Education and Schooling Influence on Educational Practices

specially prepared environment that featured methods, materials, and activities based on her observations of children.43 She had refined her theory by conducting extensive research on the work of Itard and Seguin, two early pioneers in special education. Contrary to the opinions of many conventional educators, Montessori believed that children possess an inner need to work at what interests them without the prodding of teachers and without being motivated by external rewards and punishments. Children, she found, are capable of sustained concentration and work. Enjoying structure and preferring work to play, they like to repeat actions until they master a given skill. In fact, children’s capacity for spontaneous learning leads them to begin reading and writing on their own initiative.

4-9b education and schooling

Montessori’s curriculum included three major types of activities and experiences: practical, sensory, and formal skills and studies. Children learned to perform such practical activities as setting the table, serving a meal, washing dishes, tying and buttoning clothing, and practicing basic manners and social etiquette. The practical life activities are designed so that children can do them independently of adults. Special exercises were used to develop sensory acuity and muscular and physical coordination. Children learned the alphabet by tracing movable sandpaper letters. They learned to write and then learned to read. They used colored rods of various sizes and cups to learn counting and measuring.

Montessori designed preplanned teaching (didactic) apparatus and materials to develop children’s practical, sensory, and formal skills. Examples included lacing and buttoning frames, identifying packets by smell, and tracing movable letters. Because they direct rather than control learning in the prepared environment, Montessori educators are called “directresses” rather than “teachers.” The directress prepares the

43Gerald Lee Gutek, ed., The Montessori Method: The Origins of an Educational Innovation: Including an Abridged and Annotated Edition of Maria Montessori’s The Montessori Method (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004). For a digital copy of the Montessori Method, access www.digital.library.upenn.edu.

TiMeLine

JEAn PiAgET

s ic & Ar ts Photo Library u M

Horst T appe/L eb r ech t

1870 1885

1896 Born in neuchatel, Switzerland 1925–1929 Professor Psychology, Sociology, and Philosophy of Science, University of neuchatel

1929–1939 Professor History of Scientific Thought, University of Geneva

1932–1971 Director, Institute of Educational Sciences, Geneva

1900

1924 Publishes Judgment and Reasoning in the Child

1915 1930

1921–1925 Research Director, Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Geneva 1936 Publishes Origins of Intelligence in the Child