At age 13, Montessori acted on her interest in mathematics and her vision of studying engineering, and convinced her parents to enroll her in a technical institute, in a class where she was one of two female students. This article presents how Maria Montessori broke through barriers to leave an innovative educational method. A timeline of her life…

Philipp Abraham Kohnstamm (1875-1951) was one of the founders of Dutch educational science and a key figure in the New Education movement in the Netherlands. This article has three aims: first, to depict Kohnstamm as an insightful example in the process of sharing and adopting ideas around New Education and the implementation of these ideas in the…

This article has as its focus the life and thinking of the practitioner and theorist Norman MacMunn (1877-1925), whose experimental work in a number of schools outlined a new conception of freedom and one that drew initially upon the thinking and practice of Maria Montessori. It explores how MacMunn used these new psychological ideas to develop…

Educational pioneers believed that the early childhood curriculum was inappropriate for most of the children. It needed to be modified to meet each child's maturing needs, abilities, and interests. The pioneers advocated that education should be more hands-on and assist children to function successfully in society. They recommended the initiation…

This article explores the history and pedagogy of Janusz Korczak within the context of his contemporary early Twentieth-Century European Innovative Educators which include Maria Montessori, Homer Lane, A.S. Neill, and Anton Semyonovitch Makarenko. The pedagogies of the aforementioned are compared and contrasted within the literature.

This article examines Maria Montessori's ideas on education and young children with specific reference to: (1) the nature of the child; (2) the religious dimension of her ideas; (3) other philosophical ideas which support Montessori's approach to educating young children; (4) cognitive development in young children; and (5) the moral dimension of…