Abstract/Notes: In our brief historical outline of educational conditions in Italy, we have seen that by far the greatest efforts over the past fifty years have been devoted to clarifying the theoretical issues of educational problems. We have been examining philosophical Systems that pretended to afford an unshakeable foundation to educational theory and to answer every problem raised by educational practice. They have been scrutinized and found wanting. The new Government Syllabus (1955) for the Italian elementary schools is thoroughly Catholic in spirit, humanistic in content and progressive in method. The author of the present paper feels, however, that too much theorizing is still blinding Italian educators. The canker of Transcendental Idealism is still gnawing at the efforts of all too many, also Catholic, thinkers. The “active schools” need renewed fervour, cogent Stimulation, and enlightened Inspiration from an integral Catholic philosophy of life. We must stop philosophizing and get down to realizing: experimentation and co-operative effort are badly needed, not less than clear ideas. Not words but deeds! Idealism had thought of itself being the all-inclusive answer to every problem. We must repeat Hamlet's word to the die-hard Idealist: “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, Than are dreamt of in your philosophy”.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1007/BF01423725

ISSN: 1573-0638, 0020-8566

Abstract/Notes: Anaokulları okul öncesi çocukların bilgi ve becerilerini destekleyen eğitim kurumlarıdır. Farklı eğitim sistemlerini benimsemiş olan anaokullarında aktivitelere göre alanlar oluşturulmaktadır. Algının ve çevrenin öneminin büyük olduğu bu dönemde çocukların hayal güçlerine ilham verecek mekanlar tasarlanmalıdır. Çocukların sözlü beceriden önce öğrenilen görsel dil ile yaratıcılıkları desteklenmektedir. Bunun yanında mekanda bulunan güvenli ve ulaşılabilir mobilyalar da çocukların özgürce hareket etmelerini ve sorumluluk bilinci kazanmalarını sağlamaktadır. Anadilin yanında farklı bir dilin de okul öncesi dönemde öğrenilmesi için mekanda kullanılan görseller ve bunları destekleyici yabancı dilde kelimeler ile görsel hafıza da yer etmesi sağlanabilmektedir. Bu sayede öğrenilen yabancı dildeki kelimeler ile hafızadaki ilişki kuvvetlenerek hatırlanması kolaylaşmaktadır. Bu makalenin amacı Montessori anaokullarında kullanılan mekan ihtiyaçlarını ve günümüz okullarında oluşturulan modern tasarımları araştırmaktadır. Sonuç olarak mekanda kullanılan eğrisel formlar ve donatı elemanlarının boyutlarının çocuklara göre tasarlanması ile çocuğun özgürce hareket edebileceği mekanlar eldeilmektedir. Bu mekanlar bir bütünlük içerisinde estetik bir uyum ile tasarlanmalıdır. Bir düzen içerisinde organize edilmiş az ve yeterli sayıda renk ve obje ile daha huzurlu bir mekan oluşturulmaktadır. Tasarımda ana unsuru yetişkinler ve çocuklar arasındaki olumlu ilişkiler oluşturmaktadır. Mekan tasarımı da bu ilişkiyi desteklemektedir. Doğal aydınlatma, uygun boyutta askılıklar, depolama alanlarının yeterli ve güvenli olması, dolaşım alanlarının yeterli olması da gerekmektedir. / Kindergartens are educational institutions that support the knowledge and skills of preschool children. In kindergartens in different education systems, areas are created according to the types of activities. In this period when perception and the environment are of great importance, spaces that will inspire children's imaginations should be designed. Children's creativity is supported by the visual language learned before verbal skills. In addition, safe furniture in the space allows children to move freely and gain a sense of responsibility. In addition to the mother tongue, it is possible to learn foreign languages in the pre-school period. Therefore, it can be ensured that the language is embedded in the memory with the visuals used in the space and the words in the foreign language supporting them. In this way, the relationship in the memory with the words in the learned foreign language is strengthened and the recall of the word becomes easier. This article aims to explore the space needs found in Montessori kindergartens and the modern designs created in today's schools. As a result, designing the dimensions of the furniture used in the space according to children ensures that children can move freely, implement their own decisions and receive an education without encountering obstacles. The kindergarten interior should be designed with an aesthetic harmony within a unity. Overmuch colors and toys cause a distraction for children. A more peaceful space is created with a sufficient number of colors and objects organized in order.

Language: Turkish

DOI: 10.29228/JASSS.52208

ISSN: 2148-4163

Abstract/Notes: Outdoor learning is one of the newest terminologies and implementations of using the outdoors as a part of education. This paper provides an in-depth overview to answer the question, is outdoor learning a pathway to transformational learning or another educational gimmick? To answer this question, this paper will focus on six fundamental sections. This paper begins by highlighting the ambiguity throughout history in defining education outside the classroom, with more than 75 different terminologies used to refer to education in the outdoors. The second theme is that despite this contemporary emergence, outdoor learning has a long and varied history within education, with modern elements of outdoor learning being traced back thousands of years in indigenous cultures. Then being refined throughout the 21st century before settling on the current contemporary form of outdoor learning. The third theme of this paper looks at the benefits of outdoor learning, summarized into six critical sections. These benefits include health and wellbeing, social-emotional and cognitive development, academic and behavioral benefits, memory benefits, increased positive attitudes towards the environment, and positive teacher benefits. The fourth theme of this paper reviews the barriers and challenges to implementing outdoor learning within schooling, with four primary barriers being identified. These barriers include outdoor learning having no formal status in teachers’ educational practice, a lack of teacher confidence in their outdoor teaching expertise, difficulty in starting an outdoor learning program, and physical restraints such as school grounds and weather. The penultimate theme of this paper reviews critical considerations that must be addressed when implementing an outdoor learning program; this includes cost, student numbers, transportation, insurance, time, framework, skills, assessments, the curriculum, and training. The final theme of this paper unpacks the effects of COVID-19 on outdoor learning within all levels of schooling. Initially seen as a method to return to school by being outdoors, outdoor learning has since demonstrated to educators worldwide that it deserves to be embedded as an everyday part of education even after the pandemic subsides.

Language: English

DOI: 10.20533/ijcdse.2042.6364.2022.0565

ISSN: 2042-6364

Abstract/Notes: This article seeks to re-introduce Dr. Maria Montessori’s educational philosophy, which has been absent from modern philosophy of education literature. It describes and analyzes crucial aspects of her epistemology, as best known through her Method. Discussed are the need for early education, the development of the senses, and the exercise of choice by the students. Concept formation is also shown to be an important part of Montessori’s philosophy of instruction. This article concludes with a brief resolution of the “is–ought” objection as framed by Scheffler that might be waged against Montessori’s approach.

Language: English

ISSN: 2369-8659

Abstract/Notes: Montessori Pedagogy, having as a founder M. Montessori, Italian physician and pedagogue, is one of the alternatives that entered Romania at the beginning of the 20th century, due to the opening of the occupants of those times. We present in this paper the evolution in Romania of Montessori pedagogy and educational alternative, from the beginning to the Second World War. We will refer to the interest that the ideas of M. Montessori have made, translations of her works in Romanian, as well as the writings of some Romanian specialists who have popularized and supported her. We will bring readers’ attention and involvement issues by attending conferences and training courses for teachers, by setting up the Montessori schools and the role of renowned personalities in the development of the Montessori alternative and the Montessori Association, an expression of the interest and appreciation.

Language: Italian

ISSN: 1971-1093, 1971-1131

Abstract/Notes: Objectivism, the libertarian philosophy established by Ayn Rand during the postwar years, has attracted a great deal of attention from philosophers, political scientists, economists, and English professors alike in recent years, but it hasn’t received much notice from historians with an interest in education. This article will address that problem by discussing how Rand and her followers established a philosophy of education during the 1960s and 1970s that was based, in part, on vilifying the so-called collectivist ideas of John Dewey and lionizing the so-called individualist ideas of Maria Montessori. Unfortunately, the narrative that emerged during this time seriously misrepresented the ideas of both Dewey and Montessori, resulting in a somewhat distorted view of both educators.

Language: English

DOI: 10.32316/hse/rhe.v25i1.4285

ISSN: 0843-5057, 1911-9674

Abstract/Notes: Visual representations of teachers and teachers’ work over the past century and a half, in both professional literature and popular media, commonly construct teachers’ work as teacher‐centred, and built around specific technologies that privilege the teacher as the active, dominant and legitimate principal agent in the educational process. This article analyses a set of photographs that represent an ‘alternative’ educational approach to normalised mainstream schooling, to explore the ways such practices might enact pedagogy within different social relations. Butler’s discussions of performativity and Foucault’s concept of technologies of self, offer a theoretical framework for understanding the educative and political work such visual representations of teachers work might perform, in the construction of capacities to imagine what teachers’ work looks like, with implications for capacities to enact teaching. The photographs analysed present a pedagogy in which the teacher is less visibly central and less overtly directive in relation to children’s learning than in normalised pedagogy. Thus, in important respects, they offer material from which to construct a different vision of what teachers’ work looks like, and, consequently, to enact teachers’ work differently. In this article I explore a set of photographs of Montessori methods at Blackfriars School in Sydney in the early twentieth century. I do so in order to establish whether such photographs offer a representation of teaching that differs significantly from conventional ‘normalised’ understandings of teachers’ work. This in turn is intended to inform one part of a transformative agenda to address problematic aspects of contemporary schooling.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1108/08198691200900015

ISSN: 0819-8691

Abstract/Notes: The present longitudinal study measured student adjustment to higher education, comparing 50 participants from alternative schools (Steiner, Montessori, New Schools) with 80 students from the traditional school system. We hypothesized that students from alternative schools adapt better, because of greater perceived social support, academic self-efficacy, and task-oriented coping styles. Measures were taken during the last school year (baseline characteristics), and at the beginning of the first and last terms of the first year in higher education. The quality of adjustment was assessed through academic results, and physical and psychological well-being. The following instruments were used: the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory by Spielberger (1983), the 13-items Depression Inventory by Beck et al. (1961), the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations by Endler and Parker (1990), and semi-directed interviews. Results show that students from alternative schools adjust better to higher education: they report less anxiety and depression symptoms, and show greater life satisfaction and academic achievement.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1007/s10734-009-9252-7

ISSN: 1573-174X

Abstract/Notes: This study aims to emphasize that the realization of effective educational approaches depends on the design of spaces suitable for the determined philosophy, and to reveal the design decisions required by the Montessori educational approach. A three-step method was followed in the line of the aim of this study. The first step is to acquire theoretical knowledge about the Montessori educational approach. The second step is to perform a spatial analysis based on the obtained plan schedules and visual materials from the school samples that have adopted the Montessori educational approach and designed by the designers according to this approach and the final step is to bring design decisions to designers and educators in order to create educational environments for the Montessori educational approach, depending on the literature and school analysis. In the study, it is observed in Montessori educational approach that the relationship between interior and exterior spaces is very important, that the circulation spaces and classrooms are designed as flexible multipurpose spaces depending on the basic principles of freedom, socialization, and that child-scale design and natural light are extremely important for all of the areas in question. It is seen that the Montessori approach is influential on educational spaces and the presence of spaces embodying this approach has a correspondence in architecture. In this context, this study, which reveals the relationship between learning environments and learning efficiency, is considered to be a source of data for the schools to be designed in this direction.

Language: English

DOI: 10.12973/ejmste/79799

ISSN: 1305-8215, 1305-8223

Abstract/Notes: During the transition period in Hungary the role of the market has become more significant, and several market elements have appeared in education, as well. The growing social demand for schooling resulted in the huge expansion of secondary and higher education. Schools try to match the demand with the supply in a colourful variety of programmes. However, public education in Hungary struggles with very great problems of inequalities.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1111/j.1465-3435.2006.00247.x

ISSN: 0141-8211