Montessori Pedagogy
Knowledge Engineering and Robotics Lab
Legacy of Montessori
The pedagogical toolbox used by us and proposed as the preferred method for SE courses will be called “Montessori pedagogy”. The name is both scientifically correct and morally justified, though the theory and techniques included are due to the efforts of many a researcher and educator, some after the death of Maria Montessori, whose name we propose to honor in this designation.
Maria Montessori was the first not only to theorize about a better educational approach but to implement it and in a very scientific and engineering oriented way. And not only was she the first, she was the most successful in many ways. Today some 8000 schools all over the world are called Montessori school. She is to education what Einstein is to physics. Ask a member of general public to name a physicist and he will name Albert Einstein. Ask him about an educator and he will name Maria Montessori. What was and is so special about her?
Montessori was the first woman to become a physician in Italy in 1896. What was very important for the success of her method is that before studying medicine she was drawn to engineering and studied it for many years. She was great believer in scientific and engineering method, e.g. in what we came to know as feedback mechanism. In 1907 she opened her first Casa dei Bambini, in which she implemented her approach.
She believed in educational technology and created an engineered environment for her students in the center of which was the best educational tools the technology of the day allowed her to build. Today we call the method constructivism, but Maria Montessori even today, after more than a hundred years is unique in both her dedication and belief in the student and the engineering technological approach which made her so successful.
Her great success came when her students, who came from underprivileged families, and some were even considered retarded, demonstrated unbelievable success in their study. Most learned to read and write at four, and all of them at five, and they were winning mathematics competition against children in private schools. And all these achieved while it looked like they were left to do whatever they liked, instead of studying. The later superficial impression was but illusion of course.
The modus operandi of Montessori was to create such an environment that students had to study. But they saw it as play. The teachers went to great length to create special toys which were really educational tools. Today we call it gamification. Students weren’t left to they own devices. They were closely watched and not allowed to just waste time. But there was no strict schedule, lectures or mechanical memorizing. Montessori was the first and most ardent child rights advocate. Her students felt totally different in the House of Children compared to traditional school, as is evident from the next dialogs.
"Who has taught you how to write?", they asked and the children would look up in wonder and answer, "Taught? No one has taught me".
"So, this is a place where you do what you like, is it not?" The child answered: "No, Madam, we do not do what we want, we want what we do".
Her other vital contribution was the central role of feedback in the teaching process almost half century before Norbert Wiener’s Cybernetics and Skinners Learning Machines, though not before Pavlov.
Constructivism Education
In 1938 John Dewey published his seminal work extensively describing his educational theory in the spirit of Montessori and since then it is known as constructivism.
Modern educational research is a very rich field. But unlike many other disciplines, during the 20th century there was a convergence of approaches, so that though there is a great variety of different methods, the general ruling consensus in this field could be well defined as the one variation or another of the constructivist approach.
Some of the principles of constructivism: knowledge arises through a process of active construction, not a passive process, knowledge is constructed, not acquired
Knowledge construction is based on personal experiences and the continual testing of hypotheses. Each person has a different interpretation and construction of knowledge process, based on past experiences and cultural factors.
The constructivist learning environment could be described thus:
- multiple representations of reality
- represent the complexity of the real world
- individualized knowledge construction not knowledge reproduction
- authentic tasks in a meaningful context replacing abstract instruction out of context
- real-world settings or case-based learning instead of predetermined sequences of instruction
- student is helped to thoughtful reflection on experience
- collaborative construction of knowledge through social negotiation, not competition
Among the many names given to constructivism inspired methods of study are:
- Lab-based
- Project oriented
- Telescopic
- Individually customized
- Student centered
- Association driven
- Non-frontal
- Peer-oriented
There is a general agreement upon the need to replace the traditional lecture by the lab based student proactive individually tailored study through successful completion of projects. The rub is that the plethora of approaches and technologies has made urgent the need to balance this free-for-all liberal approach to achieve the course learning aims.
