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

Language: English

ISSN: 1554-8279, 0013-5984

Language: English

ISSN: 1554-8279, 0013-5984

Abstract/Notes: Il contributo intende sondare alcuni tratti della pedagogia e del metodo Montessori di interesse per ripensare gli attuali contesti educativi escolastici sempre più interdipendenti ed eterogenei (Zoletto, 2012). L’individualizzazione nell’apprendimento e la differenziazione sono tensioni costanti nel pensiero di Montessori e si concretizzano nel ruolo dell’ambiente preparato dall’adulto a misuradi ogni bambino, in cui sono organizzati materiali di sviluppo non condizionati daappartenenze culturali (PescieTrabalzini, 2007) e nella pluralità linguistica assunta quale tratto strutturale del contesto (Consalvo, 2020), come avviene in molte scuoledi metodo che stanno sperimentando progetti bilingui. È dall’ambiente secondo Montessori (2000) che i bambini prendono il linguaggio, le abitudini e le caratteristiche della comunità a cui partecipano e per questo gli ambienti scolastici e le atmosfere relazionali costruiti sulla base della unicità e differenza di ognuno sono interculturali (Pesci,2006). Il contributo propone le prime riflessioni scaturite dal lavoro di indagine sull’attualità interculturale di Montessori in prospettiva plurilingue, che èuno dei filoni di ricerca del PRIN (2017) Maria Montessori from the past to the present(Unitàdi ricerca: Bologna, Milano, Roma, Aosta). / This paper will explore some aspects of the Montessori method and pedagogy that are pertinent in rethinking today's increasingly interdependent and heterogeneous educational and school contexts (Zoletto, 2012). Personalized learning and differentiation are constant tensions in Montessori thinking, taking shape in the environment prepared by the adult specifically for each child, where the developmental materials offered are not conditioned by cultural affiliations (Pesci e Trabalzini, 2007) and linguistic plurality is a structural feature of the context (Consalvo, 2020), as occurs in many method schools that are experimenting with bilingual projects. According to Montessori (2000), children acquire language, habits and the characteristics of the community they are part of from the environment, and for this reason school environments and the relational atmospheres based on the uniqueness and differences of each individual are intercultural (Pesci, 2006). The paper offers some initial reflections starting from an investigation of Montessori's intercultural relevance in a multilingual perspective, one of the PRIN (2017) research areas Maria Montessori from the past to the present (Research Units: Bologna, Milan, Rome, Aosta).

Language: Italian

DOI: 10.6092/issn.2420-8175/13899

ISSN: 2420-8175

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: L’articolo presenta una ricerca basata sull’osservazione di un contesto educativo di ispirazione montessoriana. La ricerca intendeva mettere in luce gli atteggiamenti, le proposte e le strategie delle educatrici, e le risposte dei bambini a queste sollecitazioni. Il testo si articola in una introduzione metodologica che illustra il tipo di servizio educativo, la metodologia di osservazione adottata e la traccia che ha gui-dato le osservazioni; seguono alcune considerazioni sull’autonomia del bambino, l’attenzione al singolo bambino e la cura del bambino, emerse dalla analisi delle osservazioni; conclude l’articolo la trascrizione di una delle tre osservazioni condotte. [The paper presents an observational study carried on in an early educational context inspired to Montessori approach. It is aimed at illustrating the educators’ attitudes, behaviours, and educational strategies and the children’s reactions to them. First, the educational approach of the centre and the observational methodology are described. Then, a detailed analysis of the observations with regard to the educators’ support to child autonomy, attention to children’s requests and needs, and care behaviours is presented. Finally, the transcript of a whole observation is reported.]

Language: Italian

DOI: 10.6092/issn.1970-2221/1760

ISSN: 1970-2221

Abstract/Notes: This is an insert which contains the January 1914 issue (vol. 1, no. 2) of Freedom for the Child (18 pages).

Language: English