Polli Soholt writes about advanced practical life and demonstrates that adding more challenge and complexity for older children leads to more social cooperation. Activities such as washing dishes, polishing, sewing, and food preparation take the child beyond the need to refine basic skills. The older primary children find more reality in tasks…

Students in grades 3 and 4 attending a traditional public elementary school in a northeastern state did not meet proficiency levels in mathematics as measured by the state's assessment system. Published reports indicated that students attending the Montessori programs were more proficient in solving math problems compared to students in…

Audrey Sillick's article, first printed in 1988, provides a theory base for Maria Montessori's foundational emphasis on the biological sciences and the sustainability of a living, organic planet Earth as part of the educational process "of becoming more fully human." Ms. Sillick helps link primary-level biology with the special energy…

Research from the past 40 years indicates that Black students in primary and secondary school settings are subjected to exclusionary discipline, including suspension and expulsion, at rates two to three times higher than their White peers (Children's Defense Fund, 1975; Skiba, Michael, Nardo, & Peterson, 2002). Although this phenomenon has…

Recognizing Maria and Mario Montessori's reverence for the hand, Pat Ludick takes the reader into the wonder of the human body, mind, and spirit and across the planes of education, into the making of a whole personality and grounded intelligence that is ready for the adult world. Putting the hand front and center, she lyrically evolves an overview…

Within the current standards-based framework of early primary education, teachers must negotiate the integration of assessment with traditional, developmental orientations to teaching and learning. The purpose of this qualitative study was to examine teachers' approaches to early primary assessment within five different school contexts: public,…

John McNamara's historically rich descriptions of his adolescent community life in one school where he taught the same children from grade one to grade eight sends a warm message of the merge of elementary and middle-school personalities as they are beginning to understand the wonder of growing up. Their letters and speeches remember the impact of…

Getting to know one's child's teachers will help parents know where they are coming from and why they are teaching. It might also give parents insight into the relationship they have with their child or children. This article illustrates what the author means through a story. The author suggests that parents need talk to their child's teachers.…

Educational philosophy in elementary and secondary schools has often centered on creating a "product," full of content knowledge and basic skills (Bagby, 2002). However, no longer is academic achievement in the classroom considered the sole gauge of lifelong success. Meltzer (2010) suggested that the development of executive functioning skills…

Gerard Leonard and Kathleen Allen describe a variety of nature experiences as a part of the Montessori elementary tradition, beginning with a warning about the way contemporary life constrains children's experience of nature. Through a lyrical rendering of the nature-based expressions of children, Leonard and Allen look at a variety of approaches…

A public Montessori school is expected to demonstrate high student scores on standardized assessments to succeed in the current school accountability era. A problem for a public Montessori elementary school is how to make sense of the school's high-stakes assessment scores in terms of Montessori's unique educational approach. This case study…

Elementary education has theoretical underpinnings based on cognitive psychology. Ideas from cognitive psychologists such as James, Dewey, Piaget, and Vygotsky coalesce to form constructivism (Cooper, 1993; Yager, 2000; Yilmaz, 2011). Among others, the Montessori Method (1912/1964) is an exemplar of constructivism. Currently, public education in…

This qualitative study investigated how pedagogy-driven schools create inclusive communities. From the analysis of open-ended interviews with members of 3 pedagogically driven public elementary schools (Core Knowledge, Experiential, and Montessori) in the United States of America, 3 themes emerged: (1) "community and culture," (2)…

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…

The purpose of this study was to examine the executive function of 4th- to 6th-grade students in three distinctively different private school environments: a Montessori school, a classical school, and a Catholic school. Using the Behavior Rating Inventory of Executive Function, parent-teacher dyads rated the executive function of 112 students.…