| Dr. V.K. Maheshwari
M.A, M.Ed, Ph.D Roorkee, India
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Rakhi Maheshwari
M.A, B.Ed Noida, India
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“The greatest sign of success for a teacher… is to be able to say, ‘the children are now working as if I did not exist. “ ~Maria Montessori
Maria Montessori (1870 – 1952). Maria Montessori was the first woman in Italy to qualify as a physician. She developed an interest in the diseases of children and in the needs of those said to be ‘uneducable’ In the case of the latter she argued for the development of training for teachers along Froebelian lines (she also drew on Rousseau and Pestalozzi) and developed the principle that was also to inform her general educational programme: first the education of the senses, then the education of the intellect. Maria Montessori developed a teaching programme that enabled ‘defective’ children to read and write. She sought to teach skills not by having children repeatedly try it, but by developing exercises that prepare them. These exercises would then be repeated: Looking becomes reading; touching becomes writing.
Brief Biography
Bottom of Form
Born: August 31, 1870 in Chiaravalle, Italy.
Died: May 6, 1952 in Noordwijk, The Netherlands.
Early Adulthood:
An extraordinarily gifted person with the scholarly bent of a Madame Curie and the compassionate soul of a Mother Teresa, Maria Montessori was always ahead of her time.
She became Italy’s first female doctor when she graduated in 1896. Initially she took care of children’s bodies and their physical ailments and diseases. Then her natural intellectual curiosity led to an exploration of children’s minds and how they learn. She believed that environment was a major factor in child development.
Professional Life:
Appointed Professor of Anthropology at the University of Rome in 1904, Montessori represented Italy at two international women’s conferences: Berlin in 1896 and London in 1900. She amazed the world of education with her glass house classroom at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco in 1915. In 1922 she was appointed Inspector of Schools in Italy. She lost that position when she refused to have her young charges take the fascist oath as the dictator Mussolini required.
Travels to America:
Dr. Montessori visited the U.S. in 1913 and impressed Alexander Graham Bell who founded the Montessori Education Association in his Washington, D.C. home. Her American friends included Helen Keller and Thomas Edison. In 1915 she mounted an exhibit at the Panama-Pacific International Exhibition in San Francisco. It featured a glass class room which allowed people to observe her teaching methods. She also conducted training sessions and addressed the NEA and the International Kindergarten Union.
Training Her Followers:
Dr. Montessori was a teacher of teachers. She wrote and lectured unceasingly. She opened a research institute in Spain in 1917 and conducted training courses in London in 1919. She founded training centres in the Netherlands in 1938 and taught her methodology in India in 1939. She established centres in The Netherlands (1938) and England (1947). An ardent pacifist, Dr. Montessori escaped harm during the turbulent ’20′s and ’30′s by advancing her educational mission in the face of hostilities.
Honours:
Dr. Montessori’s work garnered her Nobel Peace Prize nominations in 1949, 1950 and 1951.
Educational Philosophy:
Maria Montessori was profoundly influenced by Fredrich Froebel, the inventor of kindergarten, and by Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, who believed that children learned through activity. She also drew inspiration from, Seguin and Rousseau.
According to Montessori, the goal of education is “to be able to find activities that are so intrinsically meaningful that we want to throw ourselves into them” confirmed this assertion by noting that “when children find tasks that enable them to develop their naturally emerging capacities, they become interested in them and concentrate deeply on them. They possess a serenity that seems to come from the knowledge that they have been able to develop something vital from within.”
Dr. Maria Montessori initially devised her teaching philosophy in 1896 while working with special needs children in the Psychiatric Department at the University of Rome. Although her patients were diagnosed as mentally deficient and unable to learn, within two years of Montessori’s instruction, the children were able to successfully complete Italy’s standardized public school exams.
The Montessori Method was a radical philosophy at the time which contradicted and challenged many of the existing beliefs about ‘whole-class learning’ the acquisition of knowledge and the development of early human cognition. Montessori believed that children were not a blank slate and that the traditional learning methods such as recitation, memorization and conditioning failed to develop necessary life skills and individual abilities. She described traditional students as, “butterflies mounted on pins, each fastened to their place spreading the useless wings of barren and meaningless knowledge which they have acquired”.
Through her research and study in the field, Montessori observed that effective teaching styles required the establishment of a “sensory rich” environment that offered interactive yet independent learning opportunities. In this “educational playground” children could choose from a variety of developmental activities that promoted learning by doing. Montessori believed that it was necessary to train the senses before training the mind.
By using this “self-directed” individual learning approach, Montessori’s students were able to teach themselves through critical interaction in a ‘prepared environment’ containing interconnected tasks which gradually required higher levels of cognitive thought. This method was designed to create a task-oriented student who is “intrinsically motivated to master challenging tasks”.
According to Montessori, from ages 2-6 children experience a “sensitive period” in which vital skills such as language acquisition, socialization and, kinesiology need to be identified and strategically applied and advanced. Any deficiency in intellect, ethics or socialization later in life can be attributed to a lack of cognitive development during the “sensitive period”.
Terms & Concepts in Montessori Method
| S. No. | Terms & Concepts | Details |
| 1 | Individual Learning | Self-motivated learning used in Montessori schools that consists of a series of educational tasks that are chosen by the student. |
| 2 | Kinesiology | The study of the mechanics of human body movement. |
| 3 | Magnet Programs | A program in public school systems that offers specialized methods of teaching and curriculum to students representing a cross-section of the community.
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| 4 | Manipulators | Concrete objects such as beads, rods and blocks that are used by students during Montessori lessons in order to encourage sensory learning and self-discovery.
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| 5 | Montessori Method | An educational system developed by Dr. Maria Montessori in 1907 that uses independent, self correcting activities to develop and advance a student’s natural ability and intellect. |
| 6 | Montessori Schools | Any public or private special education, pre-K, K-12 or other learning institution that offers a Montessori-based curriculum to the students. |
| 7 | Progressive Approach | The belief that the goal of education is to help people become more free-thinking innovators who can improve society through positive reform.
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| 8 | Sensory Learning: | Teaching using interactions and activities designed to apply and develop the senses.
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| 9 | Traditional Learning | The belief that the goal of education is to prepare people to fulfil necessary tasks in society through subject-based instruction focused on competition and evaluation.
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| 10 | Whole-Class Learning | The traditional subject-based pedagogy of mass instruction used in most public school systems in the United States. |
Theoretical Rationale of Montessori’s Theory of Development
While Montessori noted distinguishing characteristics associated with the child’s interests and abilities at each plane, In order to meets these needs, Montessori concentrated on certain concepts in her theory which would lead to development in that child. Some of the concepts are auto-education with didactic material, individualized education, the Montessori environment, independence and the prepared environment, non-graded grouping, education of the senses.
The first and most important concept of the theory is Individualized Education. Montessori believed that because it is the child’s potential for auto-education, we should be more concerned with the child than the method of teaching. In Montessori’s method of teaching the natural drive of the child to learn is freed. Every child is unique in terms of his learning capacity, rate, and interest. Child-centred education encourages children to express their individuality in learning. This learning system aims at providing each child with an opportunity to develop at its own pace in a spirit of cooperation and respect for themselves and others. The Montessori philosophy is based on the idea that children are markedly different from adults. Ms. Montessori advocated children’s rights and believed that if children were treated with more respect and understood more fully, the world that they helped create as adults would be an increasingly better place.
The concept of Montessori’s theory is Auto- Education with Didactic Material. According to Montessori, the child builds itself through experiences on the environment. On this notion, she developed a set of didactic materials which leads to sensory education, muscular coordination, and language development. These didactic materials have built-in “control of error” which gives the child concrete proof of whether its work is right or wrong, this also frees the teacher from being the person of reinforcement. Control of Error, is another concept of the Montessori theory. By being placed in direct contact with the materials of learning, the child is not being held to the pace or interests of the teacher (Montessori, 1964). The materials give the child to a chance to learn what it has an inner drive to learn and learn it at his own speed. They are also designed to allow a child, after the teacher prepares the learning environment, to work independently until, at his or her own pace, he or she acquires skills of ever-increasing complexity. Children should have much more say in what they learn. In fact, they are capable of self-directed learning.
The Montessori environment is another major concept of this theory. She believed within the classroom there she be movement and activity at many levels. The furniture is moveable, and the didactic materials are designed for manipulation. Children are free to move about the prepared environment. In this environment, the teachers are there to aid the child in becoming well coordinated through specific exercises and motor training within the classroom and outdoors. The teacher is also there to reduce the obstacles to the child’s orderly movement and not involve herself unnecessarily. The child needs freedom to collaborate with his environment and perfect his motor behaviour. In this environment the child is free to choose which exercise he wants to do first. The Montessori environment should be set up to prepare a child’s natural desire to learn. This is done by allowing each child to experience the excitement of learning by his or her own choice rather than by being forced into activity, and second, by helping him or her develop his natural tools for learning, with emphasis on freedom, learning how to learn, and development of self- confidence.
Another important concept of the Montessori theory is Independence and the Prepared Environment. The prepared environment makes freedom in the school practical, with emphasis on moving individuals working at their own task during uninterrupted blocks of time. The child furthers his or her independence with a sense of freedom. The child is free to choose his activity, work at his or her own pace, and talk with companions as long as he or she does not interfere with their work. Montessori noted that the child learns to work by him or herself in the prepared classroom environment, enjoying the presence of other children but not necessarily working directly with them.
Non-graded Grouping is another concept of the Montessori theory. Montessori believed classes should by group by age brackets rather than by grade. For example, the first group would consist of children ages 3-5 years. Within each group, a child advances at his own pace rather than that of his companion. This provides an environment where no child feels the penalty of being “slow” neither is any child forced to mark time if the he is able to advance. Non-graded grouping allows a child to work with older children in one subject, younger children in another, and still have social interaction with children his own age. Another benefit of non-graded grouping is the fact that learning is enhanced for the older children when they help someone younger and the younger children are stimulated by exposure to the work of the older children. The Montessori philosophy downplays the notions of performance evaluation with numbers or letters.
Another important concept considers the teacher as observer facilitates better ways for the child to direct his or her own learning by providing more material they are interested in. The development of the teacher-student dynamic in Montessori might be described as moving from “help me to help myself” to “help me to do it myself” and eventually “help me to think for myself.”
Children are susceptible to “sensitive periods” or what might be called “intellectual growth spurts.” Properly understood and used, these periods can provide great benefit to children if these bursts are not left ignored or lost in adherence to rigid curricula. (Some hold that lack of proper stimulation during these periods of heightened attention can contribute to Children ought to be masters of their environments; with as much control as (or more than) we assume adults have.
The concept of child
Montessori presented the idea that the human infant is born an incomplete person whose unique goal is to finish its own formation .This formation takes place from the period of birth until young adulthood, with young adulthood ending at age twenty-four. Montessori realized education must help children to construct their own brains, instead of being focused on showering knowledge into the child’s “ready-made” brain because the brain was not ready made. By visiting children in the city asylums, Montessori began to analyze how human beings develop their intelligence by learning through their five senses, the child’s goal of development as an individual is a “sensorial exploration” and particularly through the relationship between the hand and the brain. Montessori stated that nothing should be given to the brain that is not first given to the hand because the infant touches, tastes, smells, hears, and sees the concrete world.
Montessori noted that the child seems to have a capacity for taking in the whole of his environment just by existing within it. This capacity for consuming from the environment like a sponge soaking up moisture from its surroundings, leads to the first sub-division of the Period of Transformation, the Unconscious Absorbent Mind, which is age 0-3 years. During this period the mind is steadily taking in and accumulating impressions from the environment without knowing that it is doing so, which he will later use build up his conscious life . The second sub-division of this plane is the Conscious Absorbent Mind, which is age 3-6 years. In this stage, the child uses the impressions from his unconscious absorbent mind in order to classify and categorize things. The Sensitive Periods and the Absorbent Mind, come together to form the child’s personality. The period of being “sensorial explorers” is now over, and the need for focus on the individual is finished, Montessori called these beginning years the child’s first plane of development.
The Montessori Method assumes that children are born intelligent, they simply learn in different ways and progress at their own pace. Multiple intelligences are recognized and encouraged. Students move ahead as quickly as they are ready.
The school
Montessori created a paradigm in which the school fit the needs of the student rather than the student having to fit the needs of the school. Montessori schools are supportive schools where children don’t get lost in the crowd. Montessori schools promote respect for children as unique individuals. The child’s social and emotional development along with academic development is of great concern
Montessori schools set high expectations and challenges all students not just those considered “gifted”. The students develop self-discipline and an integral sense of purpose and motivation.
Montessori schools normally promote diversity in their student body, creating an atmosphere of mutual respect and global perspective. Students develop a love of the natural world-outdoor education is a very important part of the Montessori curriculum.
The classrooms are multi-age classes which span three grade levels-children develop close and long-term relationships with teachers and classmates. The multi-grade classroom encourages a strong sense of community and teachers come to know each child’s learning style.
Classrooms are not teacher centred but child centred. This allows students to develop their leader-ship skills and independence. Students learn to care and contribute to others through their community service.
Students learn that mistakes are natural steps in the learning process. Families are important in these caring environments.
Maria Montessori’s notion of the Children’s House
The success of her method then caused her to ask questions of ‘normal’ education and the ways in which failed children. Maria Montessori had the chance to test her programme and ideas with the establishment of the first Casa die Bambini (Children’s house or household) in Rome in 1907. (This house had been built as part of a slum redevelopment). This house and those that followed were designed to provide a good environment for children to live and learn. An emphasis was placed on self-determination and self-realization. This entailed developing a concern for others and discipline and to do this children engaged in exercices de la vie pratique (exercise in daily living). These and other exercises were to function like a ladder – allowing the child to pick up the challenge and to judge their progress. ‘The essential thing is for the task to arouse such an interest that it engages the child’s whole personality’.
This connected with a further element in the Montessori programme – decentring the teacher. The teacher was the ‘keeper’ of the environment. While children got on with their activities the task was to observe and to intervene from the periphery. It is Maria Montessori’s notion of the Children’s House as a stimulating environment in which participants can learn to take responsibility that has a particular resonance.
| Suggested Instructional Procedure
In Montessori education, the environment is adapted to the child and his or her development .Seatwork is downplayed in favour of physical activity and interaction. Methodology: Maria Montessori wrote over a dozen books. The most well known are the Montessori Method (1916) and The Absorbent Mind (1949). Dr. Montessori taught that placing children in a stimulating environment, e.g., the Children’s House, will encourage learning. She saw the traditional teacher as a ‘keeper of the environment’ who was there mainly to facilitate the children’s self-conducted learning process. She did not permit any form of corporal punishment or demeaning behaviour in her class rooms.
Multi-aged Grouping based on Periods of Development: Children are grouped in three or six-year spans and have the same teacher for this period. The first group is called the “Nido” and consists of children in necessary daycares for working parents. This is age 0-1, or “until walking”. The second group is known as the “Infant Community” and is from around one year to age 2-3. The third group is the “casa dei bambini” and is from 2.5-6 or 3-6, depending on the training of the teacher. The forth group is from 6-12, a larger age span because the children for this 6 years exhibit the same tendencies and learning habits. The emotional and physical growth is steady and the intellectual work strong. The 6 year old learns from and is inspired by children much older, and the teaching is done by older to younger as well as younger to older.
The Human Tendencies: The practical application of the Montessori method is based on human tendencies— to explore, move, share with a group, to be independent and make decisions, create order, develop self-control, abstract ideas from experience, use the creative imagination, work hard, repeat, concentrate, and perfect one’s efforts. The Process of Learning: There are three stages of learning:
Indirect Preparation: The steps of learning any concept are analyzed by the adult and are systematically offered to the child. A child is always learning something that is indirectly preparing him to learn something else, making education a joyful discovery instead of drudgery. The Prepared Environment: Since the child learns to glean information from many sources, instead of being handed it by the teacher, it is the role of the teacher to prepare and continue to adapt the environment, to link the child to it through well-thought-out lessons, and to facilitate the child’s exploration and creativity. The Prepared Environment is essential to the success of Montessori. There must be just the right amount of educational materials to allow for the work of the child. Observation: Scientific observations of the child’s development are constantly carried out and recorded by the teacher. These observations are made on the level of concentration of each child, the introduction to and mastery of each piece of material, the social development, physical health, etc. on. Work Centres: The environment is arranged according to subject area, and children are always free to move around the room, and to continue to work on a piece of material with no time limit. Teaching Method: There are no text books, and seldom will two or more children be studying the same thing at the same time. Children learn directly from the environment, and from other children—rather than from the teacher. The teacher is trained to teach one child at a time, with a few small groups and almost no lessons given to the whole class. Large groups occur only in the beginning of a new class, or in the beginning of the school year, and are phased out as the children gain independence. The child is scientifically observed, observations recorded and studied by the teacher. Children learn from what they are studying individually, but also from the amazing variety of work that is going on around them during the day. Class Size: The most successful 3-6 or 6-12 classes are of 30-35 children to one teacher, with one non teaching assistant, this number reached gradually over 1-3 years. This provides the most variety of personalities, learning styles, and work being done at one time. This class size is possible because the children learn from each other and stay with the same teacher for three to six years. This size helps to create much independent work, and peer teaching, and eliminates the possibility of too much teacher-centred, teacher-directed work. The Schedule: There is at least one 3-hour period of uninterrupted, work time each day, not broken up by required group lessons or lessons by specialists. Adults and children respect concentration and do not interrupt someone who is busy at a task. Groups form spontaneously but not on a predictable schedule. Specialists are available at times but no child is asked to interrupt a self-initiated project to attend these lessons. Assessment: There are no grades, or other forms of reward or punishment, subtle or overt. Assessment is by portfolio and the teacher’s observation and record keeping. The real test of whether or not the system is working lies in the accomplishment and behaviour of the children, their happiness, maturity, kindness, and love of learning, concentration, and work. Learning Styles: All intelligences and styles of learning—musical, bodily-kinaesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, intuitive, natural, and the traditional linguistic and logical-mathematical—are nurtured and respected. Character Education: Opportunities for the valorisation of the personality is considered at least as important as academic education. Children are given the opportunity to take care of themselves, each other, and the environment—gardening, cooking, building, moving gracefully, speaking politely, doing social work in the community, etc. Classroom Environment Rather than sitting through a traditional collective lesson, students achieve what Montessori referred to as “auto-education” by working independently under the direction of a “pedagogic apparatus” of their choice. Common manipulators, or manipulative materials, used by Montessori included wooden letters and numbers, cylinders, blocks, beads, rods, puzzles, gymnastic equipment, metal objects, and household items. By using a sensory learning method, the child gains knowledge by playing the inquisitive role of the naïve scientist. Texts and workbooks are rarely used because many of the skills and concepts are abstract and a text simply doesn’t bring them to life. Montessori relies on hands-on, concrete materials to introduce new concepts. Investigation and re-search are experiences that actively engage the student. Learning is not based on rote drill and memorization Students are assigned their own personal workstations designed with educational items that correspond to the daily lesson plans and activities. Students are responsible for setting up the work area, choosing the learning activity, applying the physical materials, and returning the materials back to the shelves (Pickering, 2004). Children are always free to move around the room and are not given deadlines for the various learning tasks. Desks are arranged into open networks that encourage meaningful group discourse, as well as independent learning. Students work together with the teachers to organize time strategically in order to complete the necessary learning tasks of the day. The amount of teachers in the classroom varies based on class size, but usually two teachers are used for sections with thirty or more students. The Montessori Teacher Montessori teachers facilitate learning, coach students and come to know them as friends and mentors. The primary role of a Montessori educator is to carefully observe while creating a cooperative and supportive setting that is well organized and aesthetically pleasing to the learners. The teacher performs the “overseer role” by directing the “spontaneous” actions of the student’s .According to Montessori, “education is not something which the teacher does, but rather a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being”. Montessori teachers introduce materials with a brief lesson and demonstration and then passively guide the audience through a period of student-centred inquiry. The objective of the instructor is to motivate students, “allowing them to develop confidence and inner discipline so that there is less and less of a need to intervene as the child develops”. On average, the most teachers spend less than one hour of the daily class on group instruction In a specific discipline, instructors use more of a Renaissance approach to learning. When introducing new subjects instructors use demonstration lessons that increase in complexity as the students are able to advance in the sequence of self-correcting problems and tasks .Lessons cover an eclectic mix of disciplines such as geometry, sensory development, language acquisition and expression, literature, science, history, government and life skills. The Montessori Curriculum In Montessori schools, students spend the majority of their time participating in different sessions of uninterrupted activities that last approximately three hours. These projects consist of independent and group problem-solving tasks and other sensory activities related to math, science, language, history, geography, art, music and nature. The integrated curriculum follows a chronological order based on Montessori’s Five Great Lessons: The story of the universe, the timeline of life, the story of language, the story of numbers, and the timeline of civilization. In most settings, children are grouped in mixed ages and abilities based on three to six-year increments such as 0-3, 3-6, 6-12, Ages are mixed so that older students can assist and mentor the younger children in the group. Students are grouped according to common interests and experiences rather than the ability and skill level. According to Montessori, from birth to age 3 the child learns primarily through the “unconscious absorbent mind.” During education In the first three years, Montessori believed that it was necessary for the parents to develop in the role of unobtrusive educator; there to protect and guide without infringing on the child’s right to self-discovery. This early developmental model enabled children to learn their own skills at their own pace. During the ages of 3 to 6 the child begins to utilize the “conscious absorbent mind” which prompts students to participate in creative problem-solving consisting of wooden and metal objects of various sizes and shapes, personally designed by Montessori. If a problem becomes too difficult or overwhelming for the student, the teacher delays the project for a future day. Children also engage in practical work consisting of household tasks and personal maintenance. In both developmental mindsets, “the child seeks sensory input, regulation of movement, order, and freedom to choose activities and explore them deeply without interruption in a carefully prepared environment that helps the child choose well”. Perhaps one of the most significant and worthwhile uses of the Montessori Method is the system for teaching learning disabled students. The program is designed to help at- risk children who have deficiencies in motor or sensory skills, language acquisition, perceptual development and/or cooperative behaviour using the same principles taught in the K-12 programs: self-discovery, sensory learning, independent growth, and individual learning. Assessment Methods Montessori students learn to collaborate and work together on major projects. They strive for their personal best in this non-graded environment rather than competing for the highest grade in the class. In Montessori classroom concepts such as textbooks, grades, exams, punishment, rewards, and homework are rarely embraced or applied. Unlike traditional methods of instruction, the Progressive approach focuses on cooperation rather than competition and personal growth rather than peer evaluation. Students are assessed based on a descriptive summary of the child’s daily interactions and performance on independent and collaborative tasks. A child’s individual and group creations are organized into a portfolio and progress report for parents to evaluate during specific periods of the year. It is the responsibility of the teacher to individually assess each student through critical observation so that individual plans can be devised to help students overcome specific areas of deficiency. Merits There is no competition in the Montessori classroom – children work individually with the materials. Each child relates only to his own previous work, and the progress is not compared to the achievement of other youngsters. Dr. Montessori believed that competition in education should be introduced only after the child has gained confidence in the use of basic skills. “Never let a child risk failure,” she wrote, “until he has a reasonable chance of success.” The Montessori method introduces children to the joy of learning at an early age, and provides a framework in which intellectual and social discipline go hand-in-hand. • Montessori classrooms produced results that were found to be academically and socially superior to traditional programs. • Montessori students were also better at “controlling their attention during novel tasks, solving social problems and playing cooperatively”. • Upon the completion of kindergarten, Montessori students scored higher than their peers in public and private schools on standardized math and reading tests. • Upon completion of elementary school the Montessori students were able to write essays with more imagination and depth than their peers in public and private.
Limitations
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