Abstract/Notes: This study examines teaching and learning economics and entrepreneurship through a student-run Montessori middle school store. By designing and managing a school store, students created a 'community of practice' to learn economics concepts in their daily environment. Questions guiding this study were: (a) How do students' social-interactions in a Montessori middle school student-operated business demonstrate economics content knowledge? (b) How do students' social-interactions in a Montessori middle school student-operated business demonstrate economics skills? (c) How do students' business roles in the store develop their understanding of economics principles? Findings indicate that: (1) student activities in the school store promoted learning through social interaction; (2) the type and number of business roles a student assumed created opportunities for economic learning; (3) student entrepreneurs expressed specific knowledge of economics concepts, and, (4) students' decision-making and ownership affected behavior. Additionally, features of Kohlberg's (1985) concept of Just Community supported the learning environment. This study can provide social studies teachers and teacher-educators with a model for learning economics (or social studies) concepts through a curricular-based student-run enterprise.

Language: English

ISSN: 0885-985X, 2352-2798

Abstract/Notes: María Montessori empezó a descubrir la infancia a partir de la capacidad que el niño pequeño tiene de polarizar su atención. En la base de la capacidad de atención están los poderes de la mente absorbente que hoy los estudios de la neurociencia han descubierto con indiscutibles pruebas empíricas. Su pedagogía puede definirse como pedagogía de la atención: atención hacia el niño, atención hacia los detalles, atención hacia la atención del niño. Los estudios sobre la capacidad de atención y sobre la relación entre la atención y la memoria confirman que es necesario proporcionar a los niños la posibilidad de concentrarse durante largo tiempo en una actividad (trabajo) con materiales adecuados y sin interrumpirlos jamás. Actualmente existen múltiples y variadas tecnologías de la información que fragmentan y fomentan una tendencia a la atención superficial en los niños y en los jóvenes. Por esto, la propuesta educativa y didáctica montessoriana resulta más actual hoy que al inicio del pasado siglo. [Montessori began her discovery of childhood starting from the polarization of attention in young children. Behind attention are the powers of the absorbent mind that neuroscience today is discovering with irrefutable empirical evidence. It is the pedagogy of attention: attention to the child, attention to the details, focus on the attention of the child. Studies on attention and the relationship between attention and memory have confirmed that it is necessary to give children the opportunity to focus on a specific activity for a long time using suitable materials, without interruptions. Today, there are many technologies that break up the attention of children and young people. This is why Montessori education and teaching is more relevant today than at the beginning of the last century.]

Language: Spanish

ISSN: 2255-0666

Abstract/Notes: Godly Play is an approach to religious education for young children between the ages of three and eight. The Godly Play room, modelled on Montessori’s prepared environment, provides opportunities for young children to respond to Sacred stories, Parables and Liturgical actions presented by the Storyteller through art using any of the materials available to them. However, there is a paucity of research into how different spatial affordances may enhance opportunities for spiritual development in the Godly Play room. This article examines the Godly Play room through the lens of affordance theory. It applies elements of the notion of affordances to three documented anecdotes of Godly Play storytellers to show particular action possibilities enhance opportunities for spiritual development and wellbeing. The analysis highlights the importance of the Storyteller’s guidance, the readily accessible materials, and the dedicated space in which Godly Play is undertaken.

Language: English

DOI: 10.3390/rel13121202

ISSN: 2077-1444

Abstract/Notes: Intensive observations were made of the classroom behavior of students enrolled in a Montessori academy versus students in a public elementary school. Twelve behavioral measures yielded information in four general areas: type of task involvement, source of supervision for academic tasks, size of task group, and amount of physical movement within the classroom. While students in the two schools showed a similar distribution of time between concentrated academic effort and distractive activities, the two groups were sharply distinguished on most of the other behavioral measures. In general, the classroom behavior of the Montessori and public school students coincided with the educational philosophies espoused by the two types of schools. No differences were found in the responses of boys and girls, but a pattern of behavior reflecting greater personal autonomy was found to differentiate the older from the younger students (fourth grade versus first grade levels).

Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/00220671.1973.10884492

ISSN: 0022-0671

Abstract/Notes: Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose the activity‐based focus group as a useful method with which to generate talk‐in‐interaction among pre‐schoolers. Analytically, it aims to illustrate how transcribed talk‐in‐interaction can be subjected to a discourse analytic lens, to produce insights into how pre‐schoolers use “Coca‐Cola” as a conversational resource with which to build product‐related meanings and social selves. Design/methodology/approach Fourteen activity‐based discussion groups with pre‐schoolers aged between two and five years have been conducted in a number of settings including privately run Montessori schools and community based preschools in Dublin. The talk generated through these groups has been transcribed using the conventions of conversation analysis (CA). Passages of talk characterized by the topic of Coca‐Cola were isolated and a sub‐sample of these are analysed here using a CA‐informed discourse analytic approach. Findings A number of linguistic repertoires are drawn on, including health, permission and age. Coca‐Cola is constructed as something which is “bad” and has the potential to make one “mad”. It is an occasion‐based product permitted by parents for example as a treat, at the cinema or at McDonalds. It can be utilised to build “age‐based” social selves. “Big” boys or girls can drink Coca‐Cola but it is not suitable for “babies”. Originality/value This paper provides insight into the use of the activity‐based focus group as a data generation tool for use with pre‐schoolers. A discourse analytic approach to the interpretation of children's talk‐in‐interaction suggests that the preschool consumer is competent in accessing and employing a consumer artefact such as Coca‐Cola as a malleable resource with which to negotiate product meanings and social selves.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1108/17473610911007148

ISSN: 1747-3616

Language: English

ISSN: 0010-700X

Abstract/Notes: Compared the frequencies of peer and adult social interactions, the mean durations of social interactions, and the amounts of negative behaviors of 3-, 4-, and 5-yr-old children of both sexes (N = 131) in a Montessori nursery school, a university laboratory preschool, and a parent cooperative nursery school. The total amount of social interaction, the amount of peer interaction, and the duration of the average social interaction increased with age. The Montessori Ss differed from the Ss in the other 2 schools in amount of peer interaction and in duration of the average interaction in the same direction as older Ss differed from younger Ss. This finding suggests that teacher ratio and age distribution factors enhance the development of social interaction skills in Montessori nursery school children.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1037/h0034984

ISSN: 1939-0599, 0012-1649

Abstract/Notes: "MORE Abstracts 2003? It is time for innovation and thus for contrasting developmental and conservative boosts to come to the attention of the various places in which school action is performed everyday. Montessori materials seem to want to contribute to the representation of the complex concepts of arithmetic and geometry and certainly have allowed the identification and definition of learning models and teaching patterns that have led to defining the Montessori proposal as a method. They have played a key role in the construction of teaching processes that can determine an effective and motivating repertoire of task environments, consistent with the needs and mathematical knowledge of the times in which they were introduced and that they contributed to generate. Certain processes, such as those of abstraction, codification, decoding, transcodification and transfer characterising mathematics learning, in particular, in the various phases of developmental age, may be found in those processes, but also revisited in the light of intentional interconnections within the current developmental state of mathematical, psychological and scientific pedagogical knowledge. The conceptual, theoretical and applicative characterisations in the field of mathematics teaching dictated by the needs to explore the invariant and variable aspects of reality and to seek order to place as a basis of a method, may start up a construction and reconstruction process of the codes of logical and mathematical language on the part of learners, within the specific semantic fields that the task environment may propose. In this sense the materials could be reconsidered as a junction between interdisciplinary maps with specific perspectives inside the “method” but able to enrich themselves thanks to the contribution of the learning experience that “multimedia” children gain in other real and virtual places that go to develop the sense of self-effectiveness in the area of mathematics – a territory which cannot be considered, even today, as very appealing – and within reach of the child’s mind.

Language: English

ISSN: 2281-8375

Language: English

Abstract/Notes: Ce texte décrit un différend opposant, au début de l’internationalisation de la pédagogie montessorienne (1913), Pierre Bovet, alors directeur du tout jeune Institut Jean-Jacques Rousseau, et Maria Montessori. Il propose la notion de « diffraction » pour décrire, lorsqu’une pédagogie se diffuse, les effets de pertes, de dilution des intentions ou des pratiques, voire les déviations de la pensée initiale, pour saisir la nature et les contenus des transferts et des resémantisations à l’œuvre. Ce texte fait ainsi l’hypothèse que ce différend a contribué à l’internationalisation spécifique de la pédagogie Montessori, hors des canaux genevois et à distance de l’Éducation nouvelle. Mais il insiste également sur la place que doivent prendre les pratiques concrètes pour considérer, y compris du point de vue de l’historien, la diffusion d’une pédagogie. Quel statut donner à un mauvais passeur ou à un mauvais lecteur d’une pédagogie, c’est-à-dire à un passeur diffusant une pédagogie diffractée ? Jusqu’à quel point les pratiques – en particulier les pratiques montessoriennes, décrites comme « scientifiques » et non idéologiques ou philosophiques – sont-elles affectées par le contexte politique ou idéologique qui les porte – par exemple dans le cas du régime mussolinien ? Jusqu’à quel point le pédagogue doit-il ou peut-il cadrer la diffraction, et comment l’historien peut-il considérer pratiquement cette question? [This text describes a contention between Pierre Bovet (director of the Jean-Jacques Rousseau Institute, in Geneva) and Maria Montessori, at the beginning of the internationalization of this pedagogy (1913). It suggests the notion of «diffraction» in order to describe the effets of loss, dilution or deviation of intentions or practices, when a pedagogy is diffused. The «diffraction» aims to get the nature and the contents of the «transfers» and the resemantizations at work in this case. This text puts forth the hypothesis that this contention contributes to the specific internationalization of Montessori pedagogy, apart from genevese and New Education networks. But this texte emphazises on the place of concrete practices in the diffusion of a pedagogy. What kind of status can be given to a bad importer of a pedagogy – that is to say, an importer who broadcasts a diffracted pedagogy? The practices are they affected by the political or ideological context which receives a pedagogy? On this point, the Montessori pedagogy presents itself as « scientific » and without ideology. So how can we understand this specificity, espacially in the mussolinian context, in the 1930’s? Has the pedagogue to control the diffraction – and how – and how can the historian consider this problem?]

Language: French

Published: Neuchâtel, Switzerland: Editions Alphil-Presses Universitaires Suisses, 2020

ISBN: 978-2-88930-322-9