| Montessori is historically recognized for her contributions to early education. Her primary recognition derived from the comprehensive educational program which became known as the Montessori Method. Relatively little attention has focused on her background as physician, psychiatrist, and pedagogical psychologist, from which she developed a body of psychological knowledge which established the foundation of the well-known Method. Her pedagogical psychology was overshadowed by her pedagogical theory despite her secure position in the history of child psychiatry. Also contributing to the non-acceptance of Montessori's psychology was the psychological tenor of the times. In the forefront of the psychological movement in the early 1900's were psychometric testing, Freud's psycho-sexual stages, Thorndike's stimulus-response theory, and the emergence of behaviorism under the leadership of Watson, to name a few. This climate was not hospitable to Montessori's developmental-interactionist theory.;For Montessori, the development of the child takes place in successive and qualitatively different stages, with each stage providing the foundation for succeeding stages. Within this framework, she clearly delineates cognitive, motor, language, socialization, personality, and character as developing through stages. Cognitive structures develop through the child's interaction with, and actions upon, objects in the environment. A thorough examination of her theory leaves no doubt that Montessori is a cognitive developmentalist. While at times she appears nativistic, and at other times an extreme environmentalist, her position on development is interactionist and constructivist.;In contemporary terms her "psychopedagogy" would be considered an action psychology, which basically precludes it from academic "respectibility". Her theory contains both strengths and weaknesses in light of present-day thinking; however, on balance, Montessori's theory is quite contemporary and remarkably ahead of most of the psychological thinking of her time.;In the 1960's through the research findings of psychologists and the availability of Federal funds to compensate the "cumulative deficits" of the disadvantaged child, interest was focused on early childhood education and consequently the Montessori Method. As psychologists embraced Piaget's developmental theory, resemblances in thinking between Piaget and Montessori were noted. While psychologists pointed to Montessori's developmental-interactionist ideas, nobody attempted to elaborate her developmental theory in toto. This study attempts to do so. |
