ABSTRACT
To fully understand the significance of this piece and the next (‘Dialogues’), we need to go back to 1995, the year in which Howard Gardner proposed carrying out research together. At that time, Professor Howard Gardner was, among other things, the director of Project Zero, a research team at Harvard Graduate School of Education concerned with cognitive development and the process of learning. He was known throughout the world for the theory he had elaborated known as ‘the theory of multiple intelligences’, that is, a theory orienting research and schools towards considering the existence in children and adults of not one, but as its name says, several different intelligences (at least seven) (Gardner, 1985). It is a theory of great psychological, pedagogical and cultural importance which Malaguzzi and I came to know about thanks to a suggestion by Lella Gandini, who ‘wove together’ many of our relationships with eminent researchers and cultural figures in the United States. Gardner came to Reggio Emilia with his wife Ellen Winner to visit the municipal schools and illustrate his theory to Malaguzzi and an audience of educators from Reggio. A deep friendship was born of this encounter, based on mutual esteem and admiration which became richer with the passing years. Analogies and differences between the theories of the seven intelligences and the hundred languages made the dialogue enriching and inexhaustible.
