Abstract:

Since brain plasticity is highest in the first three years of life, it followes that it is essential to plan and organize a learning space capable of stimulating and accompanying early childhood. A set of pedagogical principles are proposed in order to to design the learning environment intended as a "third educator", according to the Reggio Children approach based on the reflections developed by Loris Malaguzzi.

Space can be defined as a language, revealing its cultural and deep biological roots; its code, often unexplicit and unrecognizable, is perceived and interpreted by individuals from the first days of life; like any other language, space represents a constitutive element of the formation of thought.

Four theoretical references are identified:
(a) Environmental psychology emphasizes how the environment is one of the influencing factors growth, intertwining with other educational, socio-cultural, motivational, socio-economic variables;
(b) the embodied cognition paradigm, which focuses attention on the relationship between perception, action, sensorimotor cognition and the development of cognitive and linguistic skills;
(c) the concept of affordance developed by James Gibson in the context of ecological psychology underlines how objects and space offer different opportunities for action;
(d) Urie Bronfenbrenner's theory of ecological systems (1979) stresses the importance of studying children in their natural environment, since childhood development is co-determined by the physical and social environment in which the characteristics of the meso-system and macro-system are reflected.

Keywords:

Learning environment, Early Childhood, Reggio Children Approach.