Work is under way to adapt a child-centred Italian teaching method to schools here. An exhibition on the "Reggio Emilia" method was opened by the Minister for Education at St Patrick's College, Drumcondra.

The Reggio Emilia approach was developed by a group of parents and teachers in a small town in the north of Italy after the second World War, when there was a shortage of teachers and schools. Aimed at the three- to six-year-old age group, the teaching approach aims to allow learning take place in a natural way, following children's questions and ideas, rather than the more rigid approach of a set curriculum.

The main focus is on listening to children's questions and ideas, noting how children represent their understanding of the world, and "discovering how to support their explorations", says Rosemary Warren of St Patrick's College, who set up the project.

The exhibition, now closed, showed how pupils at St Oliver's National School in Carlingford, Co Louth, learned under this approach. The project was subsequently taken up on a smaller scale in six other national schools: Our Lady of Victories, Ballymun, Dublin; St Peter's, Dromiskin, Co Louth; St Oliver Plunkett, Blackrock, Co Louth; St Malachy's, Dundalk; St Sylvester, Malahide, Dublin; and St Nicholas' Monastery, Dundalk.

The method encourages schools to develop their own approach. "Children are envisaged as members of families and communities, who in turn are connected with the school as part of the community," Warren says.