Language: English

Abstract/Notes: This article demonstrates how feminist posthumanism can reconfigure conceptualisations of, and practices with, ‘child’ in Montessori early childhood contexts. It complicates Montessori’s contemporary reputation as a ‘middle-class phenomenon’ by returning to the earliest Montessori schools as a justice-oriented project for working-class children and families. Grappling with the contradictions and inconsistencies of Montessori thought, this article acknowledges the legacy of Montessori’s feminism while also situating her project within the wider colonial capitalist context in which it emerged. A critical engagement with Montessori education unsettles modernist conceptualisations of ‘child’ and its civilising agenda on minds and bodies. Specifically, Montessori child observation (as a civilising mission) is disrupted and reread from a feminist posthumanist orientation to generate more relational, queer and expansive accounts of how ‘child’ is produced through observation. Working with three ‘encounters’ from fieldwork at a Montessori nursery, the authors attend to the material-discursive affective manifestation of social class, gender, sexuality and ‘race’, and what that means for child figurations in Montessori contexts. They conclude by embracing Snaza’s ‘bewildering education’ to reach towards different imaginaries of ‘child’ that are not reliant on dialectics of ‘human’ and ‘non-human’, and that allow ‘child’ to be taken seriously, without risking erasure of fleshy, leaky, porous, codified bodies in Montessori spaces.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1177/14639491221117222

ISSN: 1463-9491

Language: English

Published: New York, New York: Schocken Books, 1973

Edition: 1. english ed

Language: Italian

Published: Roma, Italy: Ente Opera Montessori, [1956]

Abstract/Notes: Maria Montessori, a doctor of medicine in Italy, employed herself in curing abnormal children, afterwards, turned to an educator. She was influenced partly by Itard and Seguin, and partly by Rousseau and Froebel. Recently arguments on Montessori method have resumed with the worldwide concern to develop early the powers latent within children. Montessori method is characterized by the concreteness which her theory can be rightly put into practice because her principles were established on the basis of her experiences in a "Children's House". Since the first criticism on her theory by kilpatrick, however, there have been arguments for and against her theory. Her educational theory, first of all, premised that the fundemental differences between children and adults must always be considered; unlike the case of adults with their development stopped, "preparing environment" required along the developmental stages of children must be given to them. She stressed, under this environment, the importance of the spontaneous activity by child without being interfered and of the role of teachers as his assistants only when help demanded. She discovered the phenemenon of concentration through children's sponta-neous interest in learning, and regarded such a situation reached as being normalized. She also considered the sensitive period, in which intellectual absorption is most remarkable, she said that unless a papticular ability was gained in the period, child would lose an opportunity of developing the ability. Though her educational theory and method has an important effect upon early childhood education, there are many problems awaiting solution. Therefore it is desirable that the questions are settled and new Montessori school based on Montessori method is developed.

Language: Korean

Abstract/Notes: María Montessori is one of the most remembered authors of the Active Education. His works have been an important reference for the production of discourse in education and pedagogy in the last century. However, despite its relevance, the work of the Italian has had appropriations that, in many cases, do not coincide with her pedagogical principles, her philosophical foundations, or her conception of the child. This paper proposes a direct review of some of his works, located at different moments of his intellectual production, in order to discuss some of his concepts and ideas.

Language: Spanish

DOI: 10.17227/pys.num58-17207

ISSN: 2500-6436, 0121-2494

Language: Italian

Published: Roma, Italy: Ente Opera Montessori, 1953

Language: Italian

Published: Roma, Italy: Ente Opera Montessori, 1953

Language: French, Italian

Published: Roma, Italy: Ente Opera Montessori, 1950

Language: Italian

Published: Roma, Italy: Ente Opera Montessori, [1953]