I walk in a new commercial area and see The Westwood School, a private school which apparently uses Montessori methods of education, along with being an IB World School. According to ibo.org, being designated as an IB World School stands for the International Baccalaureate®, offering a continuum of international education. The programs encourage both personal and academic achievement, challenging students to excel in their studies and in their personal development. The Montessori method of education was not available in the schools I attended in Oklahoma. I have heard about it for years, but have never known what it is. Let’s find out.
According to Wikipedia, the Montessori method of education was developed by Italian physician Maria Montessori. Emphasizing independence, it views children as naturally eager for knowledge and capable of initiating learning in a sufficiently supportive and well-prepared learning environment. It discourages some conventional measures of achievement, such as grades and tests. Montessori developed her theories in the early 1900s through scientific experimentation with her students; the method has since been used in many parts of the world, in public and private schools alike.
A range of practices exist under the name "Montessori," which is not trademarked in the U.S. Popular elements include mixed-age classrooms, students’ freedom — including their choices of activity, long blocks of uninterrupted work time and specially trained teachers. Scientific studies regarding the Montessori method are mostly positive, with a 2017 review stating that "broad evidence" exists for its efficacy. Some studies suggest that methods closer to Montessori's original approach — rather than modernized methods — are better for students.
History
Following her medical training, Maria Montessori began developing her educational philosophy and methods in 1897, attending courses in pedagogy at the University of Rome and learning educational theory. While visiting Rome's mental asylums during her schooling with a teacher, she observed that confined children were in need of more stimulation from their environment. In 1907, she opened her first classroom, the Casa dei Bambini, or Children's House, in a tenement building in Rome. From the beginning, she based her work on her observations of children and experimentation with the environment, materials and lessons available to them. She frequently referred to her work as "scientific pedagogy.”
At first, the classroom at the Children’s House was equipped with a teacher's table and blackboard, a stove, small chairs, armchairs and group tables for the children, and a locked cabinet for the materials that Montessori had developed at the Orthophrenic School. Activities for the children included personal care such as dressing and undressing, care of the environment such as dusting and sweeping, and caring for the garden. The children were also shown the use of the materials Montessori had developed. Occupied with teaching, research and other professional activities, she oversaw and observed the classroom work, but did not teach the children directly. Day-to-day teaching and care were provided — under Montessori's guidance — by the building porter's daughter.
In this first classroom, she observed behaviors in these young children which formed the foundation of her educational method. She noted episodes of deep attention and concentration, multiple repetitions of activity and a sensitivity to order in the environment. Given a free choice of activity, the children showed more interest in practical activities and her materials than in toys provided for them and were surprisingly unmotivated by sweets and other rewards. Over time, she saw a spontaneous self-discipline emerge.
Based on her observations, Montessori implemented a number of practices that became hallmarks of her educational philosophy and method. She replaced the heavy furniture with child-sized tables and chairs light enough for the children to move and placed child-sized materials on low, accessible shelves. She expanded the range of practical activities such as sweeping and personal care to include a wide variety of exercises for the care of the environment and the self, including flower arranging, hand washing, gymnastics, care of pets and cooking. She also included large open-air sections in the classroom encouraging children to come and go as they pleased in the room's different areas and lessons. In her book she outlines a typical winter's day of lessons, starting at 09:00 am and finishing at 04:00 pm:
- 9–10. Entrance. Greeting. Inspection as to personal cleanliness. Exercises of practical life; helping one another to take off and put on the aprons. Going over the room to see that everything is dusted and in order. Language: Conversation period: Children give an account of the events of the day before. Religious exercises.
- 10–11. Intellectual exercises. Objective lessons interrupted by short rest periods. Nomenclature, Sense exercises.
- 11–11:30. Simple gymnastics: Ordinary movements done gracefully, normal position of the body, walking, marching in line, salutations, movements for attention, placing of objects gracefully.
- 11:30–12. Luncheon: Short prayer.
- 12–1. Free games.
- 1–2. Directed games, if possible, in the open air. During this period the older children in turn go through with the exercises of practical life, cleaning the room, dusting, putting the material in order. General inspection for cleanliness: Conversation.
- 2–3. Manual work. Clay modelling, design, etc.
- 3–4. Collective gymnastics and songs — if possible in the open air. Exercises to develop forethought: Visiting, and caring for, the plants and animals.
She felt by working independently children could reach new levels of autonomy and become self-motivated to reach new levels of understanding. Montessori also came to believe that acknowledging all children as individuals and treating them as such would yield better learning and fulfilled potential in each particular child.
She continued to adapt and refine the materials she had developed earlier, altering or removing exercises which were chosen less frequently by the children. Based on her observations, Montessori experimented with allowing children free choice of the materials, uninterrupted work and freedom of movement and activity within the limits set by the environment. She began to see independence as the aim of education, and the role of the teacher as an observer and director of children's innate psychological development.
In 1901, she met Baroness Alice and Baron Leopoldo Franchetti of Città de Castello. They found many matching points between their work. She was invited to hold her first course for teachers and to set up a "Casa dei Bambini" at Villa Montesca, the home of the Franchettis in Città di Castello. She decided to move to Città di Castello, where she lived for two years and where she refined her methodology together with Alice Franchetti. In that period, she published her book in Città di Castello. The Franchettis financed the publication of the book, and the methodology had the name "Method Franchetti-Montessori." Baroness Alice Franchetti died in 1911 at the age of 37 years old.
The first Children’s House or Casa dei Bambini was a success, and a second was opened on April 7, 1907. The children in her programs continued to exhibit concentration, attention and spontaneous self-discipline, and the classrooms began to attract the attention of prominent educators, journalists and public figures. In the fall of 1907, Montessori began to experiment with teaching materials for writing and reading — letters cut from sandpaper and mounted on boards, moveable cutout letters and picture cards with labels. Four- and five-year-old children engaged spontaneously with the materials and quickly gained a proficiency in writing and reading far beyond what was expected for their age. This attracted further public attention to Montessori's work. Three more Case dei Bambini opened in 1908, and in 1909 Italian Switzerland began to replace Froebellian methods with Montessori in orphanages and kindergartens.
In 1909, Montessori held the first teacher training course in her new method in Città di Castello, Italy. Two more training courses were held in Rome in 1910, and a third in Milan in 1911. Montessori's reputation and work began to spread internationally. Around that time she gave up her medical practice to devote more time to her educational work, developing her methods and training teachers. In 1919 she resigned from her position at the University of Rome, as her educational work was increasingly absorbing all her time and interest.
As early as 1909, Montessori's work began to attract the attention of international observers and visitors. Her work was widely published internationally and spread rapidly. By the end of 1911, Montessori education had been officially adopted in public schools in Italy and Switzerland and was planned for the UK. By 1912, Montessori schools had opened in Paris and many other Western European cities, and were planned for Argentina, Australia, China, India, Japan, Korea, Mexico, Switzerland, Syria, the U.S. and New Zealand. Public programs in London, Johannesburg, Rome, and Stockholm had adopted the method in their school systems. Montessori societies were founded in the United States (the Montessori American Committee) and the United Kingdom (the Montessori Society for the United Kingdom). In 1913 the first International Training Course was held in Rome, with a second in 1914.
Montessori's work was widely translated and published during this period. “The Montessori Method: Scientific Pedagogy as Applied to Child Education in the Children’s Houses” was published in the U.S. where it became a best seller. British and Swiss editions followed. A revised Italian edition was published in 1913. Russian and Polish editions came out in 1913, and German, Japanese and Romanian editions appeared in 1914, followed by Spanish (1915), Dutch (1916) and Danish (1917) editions. In 1914, Montessori published, in English, “Doctor Montessori’s Own Handbook,” a practical guide to the didactic materials she had developed.
In 1911 and 1912, Montessori's work was popular and widely publicized in the U.S., especially in a series of articles in McClure’s Magazine. The inventor Alexander Graham Bell and his wife became proponents of the method and a second school was opened in their Canadian home. “The Montessori Method” sold quickly through six editions. The first International Training Course in Rome in 1913 was sponsored by the American Montessori Committee, and 67 of the 83 students were from the U.S. By 1913 there were more than 100 Montessori schools in the country. Montessori traveled to the United States in December 1913 on a three-week lecture tour which included films of her European classrooms, meeting with large, enthusiastic crowds wherever she traveled.
In 1913 Narcissa Cox Vanderlip and Frank A Vanderlip founded the Scarborough School, the first Montessori school in the U.S.
Montessori returned to the US in 1915, sponsored by the National Education Association, to demonstrate her work at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco, California, and to give a third international training course. A glass-walled classroom was installed at the Exposition, and thousands of observers came to see a class of 21 students. Montessori's father died in November 1915, and she returned to Italy.
Conflict arose between Montessori and the American educational establishment. The 1914 critical booklet “The Montessori System Examined” by influential education teacher William Heard Kilpatrick limited the spread of Montessori's ideas, and they languished after 1915. Montessori education returned to the United States on September 29, 1958 when Dr. Nancy McCormick Rambusch and Mrs. Georgeann Skakel Dowdle opened the Whitby School in Greenwich, Connecticut. As interest grew, Dr. Rambusch founded the American Montessori Society and the Whitby School became the first certified Montessori teacher training program in the United States. The American Montessori Society is the largest organization in the world dedicated to the Montessori method with more than 1,300 affiliated schools and almost 100 teacher-education programs.
Montessori education also spread throughout the world, including Southeast Asia and India, where Maria Montessori was interned during World War II.
Methods
Montessori education is based on a model of human development. It has two basic principles. First, children and developing adults engage in psychological self-construction by means of interaction with their environments. Second, children — especially under the age of six — have an innate path of psychological development. Based on her observations, Montessori believed that children who are at liberty to choose and act freely within an environment prepared according to her model would act spontaneously for optimal development.
Although a range of practices exist under the "Montessori" name, the Association Montessori Internationale and the American Montessori Society cite these elements as essential:
- Mixed-age classrooms: classrooms for children ages 2 1⁄2 or 3 to 6 years old are by far the most common, but 0–3, 6–9, 9–12, 12–15 and 15–18-year-old classrooms exist as well.
- Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options.
- Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours long.
- A constructivist or "discovery" model, in which students learn concepts from working with materials rather than by direct instruction.
- Specialized educational materials often made out of natural, aesthetic materials such as wood, rather than plastic.
- A thoughtfully prepared environment where materials are organized by subject area, are accessible to children and are appropriately sized.
- Freedom, within limits.
- A trained teacher experienced in observing a child's characteristics, tendencies, innate talents and abilities.
Montessori education involves free activity within a "prepared environment," meaning an educational environment tailored to basic human characteristics, to the specific characteristics of children at different ages and to the individual personalities of each child. The function of the environment is to help and allow the child to develop independence in all areas according to his or her inner psychological directives. In addition to offering access to the Montessori materials appropriate to the age of the children, the environment should exhibit the following characteristics:
- An arrangement that facilitates movement and activity.
- Beauty and harmony, cleanliness of environment.
- Construction in proportion to the child and her/his needs.
- Limitation of materials, so that only material that supports the child's development is included.
- Order.
- Nature in the classroom and outside of the classroom.
Infant and toddler programs
Montessori classrooms for children under three fall into several categories, with a number of terms being used. A nido, Italian for "nest", serves a small number of children from around two months to around fourteen months or when the child is confidently walking. A "Young Child Community" serves a larger number of children from around one year to 2 1⁄2 or 3 years old. Both environments emphasize materials and activities scaled to the children's size and abilities, opportunities to develop movement and activities to develop independence. Development of independence in toileting is typically emphasized as well. Some schools also offer "Parent-Infant" classes, in which parents participate with their very young children.
Pre-school and kindergarten
Montessori classrooms for children from 2 1⁄2 or 3 to 6 years old are often called Children's Houses, after Montessori's first school — the Casa dei Bambini in Rome in 1906. This level is also called "Primary." A typical classroom serves 20 to 30 children in mixed-age groups, staffed by a fully trained lead teacher and assistants. Classrooms are usually outfitted with child-sized tables and chairs arranged singly or in small clusters, with classroom materials on child-height shelves throughout the room. Activities are for the most part initially presented by the teacher, after which they may be chosen more or less freely by the children as interest dictates. A teacher's role within a Montessori classroom is to guide and consult students individually by letting each child create their own learning pathway. Classroom materials usually include activities for engaging in practical skills such as pouring and spooning, washing up, scrubbing tables and sweeping. Also materials for the development of the senses, mathematical materials, language materials, music, art and cultural materials, including more science-based activities like “sink and float,” magnetic and nonmagnetic and candle and air.
Activities in Children's Houses are typically hands-on, using tactile materials to teach concepts. For example, to teach writing, students use sandpaper letters. These are letters created by cutting letters out of sandpaper and placing them on wooden blocks. The children then trace these letters with their fingers to learn the shape and sound of each letter. Another example is the use of bead chains to teach math concepts, specifically multiplication. Specifically for multiples of 10, there is one bead that represents one unit, a bar of ten beads put together that represents 1×10, then a flat shape created by fitting 10 of the bars together to represent 10×10, and a cube created by fitting 10 of the flats together to represent 10×10×10. These materials help build a concrete understanding of basic concepts upon which much is built in the later years.
Elementary classrooms
Elementary school classrooms usually serve mixed-age 6- to 9-year-old and 9- to 12-year-old groupings; 6- to 12-year-old groups are also used. Lessons are typically presented to small groups of children, who are then free to follow up with independent work of their own as interest and personal responsibility dictate. Montessori educators give interdisciplinary lessons examining subjects ranging from biology and history to theology, which they refer to as "great lessons." These are typically given near the beginning of the school term and provide the basis for learning throughout the year. The great lessons offer inspiration and open doors to new areas of investigation.
Lessons include work in language, mathematics, history, the sciences, the arts, etc. Student-directed explorations of resources outside the classroom are integral to the education. Montessori used the term "cosmic education" to indicate both the universal scope of lessons to be presented and the idea that education should help children realize the human role in the interdependent functioning of the universe.
Middle and high school
Montessori education for this level is less developed than programs for younger children. Montessori did not establish a teacher training program or a detailed plan of education for adolescents during her lifetime. However, a number of schools have extended their programs for younger children to the middle school and high school levels. In addition, several Montessori organizations have developed teacher training or orientation courses and a loose consensus on the plan of study is emerging. Montessori wrote that, "The essential reform of our plan from this point of view may be defined as follows: during the difficult time of adolescence, it is helpful to leave the accustomed environment of the family in town and to go to quiet surroundings in the country, close to nature."
Psychology
Montessori perceived specific elements of human psychology which her son and collaborator Mario Montessori identified as "human tendencies" in 1957. There is some debate about the exact list, but the following are clearly identified:
- Abstraction.
- Activity.
- Communication.
- Exactness.
- Exploration.
- Manipulation of the environment.
- Order.
- Orientation.
- Repetition.
- Self-Perfection.
- Work, also described as "purposeful activity."
Planes of development
Montessori observed four distinct periods, or "planes" in human development — extending from birth to 6 years, from 6 to 12, from 12 to 18 and from 18 to 24. She saw different characteristics, learning modes and developmental imperatives active in each of these planes and called for educational approaches specific to each period.
The first plane extends from birth to around six years of age. During this period, Montessori observed that the child undergoes striking physical and psychological development. The first-plane child is seen as a concrete, sensorial explorer and learner engaged in the developmental work of psychological self-construction and building functional independence. Montessori introduced several concepts to explain this work, including the absorbent mind, sensitive periods and normalization.
Montessori described the young child's behavior of effortlessly assimilating the sensorial stimuli of his or her environment, including information from the senses, language, culture and the development of concepts with the term "absorbent mind." She believed that this is a power unique to the first plane, and that it fades as the child approached age six. Montessori also observed and discovered periods of special sensitivity to particular stimuli during this time which she called the "sensitive periods." In Montessori education, the classroom environment responds to these periods by making appropriate materials and activities available while the periods are active in each individual young child. She identified the following periods and their durations:
- Acquisition of language — from birth to around 6 years old
- Interest in small objects — from around 18 months to 3 years old
- Order — from around 1 to 3 years old
- Sensory refinement — from birth to around 4 years old
- Social behavior — from around 2 1⁄2 to 4 years old
Finally, Montessori observed in children from three to six years old a psychological state she termed "normalization." Normalization arises from concentration and focus on activity which serves the child's developmental needs and is characterized by the ability to concentrate, as well as "spontaneous discipline, continuous and happy work, social sentiments of help and sympathy for others."
The second plane of development extends from around six years to 12 years old. During this period, Montessori observed physical and psychological changes in children and developed a classroom environment, lessons and materials to respond to these new characteristics. Physically, she observed the loss of baby teeth and the lengthening of the legs and torso at the beginning of the plane and a period of uniform growth following. Psychologically, she observed the "herd instinct" or the tendency to work and socialize in groups, as well as the powers of reason and imagination. Developmentally, she believed the work of the second plane child is the formation of intellectual independence, of moral sense and of social organization.
The third plane of development extends from around 12 years to around 18 years of age, encompassing the period of adolescence. Montessori characterized the third plane by the physical changes of puberty and adolescence, but also psychological changes. She emphasized the psychological instability and difficulties in concentration of this age, as well as the creative tendencies and the development of "a sense of justice and a sense of personal dignity." She used the term "valorization" to describe the adolescents' drive for an externally derived evaluation of their worth. Developmentally, Montessori believed that the work of the third plane child is the construction of the adult self in society.
The fourth plane of development extends from around 18 years to around 24 years old. Montessori wrote comparatively little about this period and did not develop an educational program for the age. She envisioned young adults prepared by their experiences in Montessori education at the lower levels ready to fully embrace the study of culture and the sciences in order to influence and lead civilization. She believed that economic independence in the form of work for money was critical for this age and felt that an arbitrary limit to the number of years in university level study was unnecessary, as the study of culture could go on throughout a person's life.
Relationship to peace
Montessori believed that education had an important role in achieving world peace, stating in her 1936 book “Education and Peace” that "[p]reventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education." She felt that children allowed to develop according to their inner laws of development would give rise to a more peaceful and enduring civilization. From the 1930s to the end of her life, she gave a number of lectures and addresses on the subject.
In 1932, Montessori spoke on Peace and Education at the Second International Montessori Congress in Nice, France. This lecture was published by the Bureau International d'Education, Geneva, Switzerland. In 1932, Montessori spoke at the International Peace Club in Geneva, Switzerland, on the theme of peace and education. Montessori held peace conferences from 1932 to 1939 in Geneva, Brussels, Copenhagen and Utrecht, which were later published in Italian as “Educazione e Pace,” and in English as “Education and Peace.” In 1949, and again in 1950 and in 1951, Montessori was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize, receiving a total of six nominations.
Studies
A 2017 review on evaluations of Montessori education studies states that broad evidence exists that certain elements of the Montessori method — e.g., teaching early literacy through a phonics approach embedded in a rich language context, providing a sensorial foundation for mathematics education — are effective. At the same time, it was concluded that while some evidence exists that children may benefit cognitively and socially from Montessori education that sticks to original principles, it is less clear whether modern adapted forms of Montessori education are as effective. Lillard in 2017 also reviews research on the outcomes of Montessori education.
A 1975 study published in “Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development” showed that every year over a four-year period from Pre-K to Grade 2 children under a Montessori program had higher mean scores on the Stanford-Binet Intelligence Scales than those in DARCEE or traditional programs.
A 1981 study published in “Young Children” found that while Montessori programs could not be considered to have undergone detailed evaluation, they performed equal to or better than other programs in certain areas. A 2006 study published in Science magazine found that "when strictly implemented, Montessori education fosters social and academic skills that are equal or superior to those fostered by a pool of other types of schools." The study had a relatively small sample size and was severely criticized. Another study in the Milwaukee Public Schools found that children who had attended Montessori from ages 3–11 outperformed their high school classmates several years later on mathematics and science; another found that Montessori had some of the largest positive effects on achievement of all programs evaluated.
Some studies have not found positive outcomes for children in Montessori classrooms, but this might be due to the implementation of Montessori. For example, a 2005 study in a Buffalo public Montessori magnet school "failed to support the hypothesis that enrollment in a Montessori school was associated with higher academic achievement." Explicitly comparing outcomes of Montessori classrooms in which children spent a lot of time with Montessori materials, less time with the Montessori materials or no time at all with the materials because they were in conventional classrooms, in 2012 Lillard found the best outcomes for children in classic Montessori.
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