Abstract/Notes: The individual through earliest recorded history reveals contradictory views of the human life-span. "Am I a free and unique individual, able to make choices and decide my own destiny?, or, "Am I only a victim of circumstance, a speck of dust in the universe's whirlwind of fate?" Each view is recognized in education and psychology, but the latter outlook is often prominent in schools which discourage decision making. Throughout the life-span, however, the individual must make choices. Allowing the young student to progress on the road to autonomy, requires a new educational outlook. How might teacher education focus on this new perspective? Rational Autonomy (RA) is an original conceptualization of the psychological foundations for a learning-teaching theory of practice; one which promotes autonomy and reasonable decision making in children and adults. Its purpose is to provide a framework for the development of an autonomous educator who may conceptualize the interaction between the dichotomies of autonomy and rationality. These values are imbedded within the leitmotif of liberty and freedom; individuality and socialization; creativity and cooperation all natural tensions within a democracy and a democratic classroom. Cognitive psychologies today advance a view reflecting an autonomous individual who is interactive, purposeful and capable of conscious decision making. Montessori (1870-1952) recognized these traits as inherent in most children. Viewing autonomy and reason as the individual's means to full cognitive and personality development, she proposed an expansive educational psychology which would anticipate this view in cognitive psychology. Until now, few psychological definitions were available to define Montessori's theories. Thus, this thesis defines existent psychology as providing a "Social Cognitive Field" frame in which to define her theories and derive a new concept. The concept of Rational Autonomy incorporates psychological principles from human development, social, personality and learning theories. Constructs are demonstrated by interaction models of the child, family and educator. These are exemplified in a school program through a site and case study. Elementary and early childhood teacher education extends the Design into a life-span theory. The mentor-teacher relationship, curricular implications, educator group facilitation and university aims are included in the RA Design.

Language: English

Published: Corvallis, Oregon, 1989

Abstract/Notes: Maria Montessori (1870-1952) est l’une des grandes figures du courant de l’éducation nouvelle (voir l’encadré). Première femme diplômée de médecine dans son pays, elle s’occupe d’abord d’enfants dits « arriérés » ou « idiots ». Constatant que ces enfants peuvent progresser dans un environnement plus favorable, elle commence à développer tout un matériel pour les aider à lire et écrire. C’est en 1907, alors âgée de 37 ans, qu’elle a l’occasion de mettre au point sa méthode pédagogique qui, dès le début du xxe siècle, lui vaut une reconnaissance internationale. Cette fois, le ministre lui demande de prendre en charge les enfants défavorisés du quartier de San Lorenzo, un quartier ghetto de Rome, peuplé d’immigrants de l’Italie du Sud pour la plupart illettrés, où les enfants de 3 à 6 ans sont livrés à eux-mêmes. Dans l’unique pièce qui lui est octroyée, elle crée alors sa première casa dei bambini (maison des enfants). Elle fait construire des tables et des chaises adaptées à leur taille (grande innovation pour l’époque, qui inspirera les équipements des écoles maternelles) et crée un matériel pédagogique tactile et sensoriel. En l’espace de deux ans, c’est un véritable petit miracle qui s’accomplit. Les enfants, désordonnés et irrespectueux, sont devenus « polis et calmes ». Mais il y a plus : ils ont appris à écrire et à lire. De nouvelles maisons des enfants et des écoles voient le jour dans Rome. Des observateurs arrivent de partout. Montessori organisera des stages à Londres, Nice, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelone, San Francisco et même en Inde, où elle s’installe pendant la Seconde Guerre mondiale… [ It was in 1907, then aged 37, that she had the opportunity to perfect her teaching method which, from the beginning of the twentieth century, earned her international recognition. This time, the minister asks him to take care of the disadvantaged children of the district of San Lorenzo, a ghetto district of Rome, populated by immigrants from southern Italy for the most part illiterate, where children from 3 to 6 years old are left to fend for themselves. In the only room granted to her, she then created her first casa dei bambini (children's house). She built tables and chairs adapted to their size (a major innovation for the time, which would inspire nursery school equipment) and created tactile and sensory educational material. In the space of two years, a real little miracle takes place. Children, messy and disrespectful, have become "polite and calm". But there is more: they have learned to write and read. New children's homes and schools are emerging in Rome. Observers are coming from everywhere. Montessori will organize internships in London, Nice, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, ​​San Francisco and even in India, where she settled during World War II ...]

Language: French

Published: Auxerre, France: Éditions Sciences Humaines, 2018

ISBN: 978-2-36106-465-5

Abstract/Notes: Extant research studies have found that autonomy support has a positive impact on the perceived competence and intrinsic motivation of students. However, few studies have investigated how autonomy supportive classrooms can be implemented. Montessori education is established upon the philosophy of helping each child attain self-mastery and independence. It emphasizes that students be given autonomy to engage freely with their learning environment. This case study of an upper-elementary Montessori classroom found that the Montessori philosophy of education guided how teachers used autonomy supportive strategies. Teachers supported student organizational autonomy by allowing them choice in terms of school work and work partners. They fostered cognitive autonomy by encouraging student independent thinking, encouraging self-initiation, and honoring students’ voice. When implementing control, they acknowledged and respected student feelings, provided rationales for expected behavior, and suppressed criticism. Students surveyed rated themselves highly in terms of intrinsic motivation for schoolwork. Five guidelines are derived from this study to help teachers implement autonomy support in K-12 classrooms.

Language: English

DOI: 10.5296/ije.v2i2.511

ISSN: 1948-5476

Abstract/Notes: Research involving children, deemed to have difficulties with conventional means of communication, can perpetuate reductive forms of representation of children’s knowledges and experiences. This article focuses on the possibilities and opportunities that visual and creative methods can offer to researching with children. Children advance their views in and through spontaneous and concrete forms of participation. Autonomy in aesthetic acts is central to this methodology; to explore practices that produce and reproduce presuppositions deriving from societal attitudes affecting research with children, their agency and self-presentation. This cross-cultural study was conducted in Central Italy and North West England: children contributed their perspectives and experiences through participation in a series of creative encounters resulting in aesthetic and embodied outcomes of sociological and educational significance. The study contributes to the debate on children’s autonomy and the value and quality of participation through artistic practice. Examples from the corpus of data, which includes a series of artefacts and over 900 photographs from each geo-cultural context, are presented. The study shows that it is possible to harmonise power imbalances in spaces of creative freedom, in research and education, where children’s choices and agency are respected.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1080/13645579.2019.1672280

ISSN: 1364-5579

Abstract/Notes: After showing discipline's centrality in Kant's pedagogy, I briefly highlight Montessori's alternative and then turn to three fundamental differences between Kant and Montessori that partly explain their divergent accounts. My goal is not to assess whether Kant or Montessori gets the role of discipline ‘right’, but to highlight broader stakes of their disagreement and ways deeper features of Kant's psychology and moral theory ground his emphasis on discipline.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1111/1467-9752.12599

ISSN: 1467-9752

Abstract/Notes: We investigated the role of three beliefs in predicting teachers’ motivating style toward students—namely, how effective, how normative, and how easy-to-implement autonomy-supportive and controlling teaching were each believed to be. We further examined national collectivism–individualism as a predictor of individual teachers’ motivating style and beliefs about motivating style, as we expected that a collectivistic perspective would tend teachers toward the controlling style and toward positive beliefs about that style. Participants were 815 full-time PreK-12 public school teachers from eight different nations that varied in collectivism–individualism. All three teacher beliefs explained independent and substantial variance in teachers’ self-described motivating styles. Believed effectiveness was a particularly strong predictor of self-described motivating style. Collectivism–individualism predicted which teachers were most likely to self-describe a controlling motivating style, and a mediation analysis showed that teachers in collectivistic nations self-described a controlling style because they believed it to be culturally normative classroom practice. These findings enhance the literature on the antecedents of teachers’ motivating styles by showing that teacher beliefs strongly predict motivating style, and that culture informs one of these beliefs—namely, normalcy.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1007/s11031-013-9367-0

ISSN: 1573-6644

Abstract/Notes: More than a century before modern controversies over scripted instruction, the Froebelian kindergarten--the original kindergarten method designed by Friedrich Froebel--and Maria Montessori's pedagogy were criticized for rigidly prescribing how teachers taught and children learned. Today, scripted methods such as Direct Instruction and Success for All are condemned for limiting teachers' autonomy and narrowing students' learning, especially that of students from low-income backgrounds, for and with whom scripts are often designed and used. Proponents of scripted instruction counter that it is helpful for teachers and effective with students. Comparing historical and modern scripts offers an opportunity to explore teachers' reactions to this hotly debated approach to school reform and to think about some possible implications for teacher education. I examine how teachers reacted to four different models of scripted instruction. I chose to compare the Froebelian kindergarten, Montessori, Direct Instruction, and Success for All because of their longevity, wide use, and the amount of information available about them. I focus on the scripts' theory and research base and teacher training, and on teachers' assessments of the scripts' effectiveness, and ask how these factors might influence teachers' autonomy, fidelity, and resistance when using scripts. Research Design: Using historical methods, I summarize the history of scripted instruction; selectively survey research on teacher autonomy, fidelity, and resistance; and interpret primary and secondary sources on the Froebelian kindergarten, Montessori, Direct Instruction, and Success for All. Teacher autonomy, fidelity, and resistance varied in these four scripts. Froebelian kindergarten and Montessori teachers autonomously chose to receive scripted, lengthy, intensive, pre-service training and professional development in closed professional learning communities. Direct Instruction and Success for All teachers receive scripted, relatively limited pre-service training and ongoing professional development in schools in which teachers often do not autonomously choose to teach. Despite the scripted training, most Froebelian kindergarten teachers, and many Montessori, Direct Instruction, and Success for All teachers modified these scripts at the classroom level; some Froebelian and Montessori teachers made very overt, substantial changes when the social class backgrounds of the students changed. Many Froebelian and most Montessori teachers seemed to believe that these scripts helped their students learn. Direct Instruction and Success for All teachers express more mixed views of these scripts' effectiveness. Some say that the scripts "work "for their students but that as teachers they feel constrained, a situation I see as a professional dilemma. Anecdotally, some new teachers with little pre-service training say that they feel limited by scripts but daunted by the task of creating curricula and instruction on their own. My research raises questions about teachers' reactions to scripts. The examples of Froebelian kindergarten, Montessori, Direct Instruction, and Success for All teachers I studied suggest that there may be unpredictable contradictions in scripted instruction. Scripted, autonomously chosen, intensive training may strengthen teacher fidelity and resistance, by giving teachers a deep repertoire of pedagogical skills that some continue to use and others use to autonomously modify scripts in response to students' perceived needs. Scripted, externally imposed, less extensive training may give some teachers a sense of security but also create tensions between the scripts 'perceived effectiveness and the teachers' desires for autonomy, and, for new teachers, between autonomy and the difficulty of independently designing curricula and methods. I argue that these reactions suggest that educators in traditional pre-service teacher education programs may want to experiment with offering an autonomous choice of distinctly different instructional models, including scripted ones such as Direct Instruction and Success for All, in which teachers in training in professional learning communities may become deeply skilled. I also argue that script developers may want to experiment with giving teachers more explicit autonomy, both in choosing scripts and in modifying them, and more extensive pre-service training. I recommend more comparative research on teachers' reactions to scripts, especially on new teachers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Language: English

ISSN: 0161-4681, 1467-9620

Language: English

Abstract/Notes: This text presents a theoretical analysis of Maria Montessori’s concept of cognitive autonomy, defined as a process of gaining power and control over one’s own thinking and learning, building the ability to regulate its course and evaluate the results of learning. The main aim of the article is to present the cognitive potential included in M. Montessori’s pedagogical thinking, the undiscovered dimensions of her concepts, and the unusual actuality confirmed by the latest research results. The first part of the article presents the constructive nature of the learning process based on self-discipline, the internal ability to regulate one’s own impulses, and control them consciously. The second part of the article presents contemporary interpretations of Maria Montessori’s concepts, provided by researchers and teachers- practitioners from the perspective of new psychological and pedagogical achievements. The evolution in the thinking of Montessori teachers is seen here as being a sensitive balance, with the “purity” of Montessori’s original ideas on the one hand, and a critical reflection over one’s own personal teaching practice, and discovering problems or phenomena, which – although unnamed – are deeply rooted in the Montessori classroom environment. / Artykuł jest teoretyczną analizą montessoriańskiej koncepcji autonomii (samodzielności) poznawczej dziecka, rozumianej jako stopniowe zdobywanie kontroli nad własnym uczeniem się, budowanie zdolności do regulowania jego przebiegu i oceny efektów. Głównym celem jest ukazanie potencjału poznawczego zawartego w myśli pedagogicznej Marii Montessori, głębi jej koncepcji pedagogicznej, a zarazem zaskakującej aktualności założeń, które znajdują potwierdzenie w wynikach współczesnych badań nad uczeniem się. W pierwszej części tekstu ukazano uczenie się jako proces konstruktywistyczny, oparty na zdolności do samodyscypliny, wewnętrznego regulowania własnych impulsów, poddawania ich świadomej kontroli. W drugiej części artykułu ukazano współczesne interpretacje koncepcji M. Montessori, dokonywane przez badaczy i nauczycieli praktyków, pod wpływem najnowszych badań psychologicznych. Przedstawiona tu ewolucja poglądów nauczycieli charakteryzuje się z jednej strony dbałością o „czystość” montessoriańskiej idei, z drugiej zaś krytyczną refleksją nad własną praktyką edukacyjną i odkrywaniem w niej idei i problemów, które – choć nienazwane – tkwią głęboko zakorzenione w przygotowanym do samodzielnego uczenia się otoczeniu klasy Montessori.

Language: Polish

DOI: 10.14632/eetp.2017.13.47.89

ISSN: 1896-2327, 2353-7787

Language: Italian

Published: Firenze, Italy: Giunti, 2023

ISBN: 978-88-09-93317-0