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 Missouri Montessori Teacher Education Program Barbara Fulton, Ph.D. Administrative Director • • • • Claire Kim, M.Ed.. AMS Academic Director Beautiful campus and classrooms AMS Early Childhood Diploma Dedicated and experienced Faculty Graduate credit available (314) 469-6622 FAX (314) 469-7889 i 100 White Road Chesterfield, MO 63017 MOMTEP admits students of any race, color, national and ethnic origin. 28 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'. \ \ ! • -^,000 ilrii;:, ID 2800 H Dorr Avenue, Fairfax, VA 22031 Tele.: 800-287-1985, FAX: 703-205-0889 www.monte55ori-n-sucb.com Montessori LIFE • Winter 2003 29