Language: English

Published: Bombay, India: Orient Longmans, 1955

Abstract/Notes: Based on a database of over 500 resources, this paper explores the educational alternatives that exist today between the cracks of mainstream education and culture. It presents information about the growing numbers of schools and education centers that call themselves learner-centered, progressive, and/or holistic. Sources of data for this summary report also include over 3 years of informal interviews with and observations of people at alternative schools. The paper begins by examining terminology issues, discussing qualities for distinguishing educational alternatives, and describing eight types of schools (democratic and free schools, folk education, Quaker schools, homeschooling/unschooling/deschooling, Krishnamurti schools, Montessori schools, open schools, and Waldorf schools). It also presents frameworks for education (maps for understanding the territories of alternatives), and it discusses the three orientations of a competency based education: transaction (progressive), self-directed (learner-centered), and transformation (holistic). After looking at political issues around school choice which could impact the growth of the various philosophical alternatives, the paper concludes that in a society where issues of pluralism and diversity are valued as part of creating a more sustainable world and just democracy, the diversity of philosophical perspectives in education needs to be acknowledged. (Contains 41 references.) (SM)

Language: English

ISSN: 1094-3838, 2158-8414

Language: English

Published: Frankfurt am Main, Germany: Peter Lang, 1995

ISBN: 978-3-631-48917-8 978-0-8204-2914-4 3-631-48917-X 0-8204-2914-7

Series: Heidelberger Studien zur Erziehungswissenschaft (Frankfurt am Main, Germany) , 44

Abstract/Notes: The current system of education in Kenya is the 8-4-4 structure, where children study for eight years of Basic (primary) education, four years of Secondary education and four years of University education. This system was introduced in 1985 to promote man-power capable of performing blue collar jobs, as compared to the former 7-6-3 system that targeted developing a local workforce to replace the British workforce who largely held white collar jobs in the new, independent Kenya. However, over the years, the 8-4-4 curriculum has been widely criticised for a myriad of reasons. The criticisms against this curriculum are that it is too heavily loaded with content, purely examinations-oriented, and generally violating the Rights of the Child by placing undue physical and psychological pressure on learners. In order to address this problem therefore, a new curriculum was hastily crafted and taken through a rushed pilot drive in April 2017 and is expected to replace the current 8-4-4 system by January 2018. Admittedly, this new education system addresses some of the weaknesses of the current 8-4-4 education system, since it is competency-based and focuses more on skills acquisition as opposed to a purely knowledge-based acquisition system. The issues addressed in this paper is how this new and hurriedly crafted curriculum (as well as the introduction of Free Secondary School Education) will be implemented by teachers who are yet to come to terms with the new paradigm shift of teaching and learning. The second issue addressed is whether the crafters of this system took into consideration children’s rights, or whether at all, the system was crafted from a child-centred perspective. The concerns are that apart from the manner in which this syllabus was been crafted and planned for implementation, if not reviewed comprehensively may not only violate the rights of future generations of children, but also enhance negative ethnicity from a linguistic perspective

Language: English

ISSN: 2394-9686

Abstract/Notes: Harold Baumann ordnet die schweizerische Montessori-Pädagogik in die internationale Reformpädagogik ein, skizziert ihre Anfänge im Kanton Tessin, zeigt die Auswirkungen und Einflüsse der Montessori-Bestrebungen in vielen Schweizer Kantonen, u.a. anhand der staatlichen Montessori-Kindergärten im Kanton Wallis. Zudem erläutert er den heutigen Stand der Montessori-Pädagogik in der Schweiz. Harold Baumann ergänzt seine Recherchen durch Beiträge, die ihm von Zeitzeugen überreicht wurden. [Harold Baumann classifies the Swiss Montessori pedagogy in the international reform pedagogy, outlines its beginnings in the canton of Ticino, shows the effects and influences of the Montessori endeavors in many Swiss cantons, e.g. with the help of the state Montessori kindergartens in the canton of Valais. He also explains the current state of Montessori education in Switzerland. Harold Baumann supplements his research with contributions that were presented to him by contemporary witnesses.]

Language: German

Published: Bern, Switzerland: Haupt Verlag, 2007

Edition: 1st edition

ISBN: 978-3-258-07092-6

Abstract/Notes: For a century Montessori’s philosophy of education has been understood in separation from Dewey’s philosophy of education. According to Thayer-Bacon [1], a plausible explanation is that Kilpatrick, Dewey’s influential student, rejected Montessori’s system of education [2]. His main objection was that her educational system was founded on an outdated psychology. In contrast, this paper suggests, Montessori’s educational systems is founded on a psychology which, like Dewey’s, was markedly ahead of her time by putting purely embodied interactions with the environment as the foundation of human understanding. By comparing Montessori’s psychology [3; 4] to Dewey’s [5; 6] this paper shows their compatibility. The developed pragmatism of Sellars [5;6] and the interactivism of Bickhard [7] further enables us to explain how the prelinguistic human-environment interactions (or transactions), central to Dewey and Montessori, are pure processes [8]. The pure process ontology enables us to see how more complex processes emerge from simpler ones and how learning in the mere causal domain of bodily human-environment interactions can grow into the linguistic and conceptual domain of education. The ambition is to show that a flourishing interaction between Montessori and pragmatism is possible and preferable if we are to understand the proper role of the body in education. [1] Thayer-Bacon, Barbara (2012). Maria Montessori, John Dewey, and William H. Kilpatrick. Education and Culture, 28, 1, 3-20. [2] Kilpatrick, W. H. (1914). The Montessori system examined. Cambridge, Mass.; The Riverside Press [3] Montessori, M. (1912). The Montessori method. NY: Frederick A. Stokes Company [4] Montessori. M. (1949). The absorbent mind. Adyar: The Theosophical Publishing House [5] Dewey, J. (1916). Democracy and education. NY: The Macmillan Company [6] Dewey, J. (1925) Experience and nature. Chicago: Open Court Publishing Company [7] Sellars, W. (1960). Being and Being Known. Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association, 34, 28-49. [8] Sellars, W. (1981). Foundations for a metaphysics of pure process: The Carus lectures of Wilfrid Sellars. The Monist 64 (1):3-90. [9] Bickhard, M. H. (2009). The interactivist model. Synthese, 166, 3, 547-591. [10] Seibt, Johanna (2016). How to Naturalize Intentionality and Sensory Consciousness within a Process Monism with Gradient Normativity—A Reading of Sellars. In James O'Shea (ed.), Sellars and His Legacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 186-222.

Language: English

Published: Copenhagen, Denmark: International Network of Philosophers of Education, 2022

Abstract/Notes: Students who have attended Montessori pre-kindergarten and kindergarten appear to experience greater academic success than those who attend the general classroom. The purpose of this research was to examine what Montessori classrooms did differently than the general education classrooms and whether Montessori prepares students for greater academic success in elementary school. There is a vast amount of literature available on the impact of Montessori education on student achievement, but few comparison studies. The methodology for this research was causal comparative. Quantitative data was collected to ascertain the practices of Montessori classrooms to produce more academic success than that of the general education classroom. The purpose was to determine if students in a Montessori classroom will have higher academic success or if those in a traditional general education classroom setting will have higher achievement on the MAP reading and math assessment.

Language: English

Published: Central, South Carolina, 2023

Language: German

Published: Hannover, Germany: Hermann Schroedel, 1977

ISBN: 978-3-507-38230-5

Series: Bildungsproblem in der Geschichte des europäischen Erziehungsdenkens , 2

Abstract/Notes: Kindergartens are socio-spatial organizations with their social and cultural as well as their spatial structures which prepare children to be responsible members of the society. In the ear ly years of the twentieth century, the issue of how to raise new generations was one of the primary research areas of many educational scientists, especially in Europe, and therefore different progressive pedagogical methods were generated. Among these views, the Waldorf pedagogical approach developed by Rudolf Steiner, Montessori pedagogical approach developed by Maria Montessori, and Reggio Emilia pedagogical approach developed by Loris Malaguzzi became prominent. Although these three pedagogical approaches have a common view that the child should be accepted as an individual with his/her rights, each of them involved different physical environment requirements in the context of their educational philosophies. The projects obtained in an architectural design studio course constitute the focus of this paper and it aims to decipher the semantic and syntactic characteristics based on twelve student projects. The semantic dimension of the study was revealed by coding the related themes through students' project reports while the syntactic dimension of the study demonstrated the prioritized social interaction area through isovist area and variance values. Considering the semantic results, it was revealed that the students not only comprehended the spatial requirements of a specific educational pedagogy but also grasped the transformative power of the methods, in terms of physical, social, and natural characteristics. Considering the syntactic results, the fact that the mean isovist area value was higher in Reggio Emilia schools showed that the piazza dominates the physical setting. The fact that the school cluster with the highest variance value emerged in Montessori draws attention to the changeability of isovist perimeter value within the interiors to orientate the individuals to the classroom units.

Language: English

Published: Bergen, Norway: Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, 2022

Pages: 25 p.

Abstract/Notes: Book review

Language: English

ISSN: 1470-8647