mNÎESSORIAND OTHER APPROACHES
Montessori and Constructivism
he regarded as real—the touchable and
seeable. Empiricism was also reflected
in the major premise of behavioristic educational research as expressed by its
founder, Fdward Lee Thorndike. It was
Thomdike who said that "if it cannot be
measured, it does not exist." And in general behaviorism and behavioristic, stimulus/response, reward/punishment approaches to education are examples of
the empiricist epistemology. Although
the early behaviorists eschewed mentalistic concepts, many contemporary writers
now take cognition into account.
By David Elkind
E
vei-y approach to education près Lipposes an episteinology, a set of underlying, unquestioned assumptions
about how we come to know tlie world.
While every educational program presupposes an epistemology, it does not
always start from a set of explicit philosophical assumptions. For some educators, their pedagogy is an outgrowth of
their day-to-day experiences with children in the classroom. It is only when
these innovators try to articulate their
methods that they seek out a philosophy
that provides a rationale for their practice. In contrast, other educators start
from an explicit epistemology and attempt to derive a set of curricula and
teaching methods in keeping with their
philosophical predispositions. The road
between epistemology and pedagogy is
thus always a two-way thoroughfare.
This said, it is also true that gifted teachers resemble one another regardless of
their theoretical persuasion or type of classroom experience. This speaks to the fact
that talented teaching is, in part at least, an
art that cannot be derived from, or translated into, any general abstract epistemology. That is why I have chosen to compare
Montessori and the constructi vist approach
from the perspective of their epistemologies rather from that of their practice.
Teaching materials aside, in the hands of
gifted teachers, the emotional climates of
classrooms in either program are more
alike than different. Accordingly, in this
paper I will first present the three basic
epistemologies and then analyze and compare the two approaches with respect to
their philosophical rationales.
The Three Basic
Epistemological Positions
Empiricism
One way to look at how we come to
know the world is the empiricist perspective. From this point of view, the world
exists quite independently ofour minds
and we learn about it by, in effect, taking
pictures of it with our senses. Our senses
operate like a camera and our memory is
26
Montessori LIFE • Winter 2003
davidsonfilms.com
Constructivism is based in the ideas of Swiss
epistemoiogist Jean Piaget.
like unused film that gets exposed as we
look, touch, listen, taste, and feel the
world about us. For the empiricist, the
difference between children and adults is
that adults have taken many more pictures of the world and have larger film
albums. Individual differences occur because people are bom with different cameras and different types of film. Some
people may have 35iTim minds, while
some have Polaroid mentalities. Some
people have fast film, while others have
slowerbut more light-sensitive celluloid.
Regardless of camera or film type, however, learning about the world is a matter
of taking pictures of a pre-existing reality. "Nothing in the mind that was not
first in the senses" is the mantra of the
empiricist epistemology.
Translated into educational theory and
practice, empiricism would suggest a
teacher-directed, rote-learning approach
to helping children learn about the world.
Recall Professor Gradgrind in Dickens's
novel Hard Times. Professor Gradgrind
did not want to have plums on the wallpaper because plums do not grow on walls,
they grow on trees. He wanted children to
learn facts, nothing but the facts.
Gradgrind was opposed to any sort of
fiction or works that deviated from what
Nativism
At the other end of the epistemological
spectrum is the nativist position. In contrast to the empiricist, the nativist position
is that we are bom knowing everything we
will ever know about the world. This
knowledge is, however, latent and needs
to be elicited before it can be put to use.
From this perspective the mind acts not so
much like acameraas like afilmprojector.
Leaming about the world is an active
process of loading the film onto the projector and projecting the images onto the
blank screen which is the world. The difference between children and adults is that
adults have watched many more films and
have more abundant film memories. Individual differences can be accounted for by
the fact that some people are bom with
more extensive film libraries than others,
and projectors vary as to the size and speed
of film they can project. Individual differences can also result from mechanical or
lens defects. The mantra of the nativist
position is that "there is nothing in the
world that was not first in the mind."
The classical example of the nativistic
approachtoeducation is, of course, Plato
and his use of the Socratic Method. In his
directive questioning of his students, Plato
hoped to get them to discover what they
already knew. This knowledge, however,
was deductive and was implicit in the
reasoning process. For example, once
you can reason syllogistically (e.g.. All
men are mortal, Socrates is a man; therefore Socrates is mortal), you can deduce
a number of facts. This kind of deduction
is actually present in much that we teach
childreti. For example, we help children
to learn the rule that hot things burn and
hurt, this stove is hot, therefore it will
burn and hurt. Whenever we teach children general rules, we are asking them to
engage in deductive reasoning and to
discover something that was latent in
their ability to reason. The problem with
this approach is that the initial premise
mu.st come from experience, not from the
mind. While some knowledge is clearly
deductive, much of it is also inductive,
gleaned from experience.
Constructivism
The third, constructivist position is, as one
might expect, somewhere between the other
two. It argues that our knowledge of the
world has both empiricist and nativist components. There is indeed a real world that
exists independently of our senses. Yet we
can only know that worid through inbom
categories thatorganize the informationcoming in from our senses. Space, time, and
number, for example, do not exist in the real
world but ai-e forms that we impose upon the
environment in order to understand and to
control it. From this perspective the mind
operates not so much in a mechanical way as
it does in a human way. In effect, the mind
operates like an artist who takes something
from himselfor herself and something from
the world and then brings them together to
create something that cannot be reduced to
either one. The mantra of this position is that
"we construct our knowledge of reality out
of our experiences with the environment."
Although there is a real environment, we can
never know it in and of itself ( Kant" s Í://»5 fl/íí
selbst) but only our interpretations of it.
Constructivism has been translated into
a number of different pedagogical systems. One of the underlying themes of
these constructivist approaches is discovery learning. Friedrich Froebel, the inventor of the kindergarten, held to the
constructivist position. He gave children
what he called his 20 "gifts." which ranged
from a simple ball and square to geometrically shaped pieces of colored paper, to be
arranged in different patterns. Froebel was
a crystallographer by profession and believed that with his gifts children would be
able to discover underlying patterns that
would hold at different levels of understanding. The ball would give the child the
concept of roundness but also later of the
earth, and eventually the universe. Froebel
thus emphasized the importance of the
child's own actions in discovering the
world. In Froebel's view, it is the child
interacting with the world that is his or her
means of discovering it.
The Child
To briefly summarize these three epistemologies, it might be useful to describe the
kind of child presupposed by each position. For the empiricist the child isa mime.
who arrives at knowledge by being able to
copy each and every experience. The nativist, in contrast, looks upon the child as a
logician, who arrives at knowledge through
rea.son. In contrast, the constructivist sees
the child as the (f/yr/i/Yecr of his or her own
knowledge. These three models are, of
course, ideal types that do not exist in
practice. Every chi Id has a bit of the mime,
the logician, and the architect in himselfor
herself. Indeed these three models might
be described as the three basic modes of
learning: imitation, reason, and construction. Opposed educational systems tend to
focus upon and elaborate one or another of
these dispositions but always include at
least a bit of the others.
Maria Montessori
Given these thi"ee basic epistemologies, to
which one does Montessori ascribe? In many
respects Montessori is an eclectic, because
her approach incorporates all three epistemologies. One could, for example, argue
that Montessori was a nativist. She was
steeped in the writings of Rousseau,
Pestalozzi, and Froebel, all of whom stressed
that children have their own ways of coming
to know the world. But she was also influenced by Giuseppe Sergi, an anthropology
professor, who impressed upon her the importance of the school environment. The
significance of the environment became even
more apparent to Montessori in her work
with retarded children. Using some of the
methods and materials of Itard and Seguin.
she found that so-called retarded children
could make quite remarkable progress. In
short, in her formative years Montessori was
influenced both by the nativists and by the
empiricists. These two perspectives are reflected in her educational methodology. Yet
Montessori also knew of and read Piaget.
Indeed, some of her foundation ideas also
reflect a constructivist emphasis. Perhaps it
is because Montessori education encompasses all three epistemologies that it has
survived and continued to grow as a pedagogical influence.
One way to appreciate Montessori's incorporation ot the three epistemologies is
to look at the cornerstone of her educational philo.sophy, namely, the child. Montessori believed that perhaps her greatest
discovery was that of true child nature and
how this is often misunderstood by adults.
It is her conception of the child which
embodies all three of the epistemologies.
With regard to nativism. in her book 77?^
y4/7.s'ori>e/ï/A//ii£/. Montessori (1967) writes,
"There is, so to speak—in every child a
painstaking teacher, so skilled that he obtains identical results in all children in all
parts of the world" (p. 6). Her description
of sensitive periods also reflects this recognition of inbom propensities. "A .sensitive period refers to a.. . .transient disposition and [is] limited to the acquisition of
a particular trait. Once this trait or characteristic is acquired, the special sensibility
disappears" (Montessori, 1966, pp. 4649). Likewise, '"Nature endows the child
with a sensitiveness to order. . . .order
consists in recognizing the place for each
object.. .and in remembering where each
thing should be" (Montessori, 1966, p.
19). In practice, Montessori employed selfdidactic methods by which children could
leam concepts by correcting themselves.
The set of wooden cylinders with different
diameters that are to be placed in likesized holes is an example. With these
cylinders the child can leam the correct
sequence because, unless the cylinders are
placed in therightholes, they will not all flt
in. The child's own logic gives rise to the
solution. (One might argue, however, that
her self-didactic methods are also empiricist, in that the child is leaming by trial and
error as well as by logic.)
Montessori's empiricist bent is observed
Both Moníessoriün.s and consiri(Lii\isi\ ¡>iii ihe
child at the center of the educational program
and emphasize the opporUinit}' to explore, manipulate, and operate upon materials ai the
child's own time and rhythm.
Adolescence (1973). In that book she flrst
commends Comenius for introducing pictures into the education of children. But she
then objects that this approach has been
misused to close children in, rather than to
open them out. She writes, 'There is no
description, no image in any book that is
capable of replacing the sight of real trees,
Montessori LIFE - Winter 2003
27
and the life that is to be found around them,
in a real forest" (Montessori, 1973, p. 35).
Montessori also invokes theempiricist principles of abstraction and generalization
used to go from the particular to the
general, the inductive method of empiricism. "After seeing a river or a lake, is it
necessary to see all the rivers and lakes
of the world to know what they are? The
imagination, afterward is able to form a
concept of the world
This is a universal means of learning" (Montessori,
1973, p. 35).
Montessori's constructivist leanings are
reflected in her constant emphasis upon
the child's own activity in his or her construction of knowledge and intelligence.
"The hands are the instmments of man's
intelligence. . . .He constructs his mind
step by step till it becomes possessed by
memory, the power to understand, the
power to think" (Montessori, 1967, p.27).
Like Piaget, Montessori emphasizes the
importance of the child's own activity in
the construction of both mind and knowledge. To a greater extent than Piaget,
however, she emphasizes the importance
of the hand in the constructive process:
"His hands under the guidance of his intellect transform the environment and thus
enable him to perform his mission in the
world" (Montessori, 1967, p. 152). Montessori is thus a construetivist to the extent
that she regards the child as constructing
and transforming the environment through
his or her own activity.
In sum, Montessori's educational practice reflects not one epistemology, but
three. Her conception of sensitive periods reflects nativism, while her emphasis upon the inductive nature of imagination suggests empiricism. Finally., her
description of the child's constructing
and transforming the world through his
or her own activity is evidence of her
constructivism.
High/Scope was
founded by
David Weikart
in 1970.
High/Scope
When we turn to the construetivist position as reflected in the High/Scope Program (Weikart, Rogers, Adcock, &
McClelland, 1971 ), we can see how practice is in many ways dictated by theory.
Teaching number is a case in point. Piaget
(Piaget & Szeminska, 1952) described
number as developing in three stages that
were related to age. The first, nominal
stage appears at the age of 2 or 3, when
children use number as a label. As adults
we continue to use nominal number whenever, say, we call a baseball, football, or
basketball player by his or her jersey number. The number doesn't stand for the
amount of anything, it merely serves as a
name. At the ages of 3 to 4, children
generally attain the ordinal concept of
number. At this stage the child can arrange
objects according to size. When a child
correctly builds a pink tower, this is evidence that he or she can understand the
relations "bigger than" and "smaller than."
Finally, at the age of 5 or 6, most children
arrive at a ÍÍ/ÍÍY concept of number. At this
age children appreciate that every number, say the number 3, is like every other
number in that it is a number, but different from every other number in that it is
the only number that comes after 2 and
before 4. It is both like and different from
every other unit, and it is that combined
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Moniessori LIFE -Winter 2003
quality of likeness and difference that
makes it a unit. On the basis of his research investigations, Piaget suggested
that children construct the unit concept as
a result of practicing classification and
seriation. Classification teaches the child
the sense of sameness, while seriation—
ordering according to variations in size,
weight, color, etc.—teaches the sense of
difference. When the child brings these
two relations together, he or she constructs a unit concept. This in turn makes
possible all of the elementary operations
of arithmetic.
Starting from this descriprion of the
construction of number, the High/Scope
curriculum writers devised their teaching materials and instructional strategies (Weikart, 1973). Young children
were given a great many different materials to classify and to seriate. They were
also given materials they could use to
put things in one-to-one correspondence.
For example, they might be given toy
eggs and egg cups, toy birds and nests,
toy flowers and vases. The one-to-one
correspondence helps children recognize that things can go together even
though they don't resemble one another.
In other words, it is a way of helping
them understand that things can be the
same and different at the same time.
High/Scope teachers provide the material, model the activity, and instruct the
child to follow their example. Through
these exercises it is expected that the
child herself will come to construct the
unit concept (Kamii, 1973).
The construetivist emphasis is present
throughout the High/Scope program. The
problem with this emphasis upon
constructivism is that now all knowledge can be constructed by the child.
The constructivists distinguish, as did
Piaget, between physical knowledge and
social knowledge and argue that both
are constructed through the child's activity. An equally important distinction,
however, is between personally constructed and socially constructed knowledge. Each child must indeed construct
his or her conception of sweetness, hardness, loud, and soft, which can only be
acquired by personal experience with
these stimuli. But most knowledge is
socially constructed and children really
cannot be expected to discover algebra,
the periodic table, and relativity. Indeed, language itself is a social construction and in acquiring it, children
must use both imitation and reason.
While the constructivistemphasis makes
most sense at the early childhood level,
even at that level children have to employ all three modes of learning.
The Two Programs
In comparing Montessori with the High/
Scope Constructivist position, there are
both differences and similarities. In High/
Scope there is a greater emphasis upon
assessment than there is in Montessori,
where children's own choices often dictate the materials they will use. Likewise,
the Montessori classroom is a much more
prepared environment than is the
constructivist. This is true because Montessori has well defined curriculum materials that are to be found in all Montessori
schools. In constructivist classrooms, however, there is a much greater variety of
instructional aids. For example, teachers
can use whatever materials they choose to
teach children classification and seriation.
Finally, in Montessori classrooms play
and imagination are often put to practical
purposes, whereas in the constructivist
classroom play and imagination are seen
as original endeavors that allow children
to arrive at their own creations.
There are many similarities, as well.
Both Montessorians and constructivists
put the child at the center of the educational program. The teacher prepares the
environment and may model one or another activity, but the emphasis is upon
children having the opportunity to explore, manipulate, and operate upon materials at their own time and in their own
rhythm. And in both approaches, Montessori explicitly and constructivists implicitly, there is the need to see children
as mimes, logicians, and architects. This
is true because most of what children
learn is socially constructed and cannot
be arrived at by the child on his or her
own. It is to Montessori's credit that she
recognized this and made room in her
pedagogy for all three modes of learning.
Constructivists have yet to come to grips
with the fact that not all knowledge can be
constructed by the child. Some knowledge has been arrived at by reason, and
some simply learned by heart.
In conclusion, while Montessori and the
constructivists have taken different routes
to their educational practice, they have
arrived at very similar destinations. Both
programs are age- appropriate and emphasize observing the child as the best way to
decide on the best educational intervention. Paradoxically, the Montessori ap-
proach, which is generally thought to be
morerigidthan the constructivist, is in fact
more open. Montessori explicitly endorses
the three major epistemologies. while the
constructivists employ them without fully
acknowledging them. Given these similarities, it is time for these two approaches
to work together to create an even better
learning environment for young children.
DR. DAVID ELKÎND, noted author and
a major interpreter of Piaget's ideas in
the US, is professor of child development
at Tufts University, Medford, MA.
References
Kamii. C. (1973). A sketch of the Piaget-derived preschool curriculum developed by the Yipsilanii early
education program. In B. Spodek(Ed.), Early Childhood Education. Englewood Cliffs, NJ:Prendce Hall.
Montessori. M. (1966). The secret of childhood Notre
Dame, IN: Fides.
Montessori, M, (1967). The absorbent mind. New
York: Delta.
Montessori, M. (1973). From childhood to adolescence. New York: Schocken Books.
Piaget, J.,& Szeminska. A. (1952). The child's conception of number. London: Roulledge &Kegan Paul.
Weikart, D.. & Hohmann, C. ( 1973). Classification in
the High/Scope cognitive ctirriculum. Paper presented at the Biennial Meeting of the Society forthe
Research in Child Development. Philadelphia, PA.
Weikart, D., Rogers. L., Adcock. C , & McClelland,
D. (1971). The cogniliveh oriented curriculum.
Washington, DC: NAEYC'.
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29