Suzanne Axelsson lives and works in Stockholm, Sweden. She has a masters in ECE, Sheffield University, UK, her home country, where she specialised in Reggio Emilia, language and communication, documentation as a tool to aid memory and deepen children's learning, and investigating what is ”quality” in an early years setting.
With 30 years experience as teacher, director, special needs and home-language teacher in a variety of early years settings – multi-lingual, Reggio Emilia, traditional Swedish, Montessori, gender equality profile, philosophy with children etc – Suzanne has gained a broad knowledge with many perspectives that supports her work with children, it also fuels her blog ”Interaction Imagination” that she started writing in 2012 where she focuses on play and democratic learning.
In the autumn of 2022 Suzanne’s first book “The Original Learning Approach: Weaving together play, learning and teaching in early childhood” will be released. The book is an intersectional, interdisciplinary reflective approach that can be applied to all pedagogical methods and curriculums. Suzanne has a special interest in listening as a democratic and inclusive act. Social justice, peace, well-being is all dependent on the human ability to truly listen to understand, and to value all opinions even when we disagree.
Suzanne has had the great opportunity to travel around the world and visit a variety of settings and meet educators, including USA, Canada, Italy, Turkey, Palestine, Israel, and Greece.
She has written several chapters in books in the last few years - including Play in Sweden focusing on outdoor and digital play, a chapter on designing spaces for risky play in Swedish, about the Reggio Emilia Approach in Croatian, in Italian together with Nona orbach and Roberta Pucci about the freedom to draw and create, and about arboreal methodologies together with professor Jayne Osgood where the forest inspires a deeper pedagogical practice. She is currently writing a book in Swedish about Risky Play.
She is also involved in various projects around the world with a focus on play, children’s autonomy and early childhood education.
