Language: English

Published: [Corpus Christi, Texas]: The Lilliput Schoolhouse, 1963

Language: English

ISSN: 0028-5048

Language: English

ISSN: 0010-700X

Language: English

Language: English

ISSN: 1071-6246

Abstract/Notes: Montessori's theories, developed more than 100 years ago, certainly resonate with current psychological research on improving education. Autonomy, interest, competence, and relatedness form the foundation for three contemporary efforts to organize the vast literature on motivation into a parsimonious theory. These four elements also comprise fundamental aspects of Montessori elementary educational practice. By integrating modern motivation theory development with well-established Montessori practice, one could argue that Maria Montessori was a woman before her time. She was passionate in the early 1900s about the importance of students becoming actively engaged in their own learning. Montessori schools around the world today live that vision through practices that are beginning to be recognized as crucial to the formation of internal motivation. (Contains 1 figure.)

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Language: English

ISSN: 0044-0728

Abstract/Notes: Through philosophical analysis of Montessori’s critiques of psychology, I aim to show the enduring relevance of those critiques. Maria Montessori sees experimental psychology as fundamental to philosophy and pedagogy, but she objects to the experimental psychology of her day in four ways: as disconnected from practice, as myopic, as based excessively on methods from physical sciences, and—most fundamentally—as offering detailed examinations of human beings (particularly children) under abnormal conditions. In place of these prevailing norms, Montessori suggests a model of the teacher-scientist in a specially prepared environment, who can engage in sustained and impassioned observation of “normalized” children. Drawing from a variety of texts and recently published lectures, this article lays out Montessori’s philosophy of experimental psychology and briefly discusses its relevance today.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1086/682395

ISSN: 2152-5188

Language: English

ISSN: 1054-0040

Abstract/Notes: This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of social solidarity that goes beyond cooperation toward shared agency. Partly because she attends to children's ethical lives, Montessori highlights how character, respect, and solidarity all appear first as prereflective, embodied orientations of agency. Full moral virtue takes up prereflective orientations reflectively and extends them through moral concepts. Overall, Montessori's ethic improves on features similar to some in Nietzschean, Kantian, Hegelian, or Aristotelian ethical theories while situating these within a developmental and perfectionist ethics.

Language: English

DOI: 10.1017/apa.2019.41

ISSN: 2053-4477, 2053-4485