Toward an improved model of education: Maria Montessori, Karl Popper, and the evolutionary epistemology of human learning

Although most Americans steadfastly maintain that getting a good education guarantees a better society and opens the door to more rewarding careers, it is debated regularly what the best set of educational priorities and practices that constitute good schooling should be. Sociopolitical considerations of power and control have often driven the agendas of educational reform movements in the United States, and these agendas have typically clustered around adult priorities and ideas of how knowledge should be "transmitted" to children. It is asserted in this dissertation that approaches to educational reform should instead be derived from an informed understanding of naturalistic human learning so that curricular structures and pedagogical practices start from children and work backwards in support of their intrinsic curiosity and search for regularities in the world around them.;This paper argues that philosopher Karl Popper's theory of the acquisition of human knowledge, commonly referred to as an evolutionary epistemology, provides a sound theoretical framework from which to build improved educational systems that complement naturalistic human learning. It is further argued that the Montessori system of early childhood education, first introduced in Rome in 1907 by Italian physician and educator Dr. Maria Montessori, strongly evidences the principles and applied practices of an evolutionary epistemology, thereby potentially explaining Montessori's subsequent success in educating children across varying cultures and backgrounds worldwide. Drawing on the understandings that a combined Popperian/Montessorian perspective may suggest, the Education-as-Evolutionary Epistemology (EEE) model for educational reform is then proposed. The EEE model's twelve integrated recommendations present a principled guide for reconceptualizing formal learning environments by addressing three critical areas for future school reform: revised structure and organization of the learning environment, new roles and training for the learning environment's participants, and the design of curricula and assessment to support students' trial-and-error learning processes. It is suggested that future research efforts be directed toward rigorously testing the EEE model's hypotheses in order to further identify and eliminate the model's errors in attempting to solve some of formal education's most vexing problems.