Research Paper On Montessori Education
Montessori Education versus alternative education; Cognitive Outcomes, Creative outcomes & Behavioral Outcomes
Beth A. Beehler
Metropolitan State College of Denver
PSYCH 4960
Abstract
Introduction
Does Montessori education provide society with children who are better educated? In this senior thesis we will examined several studies in depth to try and pull an answer to this question. Education is multi-dimensional. Education is a complex activity that tests students motivation, and physical condition (Al, Sari, & Kahya, 2012).
Montessori education has been around for over 100 years, and there are over 4,000 Montessori school in just United States (Lillard, 2012). Maria Montessori founded this philosophy in 1907 in the …show more content…
slums of Rome. Here, Maria Montessori was a physician, who worked with children who were mentally disabled. She stepped outside of this box and decided to help children who were not developed or were from low-income families.
You may be curious as to what makes Montessori different from a traditional school, the first key is that Montessori is child led. Teachers are there to guide a child and assist when needed. The second key about Montessori education is that there is a set of materials specifically designed to help children learn through action. Montessori is about doing and being active in the work you do.
Also in a Montessori classroom the children are of mixed ages. They tend to span in three year increments; i.e.: 3-6 years old, 6-9 years old, and 9-12 years old etc… The children are allowed long periods of work time. This allows the child to have the freedom to choose the work they want to work on for as long as they need to (Hazel & Allen, 2013).
Traditional pedagogy is characterized by a specific teacher who stands in the front of the class, traditional pedagogy is also impersonal because there are so many students in the class and one teacher, and lastly the importance of abstract knowledge is not always linked to everyday life. The teacher teaches what she mastered her skills in (Besancon & Lubart, 2007).
In this paper three major areas are going to be discussed. The first topic is the cognitive outcomes of Montessori children versus traditional schools. In this section we reviewed three studies that have been done in the last ten years that give detailed answers to which philosophy of education produces children with a better academic outcome. The second topic that was put under the microscope was the creative giftedness of children who attend Montessori schools and well as the creative giftedness of children who attended a traditional educational school. The last area that was examined was the behavioral and motivational outcomes of children, depending on the educational philosophy they received. The purpose of thesis is to review as well as critique a body of work pertaining to Montessori versus alternative educational practices, address theoretical foundations, identify issues for future research and provide synthesized conclusions regarding and the cognitive outcomes, behavioral outcomes and the creative outcomes of these educational philosophies.
Literature Review The impact of Montessori education up against alterative programs is hard to find.
Montessori has been around for over 100 years. Researchers are trying to have a better understanding on the outcomes regarding the development in children who attend Montessori and non-Montessori schools. In the research done by Angeline Lillard in 2012, it was hypothesized that classic Montessori schools would out-perform traditional school in their cognitive outcomes. It was also hypothesized that classic Montessori children would outperform supplemented Montessori programs. Lastly Lillard hypothesized that supplemental Montessori programs would perform better than conventional schools. Lillard wanted to know two things; one, do preschoolers school readiness change from fall to spring as a function of the kind of educational setting they are in (Classic Montessori, supplemented Montessori or conventional). Secondly she sought to find out if within Montessori programs the amount of Montessori materials in the class predicts their readiness skills in the spring, after controlling for fall skill …show more content…
levels? The methods used in Angeline Lillard 2012 study were 172 children. Age ranging from 33 months to 76 months. There were 3 different program types; classic Montessori, supplemental Montessori and conventional school. Each classroom was set up as it would normally be set up for a conventional school, a classic Montessori school and a supplemented Montessori school. All the teachers in this study were white women. The measures that were assessed were the same for each program of school. Angeline Lillard (2012) examined executive function. This function was examined by using the “head-toes-knees-shoulders task”. This task means that children would be primed as to what is expected of them when asked to touch their certain body part, they would need to touch the opposing body part; for example “touch your head” really means touch your toes. This tasks involves several aspects of executive function. The other executive function task the children were presented with was the classic delay gratification. This is where children are asked if they would want one reward now or three rewards later. The children were also measured on Theory of Mind. This was assessed by using the False Belief Task, this is where children are asked if they know what is inside the Band-Aid box. If the students answered correctly they were given points, then the box was opened to reveal that there really was a pencil inside. If they passed the false belief test they were able to move on to the hidden emotions task. This task details children being asked to examine a sheet of paper with happy, neutral and sad faces. Then each child was given the same scenario about a boy on his birthday who wants to receive a bike from his uncle but gets a ball instead. The children are asked how the boy will feel once he receives the ball. The third measure used on the children was a social problem solving task. The children were showen a picture with children, one child was reading a book while the other child was looking over the other child’s shoulder. The researcher said that the child reading the book has had the book for quite some time. Then the researcher promted the children with these questions; “What could the other child do?”, “who seems to want to see the book?” The children were then asked what they would do if it were them (Lillard, A. 2012). Lastly, Lillard (2012) assessed each child’s reading, vocabulary, and math skills. The math was assessed using simple counting, addition and subtraction. Reading was assessed using Letter-Word Identification. Lastly the children’s vocabulary was assessed using the Picture vocabulary task. This is where the children needed to identify pictures. The participants (children) were chosen from seven different schools; five of the schools were Montessori and the other two schools were conventional schools. The study took place in a quiet area in the school. There were five trained assistant researchers that administered the test. The whole test session took 15-20 minutes. Before each test was given the children were able to have casual conversations with the researchers to make the children feel as comfortable as they could. The results of this studying are that over half of the time the children in the Montessori classrooms used the Montessori materials. Also the training the teachers received (AMI or AMS) did not affect the child’s cognitive outcome. Lillard found the variable that was different across all the programs was the vocabulary score, this score was higher within the conventional school. Vocabulary scores are closely related to intelligence scores (Lillard, A. 2012). The results of the letter-Word Identification was significantly different across all programs (classic Montessori, supplemented Montessori and convention school). Children in classic Montessori classrooms learned more on the applied problems then the children at the conventional school or the supplemented Montessori school. Overall Lillard set out to uncover if the outcomes of children’s academic skills differ depending on the type of education they receive. This research revealed that Classic Montessori children gain a significant amount of academic skills during the school year than those children who attended Supplemented Montessori or conventional schools. The biggest gains in academic outcomes were executive function and social problem solving skills. These two academic outcomes that Classic Montessori children gain can predict success in school and social relations. In a similar study done by Bagby, Barnard-Brak, Sulak, Jones & Walter in 2012, they also researched executive function and the academic outcomes of children in three different educational setting, conventional, Montessori and a Catholic school. All three of these school were also private schools. In this study there was 224 participants 112 were students and the other 112 were parents and teachers. The researches wanted to know two questions. The first question was is there any significant difference in executive function in children depending on the school environment they are in? The second question was is there a significant difference between parent and teacher ratings across the school environment? To assess executive function of these students, the researchers used the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (hereafter BREIF). BREIF is used to assess executive function behavior in children. The researches asked teachers to rate the students on this scale (never, sometimes and often) and then the parents were asked to rate their child on the same scale. The categories that they were rated on were; Inhibition, Initiation, Organization of Materials, Shift, Working Memory, Monitor, Emotional Control, and Planning/Organization (Bagby et al. 2012). The results of this study found that parents from all three schools don’t rate their child’s executive functions differently, but the child’s teacher does rate their executive function differently depending on the school environment they are in. Both the Montessori school and the Catholic school rated their students as having better executive function then those students in the classic school. In 2007, six researchers addressed the question; does attending a Montessori program offer a viable education compared to other educational practices? The schools chosen for this study were from the Milwaukee Public School system. 118 students were chosen at random from seven of 18 different schools in the area. The 118 students were chosen by how long they had attended a Montessori school (Dohrmann et al. 2007). Dohrmann wanted to compare Montessori and non-Montessori students and their academic outcomes. The researchers constructed modified control groups, using the criteria of gender, race/ethnicity, and free/reduced lunch. With that criteria in mind they then created an identical group from students who had already graduated (Dohrmann et al. 2007). The dependent measures were the assessments that each student was given throughout their time in school. In the 10th grade students are given the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (hereafter WKCE). In this examination the students are assessed on reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies. The students were also assessed with the ACT standardized test. This assessment focus’ on college bound students and the areas of academics that are tested are English, math, reading and science reasoning. The last dependent measure the researchers looked at was the students cumulative GPA (Dohrmann et al, 2007). The results of this study found that attending a Montessori school the student had a significant positive outcome in regards to math and science. Also, children who attended a Montessori school outperformed children who attended a traditional school in the math and science subjects. The study found that there is no significant differences between Montessori and Non-Montessori students in relation to their GPA, or standardized test in the subjects of English and Social studies. In conclusion to this article, the hypotheses that was tested and is supported is that Montessori students tend to have better academic outcomes than those who did not attend a Montessori school (Dohrmann et al, 2012). Academics are important, but doesn’t one need to be better-rounded? Another area of research that was studied was creative giftedness. Creative giftedness in a Montessori setting versus other educational philosophies is what will be looked at next. According to a study that was done in 2013 (Besancon, Lubart & Barbot, 2013), creativity is a valuable ability that plays a part in not only personal development but societal development as well. The impact a school setting has on a person and their creative drive, can be negative or positive. Besancon, Lubart and Barbot (2013), wanted to know how much creativity comes from the type of school setting we attend. Besancon, Lubart, & Barbot hypothesized that the Montessori school would favor creativity more than the traditional school. It was also looked at the extent to which expected pedagogical effect may vary based on the childrens grade level, and gender. It was a longitudinal study over the span of two years. This study was conducted in Paris, France in a Montessori school as well as a traditional school. The researchers gathered eighty students, forty from each school setting along with ten professors from a university that would be the judges over the next few years. The test design of this study was the test-retest design. This means the students were tested on several levels and then retested again after one year had gone by. The researchers measured the student’s creativity on several different levels. They looked at the type of task given. As well as the domain of expression. The two types of tasks given were divergent versus integrative.
A divergent task is an exploratory thinking task, out-of-the-box kind of thinking. Divergent thinking task in this study was for the children to come up with novel and original ideas. The two task that the students were given was toy improvement and parallel lines. In the toy improvement they researchers asked the students to make a stuffed elephant more entertaining, they children had three minutes to tell them what they would do. In the parallel lines task, the children needed to produce as many drawings as possible from a pair of parallel lines, the students we allowed ten minutes to work on this (Besancon et al., 2013). Integrative thinking task is using everything you have to figure something out. Meaning you use your reason and intellect, as well as intuition and imagination. This allows one to do the best they can. To apply this to Besancon, Lubart and Barbot study they asked the children to invent a story as well as to invent a drawing. When asked to invent a story the students were given a title and needed to come up with as story and make it as original as they could. In the task to invent a drawing the children were given a sheet of paper with six shapes on it. The children needed to use all six shapes. The researchers looked at the domain of expression in additional to the type of task that was given. Verbal and figural domains were looked at with each child. The results of this two year study confirmed that the type is school you attend has an effect on your level of creativity. According to the research there is a clear tendency for Montessori students to score higher and to be more creatively gifted (Besancon, Lubart, & Barbot, 2013).
In a similar study conducted by two of the researchers from the previous study on creativity Besancon and Lubart (2008), examined the impact of creativity and the learning environment that the children are in. It has been documented that the main goals of educational systems is to transmit knowledge, rigorous working habits and societal values in a person. In a traditional learning environment there isn 't much time or room for creativity. Besancon and Lubart (2008) hypothesized that children schooled in alternative pedagogies; including Montessori and Freinet versus traditional pedagogy, would have greater creative performance. The second hypotheses they conducted was to find if there was a positive influence on alternative pedagogy and creative development from one year to the second year. Like in the previous study I reviewed on creativity this study too looked at two types of task; Divergent and integrative, and there were two domains; verbal and graphic expressive. In order to get the most information this study was a longitudinal study that spanned over two years.
There was 211 children who participated in this study. The first year the children were in 1st-4th grade and the second study the children were in 2nd-5th grade. The 211 students were each given a divergent thinking task. This task included asking the children to talk about the uses of a cardboard box. They were also asked what improvements they could make to a stuff animal. Lastly they were asked to draw a figure of any kind using the parallel lines that were given on each sheet of paper. For the integrative task the children were asked to invent a story from a title that the researchers came up with (same title was given to each student). The student also had to invent a drawing from six different figures, using them all.
This study was similar in a lot of ways to the study conducted by Besancon and Lubart in 2013. However, in this study from 2008 there was found to be a significant difference in gender and creativity; girls performed better than boys.
In the end Besancon and Lubart concluded that children performed better creatively in an alternative educational setting, particularly children in a Montessori school then in a traditional school. To summarize the second hypothesis, which looked at the positive influence on creative development from 1 year to the 2nd year. They revealed that Montessori students increased in creativity in all task that were given. Although they examined another alternative educational system ( Freinet), they did not observe an increase in creativity in the Freinet education from the 1st year to the second year. In the end it was found that there is a relationship between a child 's learning environment and their creativity.
In another similar study in 2012 Rose, Jolley & Charman, examined if three different educational approaches effects children 's creativity. However different from the Besancon et al 2008 study, and Besancon et al 2013 study; Rose, Jolley & Charman set out to discover if children 's creativity in particular their drawing ability is effected based on the type of school they attend.
Drawing is something that when done, awakes more then just your creative juices. Drawing has benefits that helps children appreciate art, and gives children an outlet to express themselves ( Rose, et al 2012).
Drawing and how one comes to draw a certain way is influenced on where you live and grow up. This study looked at three different types of educational systems; English, Steiner and Montessori. In the English national curriculum school, art has been included in there school since their reform act in 1988. There are four stages, and children can move up to the next stage when the next school year comes as well as their age. Within the first two stages students need to do a lot of observational drawings. Observing according to the National Curriculum for Art and Design there needs to be a balance between drawing from observation and allowing children to be expressive and creative in their drawings (Rose, Jolley & Charman, 2012).
Different from the English National Curriculum, Steiner schools encourage imaginative play. They believe that children need to be educated wholly; mind, body and spirit. Steiner schools are also known as Waldorf schools. The children in a Steiner school setting have the freedom to draw from the narrative of the teacher or from their own mind. It is not until children are between six and seven years old that children begin to be formally taught about art, however around age 12 is when artistic forms and creative thinking and a more richer understanding of drawing is really taught to the children. Steiner believed that the purpose of art is not to achieve high artistic merit but to understand and know the path that gets you there (Rose et al, 2012). This is why the English curriculum is so different from Steiner 's art curriculum.
Montessori similar in some ways to the Steiner curriculum, children are "free" to learn as they see fit. However different from the English curriculum and the Steiner curriculum the Montessori curriculum is based on real-life and practical life skills. Like the English curriculum Montessori children are encouraged to observer before they work. This observation time allows children to gain insight to what they may do. However art martials and work is available for children if they so choose to work with it.
In previous studies there is evidence that supports that Steiner children overall outperform Montessori and National curriculum students in their ability to creatively draw. With that in mind this study conducted by Rose, Jolley and Charman (2012), hypothesized that Steiner children would produce expressive drawings of higher quality, using formal properties more expressively and depicting more items then National curriculum students. As well as a hypotheses that stated Montessori students would have the weakest expressive drawings of the three educational approaches. However, because Montessori is reality-based it was said that Montessori children would outperform both Steiner and National curriculum students when it comes to the ability to draw realistic pictures.
135 children participated in this study, 45 students from each school type (Montessori, Steiner and National). Of those 45 in each group, they were then split up by age into 3 more groups, 5 year olds, 7 year olds and 9 year olds.
The children were provided with 6 wooden mannequins, set up on a table in the front of the room. The mannequins had faces and one was set up in a running position. Children were given 30 minutes total with 10 minutes dedicated to each drawing task.
The task given to the students were; expressive drawing, and realistic drawing. For the expressive drawing task; students were asked to draw a happy picture, a sad picture, and an angry picture. The students were instructed that it could be of anything they would like, but it had to fill the emotion that was being asked. In the realistic task drawing, the students were presented with the mannequin, the mannequin that was running to be precise. The children were asked to draw exactly what they see. After the children had completed the mannequin task the children were asked to draw a picture of a house as realistically as they could. Lastly, the students were then asked to draw anything they wanted as long as it was realistic and life-like.
Each drawing was scored by judges who were blind to who drew the picture. The judges did have background education in art of some kind. The expressive drawings were measured on five aspects; line, color, composition, quality, and the number of expressive subjects depicted. To get the results of the expressive drawings researchers used a three-way ANOVA. The results of the representational drawings researchers used a two-way ANOVA. This is different from the two studies described above, they used MANOVAs to get their results.
In the end Rose, Jolley and Charman (2012), found that overall Steiner students outperformed both Montessori and National curriculum students in each task given.
Even though it was hypothesized that Montessori students would perform better drawing realistic pictures, this turned out not to be the case. It was revealed that of all age group; 5, 7 and 9 year olds, the nine year olds did better overall on every task. At age five most of the children were not exposed enough to formal art and were just allowed to freely draw. The Steiner students outperformed the other two educational approaches when it dealt with expressive drawing, but then researchers found there was not a big enough significant difference in the ability to draw representationally related to one type of educational approach. Overall, it was concluded that Steiner 's education approach seems to be more conducive to fostering the ability to draw more expressively (Rose et al., 2012).
We have reviewed the academic outcomes of different educational approaches as well as the creative outcomes of three different educational curricula, we are now going to review the behavioral outcomes depending on what kind of educational system one attends. Like the studies reviewed above, these studies will too have Montessori as one of the educational
approaches.
In this first study conducted by Hazel and Allen in 2013, they looked at how depending on the pedagogy your school is attached to, how this can help you create a more inclusive community. They examined three different types of schools; Core knowledge, Experiential and Montessori. Each school even though they are different they have three essential building blocks of their pedagogy. These building blocks are; academic education, affective education, and individualization of instruction.
In this study (Hazel & Allen, 2013) they wanted to know how pedagogically driven schools can become inclusive communities. There was no hypothesis related to this study. There were 35 participants in this study, each school’s principal, mental health provider, fourth grade teachers and all fourth graders were a part of the study.
The students were grouped together in a room and asked to draw a picture of a safe school and an unsafe school. They were also asked a series of questions; for example, "when someone is a bully or is bullied, what happens?”
The findings in the study conducted by Hazel and Allen (2012), was that in order to have inclusive communities and have certain behavioral outcomes each school emerged with three themes. The themes are: culture, structure and responsibility and expectations. They discovered that each school engaged in activities that helped the communities to become a cohesive unit. When inclusive communities are formed not only does staff and parents benefit, but most importantly the students benefit. There is positive behavioral outcomes when children feel safe and engaged in school and the community that comes along with it. There is a feeling of positive belonging when inclusive communities are established (Hazel & Allen, 2012).
How does one find motivation? Is it a cohesive inclusive community, the type of education you receive, or your parents? In this next study Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2005) compared a Montessori school and a traditional school and the student’s motivational outcomes.
It has been documented that as children transition from elementary to adolescents they begin to doubt what they can do; grades, finding friends, and abilities to succeed. With these doubts in the adolescents mind the next concern would be their motivation. Research shows that there is a drop in motivation; specifically intrinsic motivation as students enter middle school. The study (Rathunde et al, 2005), examine what happens to that motivation within two different educational settings. There are two benefits when comparing a Montessori school and a traditional school student’s motivational outcome. The first benefit is there has not been a lot of research done, so this study provided useful information. The other benefit is that one can learn about how the student context fit in middle school can affect the quality of the student experience.
The Montessori philosophy has worked hard and has kept the idea of creating an environment for intrinsic motivation as important. Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2005) discuss goal theory; students ' goals mediate the quality of their engagement at school. With this theory in mind there are two different kinds of goals looked at, task and performance. With task focused students it has been discovered that students are more intrinsically motivated. These types of students seek challenging task and crave novelty. Performance focused students as you can imagine are extrinsically motivated. These types of students are more worried about what others think or say. This is said to disrupt their learning ability, because it takes away from the chance of taking a risk or the effort they may or may not put forth.
This study chose five Montessori schools in the United State. There were 150 6th-8th grade students who participated in the study. For the traditional school, 6 schools were chosen with 160 6th-8th grade students. The demographics were very similar, including socioeconomic status, gender of all the students, family characteristics, and ethnic background. Each student who participated was given a watch to wear that would prompt them eight times a day between the hours of 7:30 in the morning to 10:30 at night, and when were prompted by the watch the participants needed to then fill out a response form. This went on for seven consecutive days, at the end of that week the students were asked to return the filled out forms and watch in an envelope. The researchers looked at five Experience Sampling Method (ESM): affect, potency, salience, intrinsic motivation and flow. The researchers describe flow as a theory in the optimal experience theory. Flow is " intrinsically motivated, task-focused state characterized by full concentration, a change in awareness of time, feelings of clarity and control, a merging of action and awareness, and a lack of self-skills in an activity and the challenges afforded by the environment" (Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi, 2005).
The results of Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2005) study made it clear that when Montessori students are engaged in academic work it was found that there was higher affect, potency, intrinsic motivation and flow. In contrast traditional school students had higher salience where Montessori students did not. However over all the Montessori students reported experiences being far more positive than those of the traditional school students.
As the previous study did, this study from 2013 by Byun, Blair and Pate looked into a student’s educational environment and how it effects their behavior. In this particular study the researchers suspected that depending on whether you attended a Montessori School or a traditional preschool ones level of sedentary behavior would differ. They used a cross-sectional study design. They included eight traditional preschools and nine Montessori preschools. All the participants we children at age 4.
The children wore an ActiGraph accelerometer to measure their movement throughout the day. This accelerometer was wore on the child 's right hip. Children were asked to wear this for at least four hours a day. The accelerometer data was taken and the results of the data from there was that overall Montessori preschool children spent less time in the sedentary behavior then children in a traditional preschool. It was discovered that depending on your school type and whether you were a boy or girl would affect how sedentary one was. As well as race, and your parents education level. It was found to be interesting that Montessori preschool children we more mobile throughout the day and that the other preschool children were not. This observation was true even as the child went home. Montessori children were measured as being more active at home than traditional schooled children. These findings would suggest that the policies and environment have an influence on how sedentary one is.
Critique With the studies discussed previously keep in mind that each study brought a very important aspect to light. That aspect could be a strength such as the length of the study or that aspect could be a weakness, such as internal validity. In the next several paragraphs I am going to shed light on the strengths and weakness’ of this body of work.
Strength
One area of strength in this body of research if the inter-rater reliability. Inter-rater reliability is where each person would judge, examine or ask the participants questions, would then come together and report their findings. This helps strengthen the validity of the research being conducted. Another strength in these studies is longitudinal design, as well as low attrition as a benefit of the design. In almost every study that was researched there was the same outcome. The researchers examined each participant over a period of time and then let time pass and came back to examine the participants.
Weakness
With strength must come weakness. The first weakness I want to point out is internal validity. According to Besancon and Lubart (2008), being creative and the level of your creativity reflects what prior knowledge you have of creativeness. It is not that one of more creative per se, but that one may have had all six interrelated resources, such as: intelligence, knowledge, motivation, personality, individual style and environment context. Different results imply different education (Besancon & Lubart, 2008). External validity, in regards to ethnicity. Most of the research above used participants that were mostly Caucasian. The weakness is that there needs to be a more diverse sample of participants. This would allow insight into whether it is just Caucasians that benefit from Montessori education of do minorities as well. Also, do minorities not attend Montessori schools because the finical demands are not in their budget.
References
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Bagby, J., Barnard-Brak, L. Sulak, T., Jones, N., & Walter, M. (2012). The effects of environment on children’s executive function: A study of three private schools. Journal of Research in Childhood Education, 26, 418-426. Doi:10.1080/02568543.2012.711431
BesanCon, M., Lubart, T., & Barbot, B. (2013). Creative giftedness and educational opportunities.
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BesanCon, M., & Lubart, T. (2008). Differences in the development of creative competencies in children schooled in diverse learning environments. Learning and Individual Differences, 18, 381-389. Doi:10.1016/j.lindif.2007.11.009
Byun, W., Blair, S.N., & Pate, R.R. (2012). Objectively measured sedentary behavior in preschool children: Comparison between Montessori and traditional preschools. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 10, 1-7.
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Beth A. Beehler
Metropolitan State College of Denver
PSYCH 4960
Abstract
Introduction
Does Montessori education provide society with children who are better educated? In this senior thesis we will examined several studies in depth to try and pull an answer to this question. Education is multi-dimensional. Education is a complex activity that tests students motivation, and physical condition (Al, Sari, & Kahya, 2012).
Montessori education has been around for over 100 years, and there are over 4,000 Montessori school in just United States (Lillard, 2012). Maria Montessori founded this philosophy in 1907 in the …show more content…
slums of Rome. Here, Maria Montessori was a physician, who worked with children who were mentally disabled. She stepped outside of this box and decided to help children who were not developed or were from low-income families.
You may be curious as to what makes Montessori different from a traditional school, the first key is that Montessori is child led. Teachers are there to guide a child and assist when needed. The second key about Montessori education is that there is a set of materials specifically designed to help children learn through action. Montessori is about doing and being active in the work you do.
Also in a Montessori classroom the children are of mixed ages. They tend to span in three year increments; i.e.: 3-6 years old, 6-9 years old, and 9-12 years old etc… The children are allowed long periods of work time. This allows the child to have the freedom to choose the work they want to work on for as long as they need to (Hazel & Allen, 2013).
Traditional pedagogy is characterized by a specific teacher who stands in the front of the class, traditional pedagogy is also impersonal because there are so many students in the class and one teacher, and lastly the importance of abstract knowledge is not always linked to everyday life. The teacher teaches what she mastered her skills in (Besancon & Lubart, 2007).
In this paper three major areas are going to be discussed. The first topic is the cognitive outcomes of Montessori children versus traditional schools. In this section we reviewed three studies that have been done in the last ten years that give detailed answers to which philosophy of education produces children with a better academic outcome. The second topic that was put under the microscope was the creative giftedness of children who attend Montessori schools and well as the creative giftedness of children who attended a traditional educational school. The last area that was examined was the behavioral and motivational outcomes of children, depending on the educational philosophy they received. The purpose of thesis is to review as well as critique a body of work pertaining to Montessori versus alternative educational practices, address theoretical foundations, identify issues for future research and provide synthesized conclusions regarding and the cognitive outcomes, behavioral outcomes and the creative outcomes of these educational philosophies.
Literature Review The impact of Montessori education up against alterative programs is hard to find.
Montessori has been around for over 100 years. Researchers are trying to have a better understanding on the outcomes regarding the development in children who attend Montessori and non-Montessori schools. In the research done by Angeline Lillard in 2012, it was hypothesized that classic Montessori schools would out-perform traditional school in their cognitive outcomes. It was also hypothesized that classic Montessori children would outperform supplemented Montessori programs. Lastly Lillard hypothesized that supplemental Montessori programs would perform better than conventional schools. Lillard wanted to know two things; one, do preschoolers school readiness change from fall to spring as a function of the kind of educational setting they are in (Classic Montessori, supplemented Montessori or conventional). Secondly she sought to find out if within Montessori programs the amount of Montessori materials in the class predicts their readiness skills in the spring, after controlling for fall skill …show more content…
levels? The methods used in Angeline Lillard 2012 study were 172 children. Age ranging from 33 months to 76 months. There were 3 different program types; classic Montessori, supplemental Montessori and conventional school. Each classroom was set up as it would normally be set up for a conventional school, a classic Montessori school and a supplemented Montessori school. All the teachers in this study were white women. The measures that were assessed were the same for each program of school. Angeline Lillard (2012) examined executive function. This function was examined by using the “head-toes-knees-shoulders task”. This task means that children would be primed as to what is expected of them when asked to touch their certain body part, they would need to touch the opposing body part; for example “touch your head” really means touch your toes. This tasks involves several aspects of executive function. The other executive function task the children were presented with was the classic delay gratification. This is where children are asked if they would want one reward now or three rewards later. The children were also measured on Theory of Mind. This was assessed by using the False Belief Task, this is where children are asked if they know what is inside the Band-Aid box. If the students answered correctly they were given points, then the box was opened to reveal that there really was a pencil inside. If they passed the false belief test they were able to move on to the hidden emotions task. This task details children being asked to examine a sheet of paper with happy, neutral and sad faces. Then each child was given the same scenario about a boy on his birthday who wants to receive a bike from his uncle but gets a ball instead. The children are asked how the boy will feel once he receives the ball. The third measure used on the children was a social problem solving task. The children were showen a picture with children, one child was reading a book while the other child was looking over the other child’s shoulder. The researcher said that the child reading the book has had the book for quite some time. Then the researcher promted the children with these questions; “What could the other child do?”, “who seems to want to see the book?” The children were then asked what they would do if it were them (Lillard, A. 2012). Lastly, Lillard (2012) assessed each child’s reading, vocabulary, and math skills. The math was assessed using simple counting, addition and subtraction. Reading was assessed using Letter-Word Identification. Lastly the children’s vocabulary was assessed using the Picture vocabulary task. This is where the children needed to identify pictures. The participants (children) were chosen from seven different schools; five of the schools were Montessori and the other two schools were conventional schools. The study took place in a quiet area in the school. There were five trained assistant researchers that administered the test. The whole test session took 15-20 minutes. Before each test was given the children were able to have casual conversations with the researchers to make the children feel as comfortable as they could. The results of this studying are that over half of the time the children in the Montessori classrooms used the Montessori materials. Also the training the teachers received (AMI or AMS) did not affect the child’s cognitive outcome. Lillard found the variable that was different across all the programs was the vocabulary score, this score was higher within the conventional school. Vocabulary scores are closely related to intelligence scores (Lillard, A. 2012). The results of the letter-Word Identification was significantly different across all programs (classic Montessori, supplemented Montessori and convention school). Children in classic Montessori classrooms learned more on the applied problems then the children at the conventional school or the supplemented Montessori school. Overall Lillard set out to uncover if the outcomes of children’s academic skills differ depending on the type of education they receive. This research revealed that Classic Montessori children gain a significant amount of academic skills during the school year than those children who attended Supplemented Montessori or conventional schools. The biggest gains in academic outcomes were executive function and social problem solving skills. These two academic outcomes that Classic Montessori children gain can predict success in school and social relations. In a similar study done by Bagby, Barnard-Brak, Sulak, Jones & Walter in 2012, they also researched executive function and the academic outcomes of children in three different educational setting, conventional, Montessori and a Catholic school. All three of these school were also private schools. In this study there was 224 participants 112 were students and the other 112 were parents and teachers. The researches wanted to know two questions. The first question was is there any significant difference in executive function in children depending on the school environment they are in? The second question was is there a significant difference between parent and teacher ratings across the school environment? To assess executive function of these students, the researchers used the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function (hereafter BREIF). BREIF is used to assess executive function behavior in children. The researches asked teachers to rate the students on this scale (never, sometimes and often) and then the parents were asked to rate their child on the same scale. The categories that they were rated on were; Inhibition, Initiation, Organization of Materials, Shift, Working Memory, Monitor, Emotional Control, and Planning/Organization (Bagby et al. 2012). The results of this study found that parents from all three schools don’t rate their child’s executive functions differently, but the child’s teacher does rate their executive function differently depending on the school environment they are in. Both the Montessori school and the Catholic school rated their students as having better executive function then those students in the classic school. In 2007, six researchers addressed the question; does attending a Montessori program offer a viable education compared to other educational practices? The schools chosen for this study were from the Milwaukee Public School system. 118 students were chosen at random from seven of 18 different schools in the area. The 118 students were chosen by how long they had attended a Montessori school (Dohrmann et al. 2007). Dohrmann wanted to compare Montessori and non-Montessori students and their academic outcomes. The researchers constructed modified control groups, using the criteria of gender, race/ethnicity, and free/reduced lunch. With that criteria in mind they then created an identical group from students who had already graduated (Dohrmann et al. 2007). The dependent measures were the assessments that each student was given throughout their time in school. In the 10th grade students are given the Wisconsin Knowledge and Concepts Examination (hereafter WKCE). In this examination the students are assessed on reading, language arts, math, science, and social studies. The students were also assessed with the ACT standardized test. This assessment focus’ on college bound students and the areas of academics that are tested are English, math, reading and science reasoning. The last dependent measure the researchers looked at was the students cumulative GPA (Dohrmann et al, 2007). The results of this study found that attending a Montessori school the student had a significant positive outcome in regards to math and science. Also, children who attended a Montessori school outperformed children who attended a traditional school in the math and science subjects. The study found that there is no significant differences between Montessori and Non-Montessori students in relation to their GPA, or standardized test in the subjects of English and Social studies. In conclusion to this article, the hypotheses that was tested and is supported is that Montessori students tend to have better academic outcomes than those who did not attend a Montessori school (Dohrmann et al, 2012). Academics are important, but doesn’t one need to be better-rounded? Another area of research that was studied was creative giftedness. Creative giftedness in a Montessori setting versus other educational philosophies is what will be looked at next. According to a study that was done in 2013 (Besancon, Lubart & Barbot, 2013), creativity is a valuable ability that plays a part in not only personal development but societal development as well. The impact a school setting has on a person and their creative drive, can be negative or positive. Besancon, Lubart and Barbot (2013), wanted to know how much creativity comes from the type of school setting we attend. Besancon, Lubart, & Barbot hypothesized that the Montessori school would favor creativity more than the traditional school. It was also looked at the extent to which expected pedagogical effect may vary based on the childrens grade level, and gender. It was a longitudinal study over the span of two years. This study was conducted in Paris, France in a Montessori school as well as a traditional school. The researchers gathered eighty students, forty from each school setting along with ten professors from a university that would be the judges over the next few years. The test design of this study was the test-retest design. This means the students were tested on several levels and then retested again after one year had gone by. The researchers measured the student’s creativity on several different levels. They looked at the type of task given. As well as the domain of expression. The two types of tasks given were divergent versus integrative.
A divergent task is an exploratory thinking task, out-of-the-box kind of thinking. Divergent thinking task in this study was for the children to come up with novel and original ideas. The two task that the students were given was toy improvement and parallel lines. In the toy improvement they researchers asked the students to make a stuffed elephant more entertaining, they children had three minutes to tell them what they would do. In the parallel lines task, the children needed to produce as many drawings as possible from a pair of parallel lines, the students we allowed ten minutes to work on this (Besancon et al., 2013). Integrative thinking task is using everything you have to figure something out. Meaning you use your reason and intellect, as well as intuition and imagination. This allows one to do the best they can. To apply this to Besancon, Lubart and Barbot study they asked the children to invent a story as well as to invent a drawing. When asked to invent a story the students were given a title and needed to come up with as story and make it as original as they could. In the task to invent a drawing the children were given a sheet of paper with six shapes on it. The children needed to use all six shapes. The researchers looked at the domain of expression in additional to the type of task that was given. Verbal and figural domains were looked at with each child. The results of this two year study confirmed that the type is school you attend has an effect on your level of creativity. According to the research there is a clear tendency for Montessori students to score higher and to be more creatively gifted (Besancon, Lubart, & Barbot, 2013).
In a similar study conducted by two of the researchers from the previous study on creativity Besancon and Lubart (2008), examined the impact of creativity and the learning environment that the children are in. It has been documented that the main goals of educational systems is to transmit knowledge, rigorous working habits and societal values in a person. In a traditional learning environment there isn 't much time or room for creativity. Besancon and Lubart (2008) hypothesized that children schooled in alternative pedagogies; including Montessori and Freinet versus traditional pedagogy, would have greater creative performance. The second hypotheses they conducted was to find if there was a positive influence on alternative pedagogy and creative development from one year to the second year. Like in the previous study I reviewed on creativity this study too looked at two types of task; Divergent and integrative, and there were two domains; verbal and graphic expressive. In order to get the most information this study was a longitudinal study that spanned over two years.
There was 211 children who participated in this study. The first year the children were in 1st-4th grade and the second study the children were in 2nd-5th grade. The 211 students were each given a divergent thinking task. This task included asking the children to talk about the uses of a cardboard box. They were also asked what improvements they could make to a stuff animal. Lastly they were asked to draw a figure of any kind using the parallel lines that were given on each sheet of paper. For the integrative task the children were asked to invent a story from a title that the researchers came up with (same title was given to each student). The student also had to invent a drawing from six different figures, using them all.
This study was similar in a lot of ways to the study conducted by Besancon and Lubart in 2013. However, in this study from 2008 there was found to be a significant difference in gender and creativity; girls performed better than boys.
In the end Besancon and Lubart concluded that children performed better creatively in an alternative educational setting, particularly children in a Montessori school then in a traditional school. To summarize the second hypothesis, which looked at the positive influence on creative development from 1 year to the 2nd year. They revealed that Montessori students increased in creativity in all task that were given. Although they examined another alternative educational system ( Freinet), they did not observe an increase in creativity in the Freinet education from the 1st year to the second year. In the end it was found that there is a relationship between a child 's learning environment and their creativity.
In another similar study in 2012 Rose, Jolley & Charman, examined if three different educational approaches effects children 's creativity. However different from the Besancon et al 2008 study, and Besancon et al 2013 study; Rose, Jolley & Charman set out to discover if children 's creativity in particular their drawing ability is effected based on the type of school they attend.
Drawing is something that when done, awakes more then just your creative juices. Drawing has benefits that helps children appreciate art, and gives children an outlet to express themselves ( Rose, et al 2012).
Drawing and how one comes to draw a certain way is influenced on where you live and grow up. This study looked at three different types of educational systems; English, Steiner and Montessori. In the English national curriculum school, art has been included in there school since their reform act in 1988. There are four stages, and children can move up to the next stage when the next school year comes as well as their age. Within the first two stages students need to do a lot of observational drawings. Observing according to the National Curriculum for Art and Design there needs to be a balance between drawing from observation and allowing children to be expressive and creative in their drawings (Rose, Jolley & Charman, 2012).
Different from the English National Curriculum, Steiner schools encourage imaginative play. They believe that children need to be educated wholly; mind, body and spirit. Steiner schools are also known as Waldorf schools. The children in a Steiner school setting have the freedom to draw from the narrative of the teacher or from their own mind. It is not until children are between six and seven years old that children begin to be formally taught about art, however around age 12 is when artistic forms and creative thinking and a more richer understanding of drawing is really taught to the children. Steiner believed that the purpose of art is not to achieve high artistic merit but to understand and know the path that gets you there (Rose et al, 2012). This is why the English curriculum is so different from Steiner 's art curriculum.
Montessori similar in some ways to the Steiner curriculum, children are "free" to learn as they see fit. However different from the English curriculum and the Steiner curriculum the Montessori curriculum is based on real-life and practical life skills. Like the English curriculum Montessori children are encouraged to observer before they work. This observation time allows children to gain insight to what they may do. However art martials and work is available for children if they so choose to work with it.
In previous studies there is evidence that supports that Steiner children overall outperform Montessori and National curriculum students in their ability to creatively draw. With that in mind this study conducted by Rose, Jolley and Charman (2012), hypothesized that Steiner children would produce expressive drawings of higher quality, using formal properties more expressively and depicting more items then National curriculum students. As well as a hypotheses that stated Montessori students would have the weakest expressive drawings of the three educational approaches. However, because Montessori is reality-based it was said that Montessori children would outperform both Steiner and National curriculum students when it comes to the ability to draw realistic pictures.
135 children participated in this study, 45 students from each school type (Montessori, Steiner and National). Of those 45 in each group, they were then split up by age into 3 more groups, 5 year olds, 7 year olds and 9 year olds.
The children were provided with 6 wooden mannequins, set up on a table in the front of the room. The mannequins had faces and one was set up in a running position. Children were given 30 minutes total with 10 minutes dedicated to each drawing task.
The task given to the students were; expressive drawing, and realistic drawing. For the expressive drawing task; students were asked to draw a happy picture, a sad picture, and an angry picture. The students were instructed that it could be of anything they would like, but it had to fill the emotion that was being asked. In the realistic task drawing, the students were presented with the mannequin, the mannequin that was running to be precise. The children were asked to draw exactly what they see. After the children had completed the mannequin task the children were asked to draw a picture of a house as realistically as they could. Lastly, the students were then asked to draw anything they wanted as long as it was realistic and life-like.
Each drawing was scored by judges who were blind to who drew the picture. The judges did have background education in art of some kind. The expressive drawings were measured on five aspects; line, color, composition, quality, and the number of expressive subjects depicted. To get the results of the expressive drawings researchers used a three-way ANOVA. The results of the representational drawings researchers used a two-way ANOVA. This is different from the two studies described above, they used MANOVAs to get their results.
In the end Rose, Jolley and Charman (2012), found that overall Steiner students outperformed both Montessori and National curriculum students in each task given.
Even though it was hypothesized that Montessori students would perform better drawing realistic pictures, this turned out not to be the case. It was revealed that of all age group; 5, 7 and 9 year olds, the nine year olds did better overall on every task. At age five most of the children were not exposed enough to formal art and were just allowed to freely draw. The Steiner students outperformed the other two educational approaches when it dealt with expressive drawing, but then researchers found there was not a big enough significant difference in the ability to draw representationally related to one type of educational approach. Overall, it was concluded that Steiner 's education approach seems to be more conducive to fostering the ability to draw more expressively (Rose et al., 2012).
We have reviewed the academic outcomes of different educational approaches as well as the creative outcomes of three different educational curricula, we are now going to review the behavioral outcomes depending on what kind of educational system one attends. Like the studies reviewed above, these studies will too have Montessori as one of the educational
approaches.
In this first study conducted by Hazel and Allen in 2013, they looked at how depending on the pedagogy your school is attached to, how this can help you create a more inclusive community. They examined three different types of schools; Core knowledge, Experiential and Montessori. Each school even though they are different they have three essential building blocks of their pedagogy. These building blocks are; academic education, affective education, and individualization of instruction.
In this study (Hazel & Allen, 2013) they wanted to know how pedagogically driven schools can become inclusive communities. There was no hypothesis related to this study. There were 35 participants in this study, each school’s principal, mental health provider, fourth grade teachers and all fourth graders were a part of the study.
The students were grouped together in a room and asked to draw a picture of a safe school and an unsafe school. They were also asked a series of questions; for example, "when someone is a bully or is bullied, what happens?”
The findings in the study conducted by Hazel and Allen (2012), was that in order to have inclusive communities and have certain behavioral outcomes each school emerged with three themes. The themes are: culture, structure and responsibility and expectations. They discovered that each school engaged in activities that helped the communities to become a cohesive unit. When inclusive communities are formed not only does staff and parents benefit, but most importantly the students benefit. There is positive behavioral outcomes when children feel safe and engaged in school and the community that comes along with it. There is a feeling of positive belonging when inclusive communities are established (Hazel & Allen, 2012).
How does one find motivation? Is it a cohesive inclusive community, the type of education you receive, or your parents? In this next study Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2005) compared a Montessori school and a traditional school and the student’s motivational outcomes.
It has been documented that as children transition from elementary to adolescents they begin to doubt what they can do; grades, finding friends, and abilities to succeed. With these doubts in the adolescents mind the next concern would be their motivation. Research shows that there is a drop in motivation; specifically intrinsic motivation as students enter middle school. The study (Rathunde et al, 2005), examine what happens to that motivation within two different educational settings. There are two benefits when comparing a Montessori school and a traditional school student’s motivational outcome. The first benefit is there has not been a lot of research done, so this study provided useful information. The other benefit is that one can learn about how the student context fit in middle school can affect the quality of the student experience.
The Montessori philosophy has worked hard and has kept the idea of creating an environment for intrinsic motivation as important. Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2005) discuss goal theory; students ' goals mediate the quality of their engagement at school. With this theory in mind there are two different kinds of goals looked at, task and performance. With task focused students it has been discovered that students are more intrinsically motivated. These types of students seek challenging task and crave novelty. Performance focused students as you can imagine are extrinsically motivated. These types of students are more worried about what others think or say. This is said to disrupt their learning ability, because it takes away from the chance of taking a risk or the effort they may or may not put forth.
This study chose five Montessori schools in the United State. There were 150 6th-8th grade students who participated in the study. For the traditional school, 6 schools were chosen with 160 6th-8th grade students. The demographics were very similar, including socioeconomic status, gender of all the students, family characteristics, and ethnic background. Each student who participated was given a watch to wear that would prompt them eight times a day between the hours of 7:30 in the morning to 10:30 at night, and when were prompted by the watch the participants needed to then fill out a response form. This went on for seven consecutive days, at the end of that week the students were asked to return the filled out forms and watch in an envelope. The researchers looked at five Experience Sampling Method (ESM): affect, potency, salience, intrinsic motivation and flow. The researchers describe flow as a theory in the optimal experience theory. Flow is " intrinsically motivated, task-focused state characterized by full concentration, a change in awareness of time, feelings of clarity and control, a merging of action and awareness, and a lack of self-skills in an activity and the challenges afforded by the environment" (Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi, 2005).
The results of Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi (2005) study made it clear that when Montessori students are engaged in academic work it was found that there was higher affect, potency, intrinsic motivation and flow. In contrast traditional school students had higher salience where Montessori students did not. However over all the Montessori students reported experiences being far more positive than those of the traditional school students.
As the previous study did, this study from 2013 by Byun, Blair and Pate looked into a student’s educational environment and how it effects their behavior. In this particular study the researchers suspected that depending on whether you attended a Montessori School or a traditional preschool ones level of sedentary behavior would differ. They used a cross-sectional study design. They included eight traditional preschools and nine Montessori preschools. All the participants we children at age 4.
The children wore an ActiGraph accelerometer to measure their movement throughout the day. This accelerometer was wore on the child 's right hip. Children were asked to wear this for at least four hours a day. The accelerometer data was taken and the results of the data from there was that overall Montessori preschool children spent less time in the sedentary behavior then children in a traditional preschool. It was discovered that depending on your school type and whether you were a boy or girl would affect how sedentary one was. As well as race, and your parents education level. It was found to be interesting that Montessori preschool children we more mobile throughout the day and that the other preschool children were not. This observation was true even as the child went home. Montessori children were measured as being more active at home than traditional schooled children. These findings would suggest that the policies and environment have an influence on how sedentary one is.
Critique With the studies discussed previously keep in mind that each study brought a very important aspect to light. That aspect could be a strength such as the length of the study or that aspect could be a weakness, such as internal validity. In the next several paragraphs I am going to shed light on the strengths and weakness’ of this body of work.
Strength
One area of strength in this body of research if the inter-rater reliability. Inter-rater reliability is where each person would judge, examine or ask the participants questions, would then come together and report their findings. This helps strengthen the validity of the research being conducted. Another strength in these studies is longitudinal design, as well as low attrition as a benefit of the design. In almost every study that was researched there was the same outcome. The researchers examined each participant over a period of time and then let time pass and came back to examine the participants.
Weakness
With strength must come weakness. The first weakness I want to point out is internal validity. According to Besancon and Lubart (2008), being creative and the level of your creativity reflects what prior knowledge you have of creativeness. It is not that one of more creative per se, but that one may have had all six interrelated resources, such as: intelligence, knowledge, motivation, personality, individual style and environment context. Different results imply different education (Besancon & Lubart, 2008). External validity, in regards to ethnicity. Most of the research above used participants that were mostly Caucasian. The weakness is that there needs to be a more diverse sample of participants. This would allow insight into whether it is just Caucasians that benefit from Montessori education of do minorities as well. Also, do minorities not attend Montessori schools because the finical demands are not in their budget.
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