Maria Montessori
Montessori education theory
Self-construction, liberty, and spontaneous activity
Montessori education is fundamentally a model of human development, and an educational approach based on that model. The model has two basic elements. First, children and developing adults engage in psychological self-construction by means of interaction with their environments. Second, children, especially under the age of six, have an innate path of psychological development. Based on her observations, Montessori believed that children at liberty to choose and act freely within an environment prepared according to her model would act spontaneously for optimal development.Human tendencies
Montessori saw universal, innate characteristics in human psychology which her son and collaborator Mario Montessori identified as "human tendencies" in 1957. There is some debate about the exact list, but the following are clearly identified:- Self-preservation
- Orientation to the environment
- Order
- Exploration
- Communication
- Work, also described as "purposeful activity"
- Manipulation of the environment
- Exactness
- Repetition
- Abstraction
- Self-perfection
- The "mathematical mind"
Prepared environment
Montessori's education method called for free activity within a "prepared environment", meaning an educational environment tailored to basic human characteristics and to the specific characteristics of children at different ages. The function of the environment is to allow the child to develop independence in all areas according to his or her inner psychological directives. In addition to offering access to the Montessori materials appropriate to the age of the children, the environment should exhibit the following characteristics:- Construction in proportion to the child and his/her needs
- Beauty and harmony, cleanliness of environment
- Order
- An arrangement that facilitates movement and activity
- Limitation of materials, so that only material that supports the child's development is included
Planes of development
Montessori observed four distinct periods, or "planes", in human development, extending from birth to six years, from six to twelve, from twelve to eighteen, and from eighteen to twenty-four. She saw different characteristics, learning modes, and developmental imperatives active in each of these planes, and called for educational approaches specific to each period.First plane
The first plane extends from birth to around six years of age. During this period, Montessori observed that the child undergoes striking physical and psychological development. The first plane child is seen as a concrete, sensorial explorer and learner engaged in the developmental work of psychological self-construction and building functional independence. Montessori introduced several concepts to explain this work, including the absorbent mind, sensitive periods, and normalization.Absorbent mind: Montessori described the young child's behavior of effortlessly assimilating the sensorial stimuli of his or her environment, including information from the senses, language, culture, and the development of concepts with the term "absorbent mind". She believed that this is a power unique to the first plane, and that it fades as the child approached age six.
Sensitive periods: Montessori also observed periods of special sensitivity to particular stimuli during this time which she called the "sensitive periods". In Montessori education, the classroom environment responds to these periods by making appropriate materials and activities available while the periods are active in the young child. She identified the following periods and their durations:
- Acquisition of language—from birth to around six years old
- Order—from around one to three years old
- Sensory refinement—from birth to around four years old
- Interest in small objects—from around 18 months to three years old
- Social behavior—from around two and a half to four years old
Second plane
The second plane of development extends from around six to twelve years old. During this period, Montessori observed physical and psychological changes in children, and developed a classroom environment, lessons, and materials, to respond to these new characteristics. Physically, she observed the loss of baby teeth and the lengthening of the legs and torso at the beginning of the plane, and a period of uniform growth following. Psychologically, she observed the "herd instinct", or the tendency to work and socialize in groups, as well as the powers of reason and imagination. Developmentally, she believed the work of the second plane child is the formation of intellectual independence, of moral sense, and of social organization.Third plane
The third plane of development extends from around twelve to around eighteen years of age, encompassing the period of adolescence. Montessori characterized the third plane by the physical changes of puberty and adolescence, but also psychological changes. She emphasized the psychological instability and difficulties in concentration of this age, as well as the creative tendencies and the development of "a sense of justice and a sense of personal dignity." She used the term "valorization" to describe the adolescents' drive for an externally derived evaluation of their worth. Developmentally, Montessori believed that the work of the third plane child is the construction of the adult self in society.Fourth plane
The fourth plane of development extends from around eighteen years to around twenty-four years old. Montessori wrote comparatively little about this period and did not develop an educational program for the age. She envisioned young adults prepared by their experiences in Montessori education at the lower levels ready to fully embrace the study of culture and the sciences in order to influence and lead civilization. She believed that economic independence in the form of work for money was critical for this age, and felt that an arbitrary limit to the number of years in university level study was unnecessary, as the study of culture could go on throughout a person's life.Education and peace
As Montessori developed her theory and practice, she came to believe that education had a role to play in the development of world peace. She felt that children allowed to develop according to their inner laws of development would give rise to a more peaceful and enduring civilization. From the 1930s to the end of her life, she gave a number of lectures and addresses on the subject, saying in 1936.Jean Piaget
Piaget has been labeled an interactionist as well as a constructivist. His interest in cognitive development came from his training in the natural sciences and his interest in epistemology. Piaget was very interested in knowledge and how children come to know their world. He developed his cognitive theory by actually observing children (some of whom were his own children). Using a standard question or set of questions as a starting point, he followed the child's train of thought and allowed the questioning to be flexible. Piaget believed that children's spontaneous comments provided valuable clues to understanding their thinking. He was not interested in a right or wrong answer, but rather what forms of logic and reasoning the child used (Singer, 1978). After many years of observation, Piaget concluded that intellectual development is the result of the interaction of hereditary and environmental factors. As the child develops and constantly interacts with the world around him, knowledge is invented and reinvented. His theory of intellectual development is strongly grounded in the biological sciences. He saw cognitive growth as an extension of biological growth and as being governed by the same laws and principles (London, 1988). He argued that intellectual development controlled every other aspect of development - emotional, social, and moral.
STAGES OF INTELLECTUAL DEVELOPMENT
Piaget may be best known for his stages of cognitive development. Piaget discovered that children think and reason differently at different periods in their lives. He believed that everyone passed through an invariant sequence of four qualitatively distinct stages. Invariant means that a person cannot skip stages or reorder them. Although every normal child passes through the stages in exactly the same order, there is some variability in the ages at which children attain each stage. The four stages are: sensorimotor - birth to 2 years; preoperational - 2 years to 7 years; concrete operational - 7 years to 11 years; and formal operational (abstract thinking) - 11 years and up. Each stage has major cognitive tasks which must be accomplished. In the sensorimotor stage, the mental structures are mainly concerned with the mastery of concrete objects. The mastery of symbols takes place in the preoperational stage. In the concrete stage, children learn mastery of classes, relations, and numbers and how to reason. The last stage deals with the mastery of thought (Evans, 1973).HOW CHILDREN LEARN
...we discovered that education is not something which the teacher does, but that it is a natural process which develops spontaneously in the human being. It is not acquired by listening to words, but in virtue of experiences in which the child acts on his environment. The teacher's task is not to talk, but to prepare and arrange a series of motives for cultural activity in a special environment made for the child. (Dr. Maria Montessori)A central component of Piaget's developmental theory of learning and thinking is that both involve the participation of the learner. Knowledge is not merely transmitted verbally but must be constructed and reconstructed by the learner. Piaget asserted that for a child to know and construct knowledge of the world, the child must act on objects and it is this action which provides knowledge of those objects (Sigel, 1977); the mind organizes reality and acts upon it. The learner must be active; he is not a vessel to be filled with facts. Piaget's approach to learning is a readiness approach. Readiness approaches in developmental psychology emphasize that children cannot learn something until maturation gives them certain prerequisites (Brainerd, 1978). The ability to learn any cognitive content is always related to their stage of intellectual development. Children who are at a certain stage cannot be taught the concepts of a higher stage.
Intellectual growth involves three fundamental processes: assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. Assimilation involves the incorporation of new events into preexisting cognitive structures. Accommodation means existing structures change to accommodate to the new information. This dual process, assimilation-accommodation, enables the child to form schema. Equilibration involves the person striking a balance between himself and the environment, between assimilation and accomodation. When a child experiences a new event, disequilibrium sets in until he is able to assimilate and accommodate the new information and thus attain equilibrium. There are many types of equilibrium between assimilation and accomodation that vary with the levels of development and the problems to be solved. For Piaget, equilibration is the major factor in explaining why some children advance more quickly in the development of logical intelligence than do others (Lavatelli, 40).
IMPLICATIONS FOR EDUCATION
A Piagetian-inspired curricula emphasizes a learner-centered educational philosophy. The teaching methods which most American school children are familiar with - teacher lectures, demonstrations, audio-visual presentations, teaching machines, and programmed instruction - do not fit in with Piaget's ideas on the acquisition of knowledge. Piaget espoused active discovery learning environments in our schools. Intelligence grows through the twin processes of assimilation and accomodation; therefore, experiences should be planned to allow opportunities for assimilation and accomodation. Children need to explore, to manipulate, to experiment, to question, and to search out answers for themselves - activity is essential. However, this does not mean that children should be allowed to do whatever they want. So what is the role of the teacher? Teachers should be able to assess the child's present cognitive level; their strengths and weaknesses. Instruction should be individualized as much as possible and children should have opportunities to communicate with one another, to argue and debate issues. He saw teachers as facilitators of knowledge - they are there to guide and stimulate the students. Allow children to make mistakes and learn from them. Learning is much more meaningful if the child is allowed to experiment on his own rather than listening to the teacher lecture. The teacher should present students with materials and situations and occasions that allow them to discover new learning. In his book To Understand Is to Invent Piaget said the basic principle of active methods can be expressed as follows: "to understand is to discover, or reconstruct by rediscovery, and such conditions must be complied with if in the future individuals are to be formed who are capable of production and creativity and not simply repetition" (p.20). In active learning, the teacher must have confidence in the child's ability to learn on his own.IMPLICATIONS FOR INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY
Laboratories, workshops and technologies that encourage interactivity such as multimedia, hypermedia and virtual reality fit in with Piagetian thought. Computer software that is strictly drill and practice does not fit in with an active discovery environment. Drill and memorization practice, often used in language schools, do not encourage creativity or discovery.Students not only can use multimedia to learn, but they can also use it to communicate their understanding of the subject to those around them. They can create what they learn by using an authoring tool such as Hypercard. Peer teaching is used as the students work together in the making of their projects. Students become active participants instead of passive sponges and the teacher truly takes on the role of facilitator as she gives them guidance in their creations. Hypermedia also allows the students to manipulate their environment as they follow the path(s) of their choice. Virtual reality has the potential to move education from its reliance on books to experential learning in naturalistic settings. For example, rather than reading about an event, the children can participate in the event with simulated persons and/or objects. These technologies supply the students with a learning environment that encourages children to initiate and complete their own activities.
Erikson's Theory of Psychosocial Development
What is Psychosocial Development?
Erik Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development is one of the best-known theories of personality in psychology. Much like Sigmund Freud, Erikson believed that personality develops in a series of stages. Unlike Freud’s theory of psychosexual stages, Erikson’s theory describes the impact of social experience across the whole lifespan.
Psychosocial Stage 1 - Trust vs. Mistrust
- The first stage of Erikson’s theory of psychosocial development occurs between birth and one year of age and is the most fundamental stage in life.2
- Because an infant is utterly dependent, the development of trust is based on the dependability and quality of the child’s caregivers.
- If a child successfully develops trust, he or she will feel safe and secure in the world. Caregivers who are inconsistent, emotionally unavailable, or rejecting contribute to feelings of mistrust in the children they care for. Failure to develop trust will result in fear and a belief that the world is inconsistent and unpredictable.
Psychosocial Stage 2 - Autonomy vs. Shame and Doubt
- The second stage of Erikson's theory of psychosocial development takes place during early childhood and is focused on children developing a greater sense of personal control.2
- Like Freud, Erikson believed that toilet training was a vital part of this process. However, Erikson's reasoning was quite different then that of Freud's. Erikson believe that learning to control one’s body functions leads to a feeling of control and a sense of independence.
- Other important events include gaining more control over food choices, toy preferences, and clothing selection.
- Children who successfully complete this stage feel secure and confident, while those who do not are left with a sense of inadequacy and self-doubt.
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