Montessori: method or response: a practitioner's investigation into Montessori pre-school education

Abstract

This thesis argues that the practice and discourse of Montessori education should be explicitly concerned with the creation of a culture of response rather than with the implementation of a method. It is argued that in order for a culture of response to occur there must be within Montessori discourse and practice an explicit recognition of the need for teachers to engage critically and continuously with the assumptions that underpin Montessori thought and practice.
This is difficult, however, because there is a tension between Montessori as a method and Montessori as response. An attempt is made to examine Montessori discourse in order to understand the nature of this tension. This involves looking at Montessori discourse from a perspective that borrows from Poststructuralist thinking.
It is suggested that in Montessori discourse there exists a relationship between certain elements of the discourse and its practices that may bind tightly together the subjectivity, or identity, of the teacher; the claims to legitimacy and truth of the discourse itself; and particular, positivist, notions of the individual, of truth, nature, change, society, and knowledge.
From a Postructuralist perspective this constellation of relationships begins to unravel when Montessori discourse is seen to arise from specific beliefs and assumptions that underpin apparently common sense understandings regarding children, learning, society and change. These understandings may result in the maintenance of the dichotomy between the observer and the observed, the teacher and the child, the knower and the known and the inevitable power relations that accompany such dichotomies. This Poststructuralist concern with the issue of power is thus a significant issue for educators who are attempting to provide a learning environment that is responsive to children’s diverse attempts to make sense of the world and to find a voice. A critical engagement with Montessori discourse, and practice, thus requires an engagement with the ways in which it may construct a relationship between teacher and child that may be inimical to the development of a culture of response in Montessori schools.

Date of Award	1998
Original language	English
Supervisor	Tim Hardy (Supervisor) & Anne Hone (Supervisor)