Sunday, 11 August 2013

What Are The Advantages Of Montessori

By Andrea Davidson


Dr. Maria Montessori, Italian physician and educator, developed an educational approach which takes emphasis on respect for natural development and freedom within limits. In her methodology, the natural development of child is given importance in terms of psychological, social, and physical aspect. Montessori Mississauga system is adapted by many schools found all over the world, in both the public and the private schools.

She developed her methods and her philosophy in 1897 and attending courses in pedagogy at the University of Rome and studying educational theories from previous educators. Pedagogy is the science and art of education and, specifically, instructional theory. She based her work on her observations of children and experimented with the materials, environment, and teachings available to them.

Her approach to education is basically modeled after the natural human development and has two main elements. The first element outlines that the child, and even developing adults, who constantly interacts with the environment develops psychological self construction. Young children, particularly those below the age of six, have an innate psychological development.

She believes that kids who are given liberty in choosing and acts freely in their environment will do their tasks spontaneously for the highest development. This was fashioned to take full advantage of their desire to learn and their ability to develop unique capabilities. However, adults are still needed for the exposure of the different possibilities, but the children must be the one to determine their responses to these possibilities.

The primary belief in this approach in educating is that students must be viewed as different from the adults and they should be seen as individuals with different characters and personalities. Children possesses high sensitivity and intellectual capability to absorbing and learning from their environment. In the foremost year of their lives in which both mind and body is developing and changing, unconditional learning is introduced to the conscious level.

Children loves and needs purposeful work and they do it for the task itself and, unlike adults, not for the completion of the work. This enables them to accomplish their most important goal, which is the development of their selves mentally, psychologically, and physically. Yet, there are still many advantages and disadvantages of these method especially those who are transitioning to traditional schools.

First problem is the management of the students, where most Montessori students are used to doing things on their own ways. Asking permission is the norm in traditional schools such as bathroom breaks, sharpening pencils, completion of their work and many more. These students are also used to working as a team and helping each other.

They use conflict resolution skills to work on their problems and the teachers respect their opinions and their inputs and encourage them on it. They are also used to respect the needs of other students and having their needs respected too. This can cause problems when children are now in a situation where are given limits and are not allowed to come up with their own solution.

They also have the freedom pick the pace of their learning and will only move on to new lessons whenever they want. Adjusting to a new environment will take time especially with a preconceived program. Those are some of the benefits and disadvantages of the Montessori Mississauga education system.




About the Author:



No comments:

Post a Comment