I recently had the pleasure of researching two influential figures of early childhood education. I chose Maria Montessori and John Piaget. Both individuals focus on the development of young children and their learning through discovery.
Maria Montessori was born in Italy. Maria Montessori’s childhood “responsibilities helped… develop a sense of mastery and leadership and prepared her to make decisions later that would enable her to become a capable woman” (Povell 2007). She was a frontier in woman’s liberation in Italy. Her mother was supportive of her desire to break through the female norm. Montessori studied math and engineering at the age of 13. She then went on to graduate as the first female to obtain her medical degree in Italy. Montessori then developed a love of early childhood studies and began another degree in childhood psychology. “Montessori’s faith in the unlimited possibilities of the child never faltered” (Povell 2007). Maria opened a school in Rome then moved to the United States in 1913 to begin her Montessori Education movement.
John Piaget is an underappreciated European child psychologist from the late 1800’s. He was born in Switzerland. His father was a linguistics professor and his mother a religious fanatic. Piaget was a very bright child and received his doctorate by age 21. He then moved to Zurich to study under Carl Jung. Piaget became a director of psychology at a European university. One of the requirements of Piaget’s students was that they had to spend time observing children. Piaget himself spent a lot of his early career observing children and posing specific questions. Piaget’s developmental theory was based on the fact that children were “freer to experiment, to use play-based pedagogies in which children are thought to create knowledge actively themselves rather than learn it passively from teachers” (Beatty 2009). In the 1920’s and 30’s early childhood education and psychology were merging paths and testing new concepts. So many concepts, in fact, that Piaget’s theories were just one of the many and were brushed under the rug. Piaget developed a theory based on the evolution of children’s thought. His four stages of developmental learning were: sensorimotor, primary operations, concrete operations, and formal operations.
Both Piaget and Montessori developed a love of childhood education and learning by research. Montessori’s research was developmental and knowledge based. She did a lot of her research in medical laboratories. Piaget’s research was on the front lines of early childhood education he spent time with the children. Which is why I relate more to Piaget’s tactics, I appreciate the fact that his developmental theory was tested and measured using real young children. Having said that both Montessori and Piaget essentially came up with the same learning theories, children learn best when they are left to their own exploratory, discovery based self education. I love these theories because I think that children can teach us so much more than we can teach them. They have the luxury of being new to the sensitized world and have new experiences. Each child has the chance to discover something new, a new way of viewing an everyday object that we may not have thought of. This creativity and methodology of education is so important to a young developing child. I hope to incorporate as much of these developmental theories into my future education as possible.
Resources
Povell, P. (2007). Maria Montessori: Portrait of a Young Woman. Montessori Life: A Publication of the American Montessori Society, 19(1), 22-24. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Beatty, B. (2009). Transitory Connections: The Reception and Rejection of Jean Piaget's Psychology in the Nursery School Movement in the 1920s and 1930s. History of Education Quarterly, 49(4), 442-464. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
