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Wheatley School of Montessori Education
Wheatley School was the only school I visited which follows a Montessori Education. Montessori’s theory and philosophy like other theories has positive and negative points. In my opinion, the main positive point is that each child can freely start working in his favorite area and choose material according to interests. This process of learning provides the students chances to work in different materials in advance depending on their individual competence without comparing them with the classmates’ capabilities and without following a specific theme or topic. As a result, the teacher follows each child’s work individually and focuses on his or her strengths or weaknesses. This learning concept will encourage students to be more responsible of completing their works. Chattin (1992) emphasized that this model develops the sense of satisfaction of completing their tasks following the right processes. This class holds child-centered atmosphere. Another positive point that the older students help the younger students and sometimes teach them the main strategies of certain lessons. For example, when I was observing the class, I watched a student model for a younger student strategies to identify the right cover for each bottle.
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The teacher must derive not only the capacity, but the desire, to observe natural phenomena. The teacher must understand and feel her position of observer: the activity must lie in the phenomenon.
Maria Montessori
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From what I learned through the Master Education program, I found Montessori and pragmatism have several aspects in common. First, the teacher’s role is transferring from guidance to facilitator. As Sadovnik, Cookson, and Semel, (2006) pointed out that “ In a progressive setting,….The teacher encourages, offers suggestions, questions, and helps plan and implement courses of study” (p. 174). The Montessori teacher’s role is observing students, moving between areas, and helping them in their lessons. In fact, the teacher introduces the lesson to the students individually or in small groups following certain structures and then gives them the opportunity to practice the lesson in their own. This process of learning is associated with the pragmatic approach as Sadvonik et al. (2006) indicated that pragmatism encourages people to find processes to attain the desired ends. As well, Montessori focuses on the steps or process of the work more than the result or the right answer. In contrast, traditional learning strategy emphasizes the right answers and sometimes it encourages students to memorize specific definitions and terms. Truly, Miller and Dyer (as cited in Chattin, 1992) indicated for us a significant fact that the “Montessori teachers spent less time correcting in appropriate behavior and disciplining than did teachers in traditional nursery school models” (p. 55). As shown, Miller and Dyer’s explanation demonstrates an important point that the Montessori teacher focus on the strategies more than correcting the result, because Montessori model encourages students to be self-correcting.
In addition to this similarity, I found the practical area in Montessori class illustrates the pragmatic concept in learning through experimentation. Sadvonik et al. (2006) expressed that curriculum in programmatic depends on investigate a particular subject matter to solve problems using academic and vocational disciplines skills. In deed, pouring, transferring, cleaning, and polishing are practical life exercises in order to encourage students to emulate adult’s activities and search for problem to solve it.
Although Montessori class has several positive learning features, it has also negative sides. First, the teacher looses the learning opportunity of gathering the whole class in one big circle and providing them a whole group activity like singing, discussing, and dancing. In fact, gathering the whole class in Montessori model only occurs under specific structures; for instance, usually gathering the whole class at the beginning of the day in order to indicate the students who are absent, to remind the students of finishing their works, and to determine each one’s schedule . Second, most of the work is done individually or in small groups, which affect the children socially. The unsocial children who prefer to work alone, they are indulged in solitary activity opportunity. Therefore, the Montessori philosophy reinforces this specific characteristic. Another negative point, I found from my experience, as a Montessori teacher, I did not have enough opportunities to produce creative materials for students. At the Montessori program, a certain material must follow specific structures in sizing and shaping. In fact, Montessori emphasizes specific academic materials, which have specific characteristics.
In conclusion, each philosophy and theory has positive and negative concepts for education from every educator’s perspective. I believe that any educator interested in a specific learning or teaching model, can implement the educational concepts and integrate other ideas. For example, if I want reinforce Montessori model, I will add an art area and integrate a gathering schedule twice a day for twenty minutes. In this gathering activity, I will allow students to express their feeling and share their works with others. My recommendations for parents is that they should gather more knowledge about the Montessori model and observe a Montessori class before enrolling their children because believing in specific model of learning is the first step to gain successful results.
References
Chattin, J. (1992). The Montessori controversy. Albany, NY: Delmar.
Sadovnik, A. R., Cookson, P. W., & Semel, S. F. (2006). Exploring education: An introduction to the foundations of education (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Allyn and Bacon.
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