Is Montessori Education Effective? What Scientific Research Tells Us

Born at the beginning of the 20th century, Montessori education has been gaining popularity in France for the past twenty years. The proliferation of books, games, and private schools labeled "Montessori" is a testament to this phenomenon.

But what does the research tell us about the effectiveness of Montessori pedagogy compared to other forms of pedagogy?

Does this pedagogy, which is more than a century old, still have something to tell us about the schools of today and tomorrow?

Based on various key principles, Montessori teaching aims to offer children a certain freedom of learning, in a structured and adapted environment. This is divided into several discovery areas dedicated to practical life, sensory life, language and mathematics. It should also be noted that children progress in multi-age groups – from 3 to 6 years old, for example, then from 6 to 9 years old…

The material present in the classroom allows the child to act independently . Among other things, it allows him to correct himself, the role of the teacher being above all to observe the child to respond optimally to his needs, to support him in his initiatives and to redirect him if necessary.

Also read : My tessori pedagogy: the springs of a lasting craze

Furthermore, the Montessori environment allows for embodied cognition . According to this theory, sensory-motor interactions with the environment promote children's cognitive development and learning. In other words, we learn better by physically interacting with the environment. Montessori materials involve several senses, particularly touch and sight.

For example, rough letters invite the child to discover the outline of alphabetical letters through touch, then to pronounce the sound. This process promotes learning to read, by allowing the child to directly associate the sound of the letters with their graphic representation. Another example on the side of mathematical concepts: Montessori materials allow the child to associate a written number with physically palpable units. Through sight and manipulation, the child can thus strengthen his understanding of the links between spatial and mathematical representation of a number.

Finally, contrary to popular belief, Montessori does not rhyme with unlimited freedom. Rules of life govern the classroom and the adults present set the framework. Thus, if one objective of this pedagogy is to adapt to the pace of each individual, respect for others and their work is eminently required. In keeping with this principle, students in Montessori schools receive neither rewards nor punishments, which would support student cooperation, while fostering intrinsic motivation.

Thus, the overall characteristics of Montessori pedagogy could provide children with a particularly favorable framework for learning and psychological development. Studies conducted over the past thirty years seem to support this, suggesting that various aspects of Montessori pedagogy could have beneficial effects on children's cognitive abilities, social skills, creativity, motor development, and academic performance.

However, until now, no comprehensive study had really allowed us to conclude on the effects of Montessori pedagogy. A meta-analysis recently published in Contemporary Educational Psychology , a leading journal in the field of developmental and educational psychology, sheds light on the effects of Montessori pedagogy on the psychological development and learning of children in primary school.

Positive effects on social skills and academic performance

A meta-analysis is a statistical synthesis of several empirical studies on the same subject of study. The objective is to determine the trend, positive or negative, of all the studies on the phenomenon studied. The methodology is based on the calculation of effect sizes, which allows the calculation of the benefit or disadvantage of the experimental group (schools or classes using the Montessori pedagogy) compared to the control group (schools or classes using another pedagogy).

Bibliographic databases were used to identify and carefully examine 109 articles published over the past 30 years. This inventory resulted in 33 experimental or quasi-experimental studies comparing Montessori pedagogy with other pedagogical approaches. All of these studies involved more than 21,000 students in North America, Asia, and Europe. This research allowed the calculation of 268 effect sizes.

Recently developed statistical methods ("multilevel meta-analysis") have made it possible to carry out analyses in order to control for all possible biases (publication bias, dependencies between effect sizes, etc.). This has enabled us to calculate the average effect sizes based on the five areas studied: academic learning, cognitive, social, motor development, and creativity.

The results of this meta-analysis show that Montessori pedagogy has positive and significant effects on social skills and academic achievement. In other words, compared to other forms of pedagogy, it would allow for better development of understanding of social situations, the ability to solve social problems or the ability to put oneself in the place of others… Different characteristics of Montessori pedagogy would favor this development of social skills, such as the promotion of cooperation rather than competition or the encouragement of mutual respect and sharing.

Furthermore, this pedagogy also contributes significantly to students achieving better academic results in mathematics, reading, writing, etc. This contribution would be linked to the multi-sensory and self-correcting material present in the classroom, but also to the absence of punishments and rewards, encouraging the child's intrinsic motivation.

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Analyses of the different moderators did not reveal differences according to school level (kindergarten or elementary school), the type of journal in which the study was published (peer-reviewed or not) and the geographical area in which the study was conducted.

The impact of Montessori pedagogy on cognitive abilities, motor skills and creativity is not significant.

As mentioned above, the effects of Montessori pedagogy on children's development and learning range from low to high. Further studies would be beneficial to support the current evidence. Future research would benefit from controlling for more variables such as family socioeconomic status and the extent to which Montessori pedagogy is implemented. Indeed, as various studies have shown, a holistic approach to this method appears to be more effective than its partial use.