Innovations Volume 25, Number 3 | September 2018

The topic of this second peer-reviewed issue of Innovations is “The Theory of the Hundred Languages: How Representation with Materials and Media Becomes a Language for Expression and Learning.” The educators in Reggio Emilia believe that “children possess a hundred languages, a hundred ways of thinking, of expressing themselves, of understanding, and of encountering others, with a way of thinking that creates connections between the various dimensions of experience rather than separating them” (Istituzione of the Municipality of Reggio Emilia, 2010, p. 10).

Mirella Ruozzi (2010), an atelierista for the municipality of Reggio Emilia, writes about the contribution of languages to the learning process: “The visual language has always participated and been interwoven with all the other different fields of knowledge” (p. 3).

Vea Vecchi (2015), also an atelierista in Reggio Emilia, emphasizes the role of languages in supporting creativity:

Creativity will . . . save us from the obsessive certainty that our way of thinking is the only right way of thinking. I am very grateful to the Reggio Emilia educational philosophy, which situates the poetic languages as important and enriching elements of learning and of human knowledge (p. 4).