Montessori theory of education was initially developed from within the realm of developmental psychology. Maria Montessori (an Italian physician and educator and the founder of Montessori method) started developing her theory in the last decade of the 19th century and culminated it with the establishment of her one-room school where she carried on different experimentations and observations of young kids learning. The fruits of her hard work soon reached the States and the rest of world making her theory one of the widely applied methods in education. According to Wikipedia, Montessori's theory has seven essential elements:
- Mixed age classrooms, with classrooms for children ages 21⁄2 or 3 to 6 years old by far the most common
- Student choice of activity from within a prescribed range of options
- Uninterrupted blocks of work time, ideally three hours
- A constructivist or "discovery" model, where students learn concepts from working with materials, rather than by direct instruction
- Specialized educational materials developed by Montessori and her collaborators
- Freedom of movement within the classroom
- A trained Montessori teacher
Below is a very good graphic that provides key insights about Montessori education to help those of you knew to this theory learn more about it. This visual is created by Naudain Academy which is also a Montessori school.
No comments:
Post a Comment