

What makes this finding so significant is what sustained shared thinking actually requires of the teacher. As researchers Siraj-Blatchford and colleagues described it: both parties must contribute to the thinking and it must develop and extend. In other words, the teacher cannot be doing all the thinking. The child must be a genuine participant. The interaction must go somewhere neither party fully anticipated at the start.

This is precisely what the Reggio Emilia philosophy has been practicing for decades.

What It Means to Be a Partner in Learning

The word partner is chosen carefully in the Reggio Emilia philosophy. A partner is not passive. They bring skill, intention, and presence to a shared endeavor. But a partner also follows as well as leads. When training our educators, we emphasize to our teachers that they should be co-constructing learning.

In the Reggio Emilia approach, teachers facilitate learning by asking questions that lead children to other thoughts and actions. How the teacher views the child is what shapes the teacher’s role, and when adults respect children, they are more open to learning.

In practice, this looks like:

• Sitting beside a child during an activity rather than hovering above them
• Asking genuinely open questions rather than fishing for a predetermined answer
• Following a child’s line of inquiry even when it leads away from the planned activity
• Being willing to say “I don’t know”, and then exploring the answer together
• Treating children’s ideas with the same intellectual seriousness you would give a colleague’s

This approach sends a quiet but powerful message to children every single day: your thinking matters here. 

The Teacher as Guide

Being a partner does not mean stepping back entirely. This is a common misconception of what the Reggio Emilia philosophy is. Teachers observe children’s development, listen, interact through questions and dialogue, and provide scaffolding to extend learning.

A guide in a Reggio Emilia classroom knows when to introduce a new material that might spark deeper investigation. They know when to step back and let a process unfold, and when to offer the precise scaffold that helps a child reach something just beyond their current grasp.

This requires tremendous professional skill, far more than following a strict curriculum. Reading a room full of children, understanding where their thinking is, and making real-time decisions about how to respond to it is genuinely demanding work. It is also the kind of work that produces the deep, sustained engagement the research consistently associates with the best outcomes.

At Little Sunshine’s Playhouse, developing this capacity in our educators is one of my greatest priorities. It is built through practice, reflection, mentorship, and a sustained commitment to seeing children clearly.

The Teacher as a Researcher

There is one more dimension of this principle worth naming: in the Reggio Emilia philosophy, teachers are also researchers.

In a Reggio-inspired curriculum, the classroom teacher assumes the role of researcher and intentionally engages children in meaningful work and conversation, and it is the child’s relationship with their parents, teachers, and environment that ignites learning.

Every time a teacher observes carefully, documents a learning moment, or reflects on what unfolded during an investigation, they are engaging in genuine inquiry. They are collecting information, making meaning from it, and using it to inform what comes next. This stance keeps educators genuinely curious, not just about what children are learning, but about the process of learning itself.

This is why our ongoing professional development at Little Sunshine’s Playhouse is not a checkbox. It is a core part of how we sustain the quality of teaching our families deserve.

What This Means for Your Child

For families considering a Reggio Emilia classroom, the teacher’s role as partner and guide has concrete implications for your child’s daily experience.

It means your child will spend their days with adults who are genuinely interested in their thinking, not just in managing behavior or moving through a scope and sequence, but in understanding how your particular child approaches problems and what they are curious about.

It also means that when you talk with your child’s teacher, you are speaking with someone who has been paying close attention. Someone who can tell you not just what your child did today, but what they are working to understand, what questions are alive for them, and where their curiosity is leading. That kind of knowing is what the Reggio Emilia philosophy makes possible, and it is what we work toward every day inside our castles.

A Different Kind of Expertise

I want to close with something that might seem counterintuitive: being a partner and guide requires more expertise than traditional teaching, not less.

It is not easy to hold space for children’s thinking without redirecting it prematurely. It is not easy to listen with the kind of attention that transforms observation into meaningful response. It is not easy to follow a child’s curiosity into unexpected territory and make it rich and meaningful.

The teachers who do this well are extraordinary. They are what we look for, what we develop, and what we celebrate at Little Sunshine’s Playhouse.

If this article sparked your interest, there’s so much more to explore. Our About page dives deeper into how exceptional early education can nurture a child’s natural curiosity, confidence, and love of learning. You can even experience this approach for yourself at a Reggio Emilia preschool and daycare near you. We’re glad you’re here. Let’s keep learning together.

Keep reading about the seven principles of Reggio Emilia: 

(1) Children Are Active Participants in Their Learning

(2) Learning Thrives Through Collaboration 

(3) Children are Natural Communicators 

(4) The Classroom is the Third Teacher 

(5) Teachers are Partners and Guides