The main purpose of this article is to describe the nature of imaginary play in Montessori classrooms. A transcript from a train ride shows how young children imagine and recreate ideas from their real world experiences and weave them into original new accounts. The author discusses how the play-like action of dramatizing "The Caboose Who Got…

Montessori educators follow Montessori's lead and use the word "work" to describe the child's concentrated attention with a hands-on material. But this word may lead to communication problems with parents and those in the non-Montessori world: educators, administrators, accreditors, and so on. These communication problems are…

Within the United States, there are a variety of early education models and curricula aimed at promoting young children's pre-academic, social, and behavioral skills. This study, using data from the Miami School Readiness Project (Winsler et al., 2008, 2012), examined the school readiness gains of low-income Latino (n = 7,045) and Black (n =…

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…

This article presents edited transcripts of separate Skype conversations with Richard Ungerer, AMS executive director, in his office at AMS headquarters in New York and Andre Roberfroid, president of AMI, at his home in Vetraz-Monthoux, France. It also presents a discussion of the ways the two organizations can join forces to strengthen the…

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.…

"The Montessori Observer" is mailed four times each year, in March, May, September and November, to Society members throughout the world. The purpose is to provide news and information about the Society's work in Montessori education, and to extend awareness of Montessori principles throughout the world. This issue contains a feature…

"Understanding the Montessori Approach" is a much needed source of information for those wishing to extend and consolidate their understanding of the Montessori Approach and how it is used in the teaching and learning of young children. It will enable the reader to analyse the essential elements of this Approach to early childhood and and its…

The purpose of this phenomenological study was to examine the perceptions of Texas public Montessori school principals as instructional leaders in science. Twelve public Montessori school principals were interviewed for this study. Two research questions were used: How do public Montessori principals perceive Texas science standards in public…

Martha Urioste tells a compelling history of public sector Montessori in Denver, from its socially charged beginnings in the 1960s to 2009. She played a huge role in creating the first public Montessori school in Colorado that was launched as an integration model with bilingual classes and staff. This inspirational story begins with her early…

"The Montessori Observer" is mailed four times each year, in March, May, September and November, to Society members throughout the world. The purpose is to provide news and information about the Society's work in Montessori education, and to extend awareness of Montessori principles throughout the world. This issue contains a feature…

This study compared word recognition for words written in a traditional flat font to the same words written in a three-dimensional appearing font determined to create a right hemispheric stimulation. The participants were emergent readers enrolled in Montessori schools in the United States learning to read basic CVC (consonant, vowel, consonant)…

This study explored why parents choose Montessori schools for their children. Parents from two public (n = 40) and two private (n = 10) Montessori schools responded to a written survey designed to discern what characteristics parents valued in making their decision. Descriptive statistics, t-tests, and chi-square tests were used to understand the…

The early 1960s was a critical, albeit chaotic, period for the revival of the Montessori movement, which had been recently rekindled in the United States. The success or failure of the movement can arguably be said to have rested squarely upon the backs of those founding members and early supporters of the fledgling American Montessori Society,…

This article presents findings from a qualitative case study of a public Montessori magnet school in the United States. It focuses on two teachers' experiences, identifying how their teaching is situated in school scripts, that is; ways of speaking about teaching and learning within particular school micro-cultures. The focal teachers utilized…