Understanding the Montessori Approach

Early Years Education in Practice

Barbara Isaacs

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138690547
• eBook ISBN: 9781134995288
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Human Resource Management
• Index: Business

Understanding the Montessori Approach is a much-needed source of information for those wishing to extend and consolidate their understanding of the Montessori Approach and how it is used in the teaching and learning of young children. The book will enable the reader to analyse the essential elements of this Approach to early childhood and and its relationship to quality early years practice.

This second edition has been fully updated to reflect changes in the Early Years Foundation Stage and includes a fresh examination of the relationship between technology and the Montessori approach, as well as a brand new chapter, Learning in Montessori Settings. Exploring all areas of the curriculum including the organisation of Montessori schools, the environment, learning and teaching and the outcomes for children, this book:

• examines the historical context of the Montessori approach and its relevance to modern-day education;
• explores Montessori's views of child development and the role of the learning environment in a child's educational development;
• details the organisation of Montessori schools worldwide and the structure of a typical day in a Montessori setting;
• highlights the principles of Montessori pedagogy, including the tools and strategies employed by its practitioners;
• considers how and what children learn in a Montessori setting and the links with EYFS 2017;
• includes new benefits and challenges of the Montessori approach to children's lives.

Understanding the Montessori Approach provides an accessible overview of this major pedagogical influence on early years practice, supported by case studies, examples, summaries and reflective practice questions. This new edition not only highlights the core ideas that practitioners should consider when reviewing and reflecting on their own practice, but accomodates revisions to educational curriculum and policy in order to serve as an invaluable resource for students and practitioners alike.

1 Historical context

This chapter explores the history of the Montessori approach and the reasons for its continued relevance and appeal in the 21^st century. It also considers the global aspects of the Montessori approach and its bearing on the lives of children today. It examines the discoveries made by Montessori in the first Children’s House and how those findings impact Montessori practice today.

Education must concern itself with the development of individuality and allow the individual child to remain independent not only in the earliest years of childhood but through all the stages of his development. Two things are necessary: the development of individuality and the participation of the individual in a truly social life. This development and this participation in social activities will take different forms in the various stages of childhood. But one principle will remain unchanged during all these stages: the child must be furnished at all times with the means necessary for him to act and gain experience. His life as a social being will then develop throughout his formative years, becoming more and more complex as he grows older.

(Montessori 1992: 56)

Montessori’s beginnings

Montessori’s early life

Montessori was born in Chiaravale, Ancona province, on the east coast of Italy on 31 August 1870, the year in which Italy became a republic. The new political structure heralded changes in society and spawned new possibilities for education. Montessori was one of the beneficiaries of the emerging new political and social trends in Italian society in the last three decades of the 19^th century.

Montessori was the only child of Renilde Stoppani, a niece of the renowned naturalist Antonio Stoppani. Renilde supported her daughter’s aspiration to study mathematics, the sciences and later, to become a doctor. Montessori’s father, Alessandro, was of a military background and rather conservative in his outlook on life. As a civil servant he and his family moved several times until they finally settled in Rome in 1875, when Maria was five years old. At the age of fourteen the young Maria joined a technical school for boys, hoping to become an engineer. Her subsequent interest in biology led her towards the medical sciences. Gaining entry into the University of Rome to study medicine was a real challenge; she was opposed both by her father and the establishment. Nonetheless, she achieved her goal and entered the University of Rome School of Medicine in 1892.

Becoming a doctor

Her student life was not easy; she funded her university studies by tutoring and scholarships. As the only woman admitted into the programme of study, she faced ridicule and difficulties in attending some of the courses. For example, she was not able to participate in the dissection lectures because it was considered inappropriate for a woman to share the lessons with men. She had to work alone in the evenings. Kramer (1976) mentions that Montessori hated the smell of the dead bodies. This must have added a further obstacle and confirms her determination to become a doctor.

Montessori achieved her aim in 1896 when she graduated with double honours. For the first time her father acknowledged and applauded her determination to join the medical vocation. She was one of the first two women to become a doctor in Italy at the time. For the next ten years she devoted herself to practising medicine both in a small private clinic and in the hospitals of Rome, working with women and children. Her appointment as an assistant doctor at the Psychiatric Clinic of the University of Rome gave her the opportunity to gain a deeper insight into the lives of children with various levels of mental disability. They became her inspiration for further study and she focused on the work of two French doctors, Jean Itard (1775–1838) and Eduard Seguin (1812–1880). Following her study and observations of children in the Psychiatric Clinic, she formed the opinion that they needed suitable education more than medical treatment. She expressed this view for the first time at a meeting of teachers and lecturers in Turin in 1898. This was the beginning of Montessori’s focus on pedagogy rather than medicine.

Following the Turin presentation, she was invited to give a series of lectures on the observation and training of children with disabilities to teachers in Rome. These lectures were instrumental in the foundation of the first state Orthophrenic School in the city. This meant that all the children with special needs in the city had the opportunity to attend. Montessori was the first director of this clinic. For the next two years she and her colleagues worked tirelessly to observe children and train teachers, testing and developing Sequin’s and Itard’s ideas in the process. Their efforts were recognised when some of the children from the Orthophrenic School passed state school examinations and were able to enter mainstream schools. This was the beginning of Montessori’s consideration of general education for all children in Italy.

Medical profession leads Montessori towards work with children

At the same time, Montessori continued her advocacy on behalf of women and children. Her concerns for their plight were voiced at a feminist conference held in London in 1900, where she was critical of child labour and supported Queen Victoria’s programme against it. Montessori’s commitment to the rights of women and children continued until her death in 1952.

Some time between 1898 and 1900 Montessori gave birth to a son, Mario. We know that he was the son of Doctor Montessano, a medical colleague, whose aristocratic background barred marriage to Maria Montessori. However, there is a lack of clarity in the Montessori records as to when exactly Mario was born and why he was not given his father’s name. He was brought up in the countryside outside Rome and Montessori visited him frequently. She revealed the truth about his parentage when he was fifteen; from then on Mario lived alongside his mother and became her assistant. Montessori never spoke about Mario’s origins – he was known as her adopted son. Only at Mario’s own funeral in 1982 was his father publically acknowledged for the first time. The 20^th century gave us the opportunity to delve deeper in our understanding of the human psyche, and there is no doubt that Montessori’s denial of her son during his early years must have had a profound effect both on her attitudes to children as well as her research and writing. We can only speculate on how her life would have unfolded had she kept Mario and brought him up herself.

Establishing the first Montessori nursery – the Casa dei Bambini in Rome

Following her work with teachers in Rome, Montessori realised that further study of the philosophy and anthropology of education would be beneficial to her, and she enrolled, once again, as a student at the University of Rome. It was during this time that Montessori translated the works of Itard and Sequin into Italian. In 1904 she became a Professor of Anthropology at the university. The ten years between her graduation in 1896 and 1906 can be seen as the preparatory period for the work which commenced in 1906. In that year Montessori was invited to set up a school in a newly built social housing estate in the San Lorenzo slum district of Rome, where migrants from the countryside and abroad came to live in search of work in the city. At that time in Italy, compulsory education started at the age of six, as it does today. The director of the housing project wanted children under that age to be looked after whilst their mothers went to work. Montessori was approached to lead this project and so began to establish the first Children’s House (Casa dei Bambini). All she was given were the rooms for the nursery school. There was no money for furnishings, educational materials or teachers. Montessori had to be enormously resourceful in ensuring that her project succeeded.

Her team reassembled office furniture to make chairs and tables appropriate for a child’s size. They introduced a range of toys donated to the school and also incorporated some of the materials Montessori trialled in the Orthophrenic School. There was no money to pay a teacher’s salary, so Montessori employed the daughter of the caretaker to help her care for the children. When the school opened on 6 January 1907 at 53 Via Marsi, Montessori made a now famous speech in which she committed to provide well for the fifty children in her care (Montessori 2007b).

She began her project by ensuring that all the children attending were clean, weighed, measured and provided with nourishing food, so caring for their physical needs. She realised that the parents were keen to be involved and that the children had the power of introducing basic hygiene and orderly habits to their families. This was as much a social experiment as a pedagogical one. During the inaugural address delivered at the opening of the second Children’s House in 1907 Montessori stated that traditionally:

The home is shut off not only from education but also from social influences. In the Children’s Houses we see for the first time the possibility of effectively establishing ‘closer links.’ This school is located in the same building as the children’s homes and the teacher lives in the midst. The parents know the Children’s House belongs to them … They can go there at any hour of the day to watch, to admire, to meditate.

(Montessori 2007b: 336)

Thus the school was placed at the heart of the community. This principle was mirrored by the parents who first established the Reggio Emilia nurseries after World War II (Edwards et al. 1998). Key too was how the schools looked to establish closer links between the children, their families and the whole community.

Montessori did not have preconceived ideas about the educational content of the programme she offered in the nursery. Rather, she observed the children and these observations constituted the basis of what we know today as the Montessori approach.

Observation remains at the heart of Montessori practice today and guides the educators’ understanding of children in their care, and serves as the basis for their planning and assessment of children’s progress.

The early days of Montessori education

Montessori’s two-year engagement with the two Children’s Houses in San Lorenzo and the establishment of the Casa dei Bambini in Milan’s Umanitaria, a Jewish Socialist Centre, by Anna Maccheroni in 1908, contributed to discoveries documented by Montessori herself in The Montessori Method (1964 [1912]) and further elaborated upon by Kramer (1976), Standing (1984) and others.

Montessori’s aim was to nurture each individual child so that she or he could reach her or his potential as a human being. She believed that this was made possible by providing a favourable environment which would nurture self-development under the guidance of sensitive and empathetic adults (MCI 2010). To achieve this aim, she instinctively recognised that movement and manipulation are the keys to learning in the early years and therefore that young children must be given opportunities to be ‘active learners’ (DfE 2017). This discovery translated into encouraging children to help look after the classroom and its environs, and to the development of materials for educating the senses. To this day, these two areas are the bedrock of all learning in Montessori nurseries.

Montessori (2007b) recognised that for unique development of each individual to take place, children needed freedom within limits to explore the favourable environment specially prepared to meet their developmental as well as individual needs. In an atmosphere of autonomy which is supplemented by a wide range of accessible activities, the child would reveal the true potential of the human being and should be nurtured to achieve it. She observed that children as young as three were able to select activities which engaged them and so were able to repeat them whilst deeply focusing on the task. This type of activity fulfilled the children’s individual needs, demonstrated their ability to concentrate for long periods of time and facilitated development of self-discipline and awareness of others. This, for Montessori (2007a, 2007b), was the sign of true liberty. In the 1946 lectures (Montessori 2012: 133) she declared: ‘if they [the children] d...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• 1 Historical context
• 2 Montessori’s view of child development
• 3 Organisation of Montessori schools
• 4 Principles of Montessori pedagogy
• 5 Learning in Montessori settings
• 6 The favourable environment
• 7 Benefits and challenges of the Montessori approach to children’s lives and communities today
• Appendix 1: Montessori secondary education – the Erdkinder (land-children)
• Appendix 2: Glossary of terms
• Appendix 3: Key Montessori texts
• Appendix 4: Leading UK and international Montessori organisations
• Bibliography
• Index