The key concepts of listening, dialogue and reflection construct the pillars of JC ACADEMY ’s services, with value given to view aesthetics as an important activator for learning. There are many professional instruments to help gauge the weight and the value of our professional identity and work in any field of work. These are very important structures any profession necessitates. JC ACADEMY’s approach to professional development is holistic and constructive, highlighting the potentials in people, both children and adults, through a process of construction where learning is always cognitive, affective and in relationship with the environment.

Listening, dialogue and reflection which underscore JC ACADEMY’s approach towards professional development, is inspired by the Reggio Emilia Experience*, a philosophical approach to early childhood education, long recognized by educators around the world. The Reggio Emilia Experience, or Approach, sees children born with potential and full of resources, possessing rights as a citizen, to be heard and recognized, and to receiving quality education. It is an approach which is embedded and embodied in a deep cultural, historical, social and political context of the city of Reggio Emilia, in northern Italy, and one which must be interpreted into each of our contexts, rather to clone the approach.

The value given to the importance of aesthetics to learning through the Reggio Emilia Experience is one that is both central and complex, and one which JC ACADEMY’s director, Junko Cancemi, instills in her work. In the way nature inspires beauty, or the amiable ways in which people work together, beauty, whether concrete or intangible, is an activator for learning, with imagination as the connector. The emotion helps to retain and recall an experience, and provides a richer understanding of the experience. Learning as affective includes an emotional relationship with any experience, “What is dangerous is to separate the intellect from the heart. It is important to have an intelligent heart.” (Vea Vecchi, atelierista of the municipal preschools, Reggio Emilia).

The poem ‘No way. The Hundred is there’ written by Loris Malaguzzi (1920-1994) founder and guide of the Reggio Emilia Approach, communicates children as having ‘A Hundred Languages’, offering a metaphor for the many varied ways of expression children possess. ‘Difference’ is a concept welcomed in Reggio Emilia, where sharing different points of view, in dialogue with each other, is essential for the construction of knowledge and for living as human beings, seeing the relationships and patterns of phenomena, rather than to seeing each element as separate and disconnected.

Rather than a prescribed and predetermined approach to learning, knowledge construction involves a process, where an element of uncertainty exists. A sense of uncertainty in not knowing, is not necessarily a bad thing, as one can enter the space of learning without any preempted judgment or expectation, as if a child looks at life with fresh burgeoning eyes. JC Academy’s services offer this way of entry into encountering and interpreting any learning experience and professional development. This, of course, does not mean to be ignorant or naive of the happenings around us, but rather to rigorously listen with both an open heart and mind, to question the ‘self’ within.

How might a pedagogy of listening enhance understanding, leadership, team building in any field? How can people co-exist in an environment based upon listening? Through the scholarly study of the thoughts, actions and interactions of young learners as vantage points which the Reggio Emilia Experience shares, life-long learning continues through dialogue and reflection on the ever recyclable human resources of listening, curiosity and imagination within both children and adults.

JC ACADEMY is committed to authenticity and bettering people’s lives through innovation and creative solutions (Mission Statement of CANCEMI CORPORATION)

*Further information on the Reggio Emilia Approach

jirea.jp

reggiochildren.it