PROTOCOL - Montessori Education for Improving Academic and Social/Behavioral Outcomes for Elementary Students

At a Glance

Metadata	Details
Publication Date	2016-01-01
Journal	Campbell Systematic Reviews
Authors	Justus Randolph, Anaya Bryson, Lakshmi Menon, Stephen Michaels, Debra Leigh Walls Rosenstein
Citations	5

Abstract

In the early 1900s, Maria Montessori characterized schools as places of “enforced mobility, inadequate light, [poor] ventilation, and rote methodology” (Turner, 1992, p. 18). Given this confined topography of the educational landscape, Montessori developed a holistic approach to schooling—one that was meant to liberate children via a developmentally appropriate approach (Montessori, 1964). This rounded approach involved an intentional interest in improving the quality of students’ lives. The holistic approach, which included “opportunities to solve problems on their own, question assumptions, and reason their way to solutions” (Diamond, 2010, p. 781), was facilitated through a curriculum and environment that encouraged engagement and the cultivation of students’ innate academic and social abilities. The Montessori method is an attractive alternative to traditional education for many parents in the United States of America and abroad (Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006). There are between 4,000 and 5,000 private Montessori programs in the United States, and thousands more internationally (American Montessori Society, 2016; Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006, North American Montessori Teachers’ Association, 2016; USA Montessori Census, 2016). Apart from private Montessori schools, there are at least 500 public Montessori schools throughout the United States (National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector, 2016). Numerous qualitative narratives espousing the benefits of Montessori education to enhance executive functioning (e.g., working memory, self-regulation, and reasoning abilities), academic achievement, and social competence are readily available. Despite the existence of these narratives, hardly any empirical consensus regarding the actual utility of the Montessori approach can be found (Diamond, 2010). The purpose of this review is to investigate, via a quantitative meta-analysis, the hypothesis that the Montessori method is at least as effective as traditional education in affecting academic and social outcomes for children. The proposed meta-analysis is completed with the intention to help the public, as well as the research community, make more informed and empirically sound decisions regarding Montessori education by collecting, codifying, synthesizing, and disseminating the current empirical research. To appropriately communicate the purpose, meaning, and utility of Montessori education across a variety of sociocultural and economic contexts, the topic of Montessori education must be examined through the lenses of the meaningful subdomains into which it subsists. These domains include the following three frameworks: (a) the historical background, (b) a conceptual analysis of how schools most often employ the intervention, and (c) the theoretical underpinnings of Montessori as a philosophy and approach to curriculum. According to the American Montessori Society (AMS, 2016) and Turner (1992), the Montessori method is not so much a “curricular model” as it is a “philosophy” (AMS, 2016; Turner, 1992). The Montessori model is based on the interactive dynamics of three major components—the child, the adult/teacher, and the environment (see Figure 1), as well as a philosophy that views children as naturally inquisitive and capable initiators who are eager to understand the world around them. The Montessori triangle. To nurture and optimize children’s understanding of their environment and the world, Montessori believed that the physical environment must be an environment in which learners could be supported and could feel accepted as they progressed through their innately unique processes of learning. According to Diamond (2010), the absence of this positive classroom environment minimizes children’s sense of safety, security, and acceptance, which significantly hinders the likelihood that the child will feel confident enough to take risks to learn. To accomplish this goal, Montessori designed the curriculum, and the learning environment in which the curriculum is situated. It was based on the idea that students be granted doable, or developmentally appropriate opportunities, or “invitations” to support their natural curiosity through movement in an organized environment (Diamond, 2010; Ervin, Wash, & Mecca, 2010; Faulkenberry & Faulkenberry, 2006; Ultanir, 2012). These eight principles of Montessori education are manifested in the physical and social environment of the Montessori classroom. For example, concerning collaborative and cooperative arrangements conducive to learning, older students often work with younger children to learn from what the older children have already mastered. This multi-age grouping (versus the strict age grouping seen in U.S. schools) inspires the younger children through intrinsic motivation (i.e., desire to understand and engage), to imitate, assimilate, and accommodate the academic or social skill authentically and with mastery (Turner, 1992). Nunnery, Chappell, and Arnold (2011) provided yet another example of how these eight principles are evident in the Montessori classroom. When entering a Montessori classroom, it is physically and audibly apparent that Montessori teachers bolster an awareness of situated problems within daily life such as housekeeping, art, cooking, gardening, or experimenting. Montessori teachers also facilitate student-driven creative approaches to solving these problems as well as determining the lessons that can be gleaned from them (Nunnery, Chappell, & Arnold, 2011; Ultanir, 2006). It is evident from the pedagogical examples provided here and in the research literature regarding the characteristics of the Montessori classroom that the geographical location is immaterial. The core of the Montessori educational environment is built around the three interdependent components of: (a) the teacher, (b) the child, and the (c) educational environment (see Figure 1). Montessori teacher training and accreditation programs (e.g., Association Montessori International, American Montessori Society, Pan American Montessori Society, International Association of Progressive Montessori, etc.) vary internationally. Therefore, there will be slight variations in the Montessorian curricula in regards to the physical setting, type of resources available, and the pedagogical practices employed. The following section works to delineate the nuanced variations cited within the research literature. Before disaggregating the differences amongst Montessori programs, the reader should be aware of the fundamental commonalities often found within Montessori classrooms. A characteristic feature of all Montessori programs is the consistent age groupings of Montessori attendees—specifically for primary children. According to Lillard (2013): Montessori classrooms ideally contain age groupings spanning three years: Infant to three years old, three to six, six to nine, and nine to twelve. [Age-appropriate] working materials, kept on shelves and freely available to the children, are organized into topics such as language, math, and so on. The materials are designed so that if children make mistakes, they can see and correct them without close teacher supervision or intervention. Areas of the curriculum are tightly interconnected (Lillard, 2013, p. 159). For children between the ages of three to six, the primary classroom includes five areas of self-directed exploration. These include the: (a) cultural area, which includes geography, history, the sciences, and an exploration of human activity (e.g., music, dress, nutrition, etc.); (b) “practical-life materials, mirroring the activities of the culture, such as care of self and the environment; (c) manners and social behavior; (d) sensorial materials, reflecting the qualities and facts about the world; and (e) mathematics and language materials” (Lillard, 1996, p. 34). The materials are arranged attractively and sequenced from simplest to most complex, and the children are encouraged to engage in critical exploratory work within these five domains. This inherent order in the arrangement of the environment aids the children in better understanding the myriad impressions that they receive through their senses, and in the development of a rich vocabulary for describing these experiences. For children between the ages of six to nine and nine to twelve, Montessori classroom and process of education is similar for both the upper and lower elementary groups, with the main difference being the maturity of the latter group in how they interact with the environment (Lillard, 1996). Lillard noted that “nine- to twelve-year-olds go into much further detail in their studies and their research, and their ‘going out’ activities reflect a greater depth of knowledge and intensity of interests” (p. 115). Montessori asserted another commonality between these age groups: children between the ages of 6 to 12 years enjoyed a period of physiological and psychological stability marked by a dramatic expansion of the imagination (Montessori, 1912/1964). Lillard describes the characteristics of the upper and lower elementary classrooms below: There are special materials displayed on shelves in an organized manner by sections: mathematics, geography, science, art, music language and so forth… . The elementary classroom can best be described as a workplace. Although the noise level may be somewhat higher than in the primary classroom, the orderliness of the environment leads to concentration and careful effort (pp. 78-79). In addition to these characteristic features of Montessori programs which maintains the historical vision of the Montessori method, many Montessori programs follow some adaptation of Turner’s (1992) learning cycle model for Montessori education. Although the model is complex and rooted in the triangular historical model of the child, the adult, and the environment, the learning cycle model is fundamentally embedded in and provides a springboard for how experiential learning can occur (Turner, 1992; see Figure 2). The natural learning cycle. According to Turner (1992), the natural learning cycle includes three phases. The first of which requires that the student observes a demonstration given by a teacher or another student. Next, the student is given an opportunity to participate in the demonstration, and then allowed to practice. The amount of time needed to assimilate the relationship between the stimulus and phenomenon varies per child, but once it occurs, it is during this period that the student experiences a moment of conscientization, or “Eureka moment.” Following this moment of revelation comes the student’s ability to perform effectively. It is when the student can perform effectively—and can pass on this knowledge to other students (through demonstration)—that the cycle of learning is considered concluded. Variations in the perceived intention, and therefore the methodology of Maria Montessori’s writings, have probably been the reasons for the previously mentioned inconsistencies across programs and even accrediting agencies. These variations in methodology and the range of empirically purported benefits given these variations have probably yielded conflicting and inconclusive results regarding the efficacy of Montessori education within the research literature. Although empirically challenging, the variation in approaches to Montessori education is what ties the Montessori method to constructivist theories of learning. In the Tylerian approach to pedagogy, the teacher is the bestower of knowledge whereas, in the Montessorian approach, the student serves as the principal constructor of knowledge (Loeffler, 1992). Both Montessori and constructivism posit that truth and knowledge are a working hypothesis, not imposed from outside people. Both approaches are based on people’s beliefs and experiences in situations, and hold that educational curricula must address the cognitive, emotional, social, and physical needs of the whole child (Diamond, 2010; Hyslop-Margison & Strobel, 2008; Loeffler, 1992; Schunk, 2012). Under both Montessori and constructivist methods, the role of the teacher is to observe carefully and facilitate students’ academic, social, and affective development in realistic, complex, and relevant learning environments by focusing on the needs of the “whole” child (Diamond, 2010; Driscoll, 2005). Similar to the historical conceptions of Montessori education, constructivism does not subsist as a theory, but as an epistemology, or way of believing about the nature of knowing (Schunk, 2012; Wu & Tsai, 2005). Each of these contentions aligns with one or more of the eight principles of Montessori education (e.g., collaboration and cooperative learning, context-dependent situations, intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation). The contentions correspond to the Montessori triangle which conceptualizes how interactions between the child, the adult, and the environment facilitate learning. It also provides an approach to nurturing and optimizing the natural learning cycle by allowing students to communicate their observations and moments of conscientization during the learning process. In addition to comparisons amenable to Vygotsky’s social constructivism is Piaget’s theory of cognitive constructivism. According to this theory, cognitive development develops prior to our ability to socially interact as well as construct and does so through four domains: (a) biological maturation, (b) experience with the physical environment, (c) experience with the social environment, and through these three domains, mature to the fourth—equilibration (Piaget, 1969; Schunk, 2012). Equilibration refers to the innate desire for one’s internal and external environments to balance (Piaget, 1969). According to Piaget, this inner desire to create a cognitive correspondence with the external world is what drives the ability and the interest to assimilate and/or accommodate new information. It is this interest in and ability to assimilate and accommodate cognitive disagreement that most closely mirrors the purpose of the Montessori principles (e.g., intrinsic motivation, environmental choice and interest, and cognition through movement) and the cycle of learning (e.g., Turner’s Eureka moment). It is also this conception of cognitive constructivism that provides the theoretical rationale behind teachers’ introducing realistic, complex, and relevant cognitive conflicts for students to creatively problem solve. However, despite these fundamental parallels between the nature and purpose of learning, as similarly defined by the Montessori curriculum and theories related to constructivism, there exist some differences. One key example exists between the role of play in the classroom. Montessori vehemently disagreed that the nature and orientation of students’ self-directed learning coincided with Piaget’s theory of meaningful play (Lillard, 2013). Montessori characterized the activities that children took up during and while in their learning environment as: “work.” Cognitive constructivists such as Piaget would argue that not only is this self-direction a type of play, but also that play also serves a prerequisite to higher levels of executive functioning as the child matures (Piaget, 1969). Brooks and Brooks (1999) offered yet another basis of disagreement between Montessorians and constructivists, via their description of the dynamics of the constructivist classroom. The constructivist classroom is one in which the teacher is principally concerned with making students’ life experiences relate to predetermined standards and learning objectives. In a Montessori classroom, the teacher serves as the conscientious facilitator of knowledge as the destination of the learning cycle is not predetermined. The constructivist approach to the learning cycle requires that teachers “pose problems of emerging relevance”; the Montessorian method allows problems to unfold authentically (Brooks & Brooks, 1999, ix). Constructivism traditionally exists within the behaviorally oriented, or traditional classroom, in which personal modifications to the theory abound. As such, the theory of constructivism resides in classrooms as an instructional approach as opposed to a way of learning and knowing. Though, while there are some differences between the perspectives and aims of Montessori and constructivist methods, the authors believe these differences to be cursory and not fundamentally incongruous. Moreover, due to the epistemological and axiological foundations of both the Montessori approach and constructivist ideology, in conjunction with the practical pedagogical applications of constructivist theories, the authors contend that the Montessori method, and therefore, Montessori education, is most closely aligned to and underpinned by the constructivist learning theory. As previously described in the section elucidating the paucity of Montessori meta-analyses, there have been several narrative reviews related to the quality of Montessori education for academic and social outcomes for primary children (e.g., Boehnlein, 1988, 2001; Jones, 2005; Murray, 2010). However, to our knowledge, there has not been a recent and comprehensive meta-analysis of Montessori education or a meta-analysis done with the intention of describing the purported effects of Montessori education on these same outcomes. Similar to the other reviews, the Boehnlein reviews, while thorough, were narrative reviews without a systematic search strategy or quantitative synthesis. In summary, the current narrative reviews of Montessori education lack the systematic quality and rigor afforded by a Campbell Collaboration review. The authors have located one previous high-quality meta-analysis of Montessori research by Borman, Hewes, Overman, and Brown (2003). In their review, Borman et al., (2003), reviewed nearly 30 comprehensive school reform programs and concluded that Montessori education serves as a reform with “promising evidence of effectiveness,” d = 0.27 [95% CIs 0.19, 0.35], p < .01. Other school reform programs that were also classified as having promising evidence of effectiveness were America’s Choice, Atlas Communities, Paideia, and the Learning Network. However, the Borman review only provided outcomes based on national standardized tests of academic achievement. The proposed meta-analysis will help the public and the research community understand the qualitative and quantitative outcomes of Montessori education. By our collecting, codifying, and synthesizing the empirical research on Montessori education parents, teachers, and policymakers will better able to make informed decisions about Montessori methods and programs. The primary objective of this review will be to examine the effectiveness of Montessori education in improving academic and behavioral outcomes compared to traditional public school education. The secondary outcomes will be to determine what factors moderate the reported effectiveness of Montessori education. Possible moderators include the age of students, setting, type of teacher training, student characteristics, study quality, study design, among others. We will include studies that used group experimental and/or quasi-experimental research designs. 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Original Source

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/cl2.152

References

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