"Montessori method"  History

The "Montessori method" developed from experimental research that Dr. Maria Montessori conducted with children with intellectual disabilities in the early 1900s.^[10] She began this research using the basic idea of scientific education that was developed and employed in the 1800s with children with special needs by French physicians Jean Itard and Edouard Seguin.^[11] A student and associate of Itard, Seguin extended Itard's initial idea of observing children in their natural, free activity by adding a series of exercises with specially designed self-teaching materials. Based on Dr. Montessori's success using this same approach in her initial research with children with disabilities, she began to look for an opportunity to study how it might be applied to benefit the education of typically developing children as well.^[12]

Montessori was asked to establish a day-care center for young children (2–6) in a low-income housing area of Rome's San Lorenzo district.^[13] She opened the center in 1907, calling it a Children's House,and began observing the children in the scientific manner indicated before by Seguin.^[12] In this process, Dr. Montessori soon discovered that the children responded to the materials with a deep concentration that resulted in a fundamental shift in their way of being, changing from the ordinary behavior of fantasy, inattention, and disorder, to a state of profound peace, calm and order within their environment. Observing this change occurring with all the children in her environment, she concluded that she had discovered the child's true normal nature. Later, Dr. Montessori referred to this change as normalization and the new emerging children as normalized.^[14]

After 1907, Dr. Montessori reported her discovery and experiences to educators and others who became increasingly interested in learning how these changes came about in children. This interest soon led her to write various books on the subject and conduct training programs to explain her approach, which eventually came to be known as the "Montessori method." ^[15]

Following her initial experiments with young children, Montessori extended her research by introducing new materials and studying the effects of her approach with children of different ages. For example, near the end of her life, in her book De l'Enfant à l'Adolescent,^[16] (From Childhood to Adolescence), Montessori contributed to the work of the International Bureau of Education and UNESCO, by relating how her method would apply to the secondary-school and university settings. Her writings, lectures, and research during some 40 years until her death in 1952 constituted the basic foundation of knowledge about the method, which is currently conducted according to various philosophies in schools and other institutions associated with the name Montessori throughout the world.^[17] The method has developed along several different philosophical tracks. Each track has evolved its own distinctive organizational affiliations, training and presentation of the method to the general public.^[18]