The Importance Of Montessori Education

Recently, Montessori Education has been introduced in Mainland China, and this educational system has become increasingly popular among Chinese. Dating back to 1906, Maria Montessori set up the Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House), which was the embryo of Montessori system today (Kazdin, 2000). In this point, wondering why is Montessori system effective and successful is a common consideration among the parents. In the following content, Montessori classroom approach would be analyzed by some learning theories. To know about Montessori, the first glance should be focused on the classroom. Stepping in a Montessori classroom, you feel clam and quiet. A comfortable environment is indeed necessary for learning. According to Guthrie’s theory, environment

In the relationship between Montessori teacher and student, teacher leads students to novel lessons and challenges like a guilder; however, children usually freely choose and interact with the environment which provides stimulus enable children’s learning (Lillard, 2013). According to Olson and Hergenhahn (2013, P. 281), Piaget advocated that students should be provided chances by educational environment to discover by themselves. Instruction might prevent children from complete understanding. In addition, this theory was proved in a meta-analyses conducted by Alfieri, Brooks, Aldrich and Tenenbau (2011), which indicated that “unassisted discovery learning might lead to better learning outcomes than explicit-instructional tasks”. At this point, you might worry what if the students were not able to solve problems by their own. As it was mentioned above, Montessori materials are designed to facilitate students to correct mistake independently. Moreover, Montessori teachers would guide the students toward the established goals. Such tool is an application of scaffolding from Vygotsky (Driscoll, 2005, P. 257), which describes that instructors provide supports for the learner to construct

Multi-Age grouping is employed-“A Montessori class is composed of students whose ages typically span 3 years” (American Montessori Society, 2016)-to enable students work together. According to Vygostsky’ theory, an advanced peer give a hand to juniors, which facilitates younger students’ learning (Driscoll, 2005, P. 257). Also, Bandura and Huston (1961) illustrated that children have tendencies to imitate the behaviors from models, which indicates that it is easy for children to activate learning or absorb learning strategy from advanced peers. In the same time, teachers should be cautious about it, because aggressive behaviors are also imitable objects for younger children (Bandura, Ross & Ross, 1961). In general, both the students and teachers build up a caring community in Montessori classroom, which enables the children to transfer the respect and obliging attitude to the societal life in their