In Montessori education, the term “normalization” has a specialized meaning. “Normal” does not refer to what is considered to be “typical” or “average” or even “usual.” “Normalization” does not refer to a process of being forced to conform. Instead, Maria Montessori used the terms “normal” and “normalization” to describe a unique process she observed in child development.
Montessori observed that when children are allowed freedom in an environment suited to their needs, they blossom. After a period of intense concentration, working with materials that fully engage their interest, children appear to be refreshed and contented. Through continued concentrated work of their own choice, children grow in inner discipline and peace. She called this process “normalization” and cited it as “the most important single result of our whole work” (The Absorbent Mind, 1949).
She went on to write,
Only “normalised” children, aided by their environment, show in their subsequent development those wonderful powers that we describe: spontaneous discipline, continuous and happy work, social sentiments of help and sympathy for others. . . . An interesting piece of work, freely chosen, which has the virtue of inducing concentration rather than fatigue, adds to the child’s energies and mental capacities, and leads him to self-mastery. . . . One is tempted to say that the children are performing spiritual exercises, having found the path of self-perfectionment and of ascent to the inner heights of the soul. (Maria Montessori, The Absorbent Mind, 1949)
E.M. Standing (Maria Montessori: Her Life and Work, 1957) lists these as the characteristics of normalization: love of order, love of work, spontaneous concentration, attachment to reality, love of silence and of working alone, sublimation of the possessive instinct, power to act from real choice, obedience, independence and initiative, spontaneous self-discipline, and joy. Montessori believed that these are the truly “normal” characteristics of childhood, which emerge when children’s developmental needs are met.
The 14-year-old West Melbourne resident was honored with the Samueli Foundation Prize for overall excellence in science, technology, engineering and math, also known as the STEM fields. River also will have a newly discovered asteroid named after him. Grace was one of 30 finalists from 17 states who attended the third annual Broadcom Math, Applied Science, Technology and Engineering for Rising Stars, or MASTERS, competition. “I had no idea I’d win this,” Grace said. “Any one of us could have won.”
River’s project was titled “Rain Dance of the Radiata: Behavior of the Endangered Radiated Tortoise and Related Species.”
While researching the Radiated Tortoise, River realized that not much is known about the species, which is only found in southern Madagascar. It’s critically endangered, and scientists estimate it could be extinct in the next 20 years.
River Grace (third from left) won the Broadcom MASTERS competition. With him were, from left: Henry Samueli of Broadcom Corp., Susan Samueli of the Samueli Foundation, Scott McGregor of Broadcom Corp., Paula Golden of Broadcom Foundation and Rick Bates of SSP.
Below are some related news articles and tweets about his project and recent trip to Washington D.C. Way to go, River!
Montessori parents know first-hand how this approach to education supports and nurtures children’s development in all areas: physical, intellectual, language, and social-emotional. Scientific research confirms that Montessori children have an advantage not only academically, but also in social and emotional development.
This longitudinal study of Milwaukee high school graduates showed that students who had attended Montessori preschool and elementary programs significantly outperformed a peer control group on math/science scores. “In essence,” the study found, “attending a Montessori program from the approximate ages of three to 11 predicts significantly higher mathematics and science standardized test scores in high school.”
This article describes the positive impact of Montessori manipulative materials on four seventh grade students who qualified for academic intervention services because of previous low state test scores in mathematics. The article presents a brief introduction to the Montessori approach to learning, an overview of Montessori mathematics, and an explanation of the Checkerboard for Multiplication with related multiplication manipulatives. Pretest/posttest results of the four students indicated that all increased their understanding of multiplication. The results of an attitude survey showed students improved in enjoyment, perceived knowledge, and confidence in solving multiplication problems.
East Dallas Community Schools operates two inner-city Montessori schools that serve an ethnically and culturally diverse group of primarily low-income families. In over 30 years of using the Montessori approach to education, EDCS has proved that all children, regardless of race or income, can succeed in school when you start young and involve parents. In a neighborhood in which the high school dropout rate is over 50%, children who attend EDCS have graduated from high school at a rate of 94%, with 88% of those graduates attending college. A ten-year study of standardized test scores found that third grade students’ average scores were in the top 36% nationwide in reading and math. Even though many of these children start school without speaking any English, 100% of the children test as fluent in English by the end of the third grade.
Angeline Lillard examines the impact of Montessori implementation fidelity. Her study found that children in classroom with high fidelity implementation showed significantly greater school- year gains on outcome measures of executive function, reading, math, vocabulary, and social problem-solving, than children in low fidelity or conventional classrooms.
Researchers compared Montessori students with students in other school programs, and found that 5-year-old children who completed the three-year cycle in the Montessori preschool program scored higher on both academic and behavioral tests than the control group. The study also found that 12-year-old Montessori students wrote more sophisticated and creative stories and showed a more highly developed sense of community and social skills than students in other programs.
A comprehensive review of the scientific literature that demonstrates how current research validates Dr. Montessori’s observations about how children learn, particularly with regard to movement and cognition, the detrimental effect on motivation of extrinsic rewards, the beneficial effect of order in the environment, and the academic and emotional benefits of freedom of choice.
This study compared middle school students in Montessori programs with students in traditional middle schools, and found significantly higher student motivation and socialization among the Montessori students. “There were strong differences suggesting that Montessori students were feeling more active, strong, excited, happy, relaxed, sociable, and proud while engaged in academic work. They were also enjoying themselves more, they were more interested in what they were doing, and they wanted to be doing academic work more than the traditional students.”
To be successful takes creativity, flexibility, self-control, and discipline. Central to all those are executive functions, including mentally playing with ideas, giving a considered rather than a compulsive response, and staying focused. This review compares research results from various activities and curricula that have been shown to improve children’s executive function, including computerized training, aerobic exercise, martial arts and mindfulness practices, and classroom curricula including Montessori education. In a comparison of curricula and curricula add-ons, the Montessori approach is shown to meet more criteria for the development of executive function for a more extended age group.
Dr. Adele Diamond, Professor of Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of British Columbia, is one of the world’s leading researchers on the development of cognitive function and a supporter of Montessori education. In this article she discusses effective strategies for advancing academic achievement, and advises: “Programs that address the whole child (cognitive, emotional, social and physical needs) are the most successful at improving any single aspect – for good reason. For example, if you want to help children with academic development, you will not realize the best results if you focus only on academic achievement (though at first glance doing that might seem the most efficient strategy); counter-intuitively, the most efficient and effective strategy for advancing academic achievement is to also nurture children’s social, emotional, and physical needs.”
Young children aren’t usually known for intense concentration. To the contrary, kids are expected to bounce from one activity to another with the attention span of a gnat. That’s why parents are surprised by what they see when they tour Bellevue’s Eton Montessori School: Children as young as three happily engaged in independent, focused work for long stretches.
Parents are just as surprised by what they don’t see — no lecturing teachers prodding reluctant kids to complete assigned work. “Our children are self-motivated. Our teachers don’t stand over them, telling them to be quiet and get back to work,” says Dr. Patricia Feltin, who founded Eton School in 1978. This ability to focus at a young age is a hallmark of Montessori education, but it’s revolutionary to parents who haven’t seen a Montessori classroom in action.
Montessori learning is hardly novel — Maria Montessori’s first school opened its doors in 1907. But a trend toward mindfulness in education is sparking new interest in this century-old style of education, and new science is showing how this type of learning benefits today’s young minds.
Mastering Mindfulness
Over the past decade, organizations like Mindfulness in Education Network, Association for Mindfulness in Education, and Mindful Schools have sprung up, training teachers, hosting conferences, and producing research aimed at helping children become more focused, motivated, and intentional in the classroom.
Just what is mindfulness, exactly, and why does it matter? In a world filled with chaotic distraction, advocates of mindfulness say it can be a salve for the conflict, impulsiveness, and stress plaguing modern students and schools.
Steven J. Hughes, Ph.D., a pediatric neuropsychologist specializing in attention, concentration, planning, and organizing — a set of traits known as executive functions — defines mindfulness as “sustained positive engagement.” Other scientists refer to a “flow” state of prolonged, energized work that produces both calm satisfaction and profound joy in learning.
Whole Body, Whole Mind
Maria Montessori didn’t coin the term “mindfulness,” but she was an early advocate for sustained focus and internal motivation. Her methods deliberately encourage intense concentration as the best context for early learning.
Montessori’s approach to motor development actually stimulates cognitive development and deep concentration, says Hughes.
When children begin Montessori education at 3 or 4, they work on motor-skills activities like sweeping, polishing silverware, and pouring. These aptly named “Practical Life” activities prepare kids for greater independence and self-reliance in daily tasks, but there’s something bigger going on — the development of higher cognitive functions essential to concentration and attention.
Montessori tasks like wiping a table or washing dishes develop fine-motor control, but they also activate areas of the pre-frontal cortex essential to executive function, which paves the way for greater concentration and focus, he says. “Dr. Montessori wrote about the close relationship between cognitive development and motor development in 1949. 50 years later, scientists made the same connection.”
This whole-body approach is part of the reason numerous studies show that Montessori- educated children have an academic edge over children educated in traditional classrooms, he says.
Happy Work: Environment, Schedule, and Shared Focus
One way Montessori promotes focus is through a carefully prepared environment, a key component of Montessori learning. In Montessori classrooms, specially designed materials — from child-size brooms to lacing cards to counting beads — are prepared to be aesthetically appealing and accessible for young children; simplicity, beauty, and order are paramount. “Montessori environments are designed to be attractive and appealing, and to allow children to make a choice. Children get to look around and choose what they want to do,” says Feltin.
This important act of choosing one’s own activity promotes sustained engagement, says Dee Hirsch, president of the Pacific Northwest Montessori Association and director of Discovery Montessori School in Seattle. Montessori-taught children choose their own work from a palette of developmentally appropriate options that grow progressively more complex and challenging.
Montessori schools incorporate concrete learning goals into a child’s educational plan, but children are free to choose when and how to complete their work within a specified time-frame. “That act of choosing is what allows a child to make a wholehearted commitment to their work. It’s what makes Montessori education child-centered,” says Hirsch.
When children are motivated by their own interests, deep concentration is a natural result, she continues: “Kids are choosing what they want to focus on.”
Montessori also encourages deep concentration and focus by giving students more uninterrupted time to work. Unlike a traditional classroom, where students cycle in and out of various subjects every 40 to 50 minutes, children are given longer periods — generally 90 minutes — of uninterrupted work time.
During a 90-minute period, children can take their work through its beginning, middle, and end stages. Working through this natural sequence promotes competence and mastery; children can repeat the activity as many times as they wish, without being told to hurry up and move on to something else.
Though the terms focus and concentration conjure up images of a child working alone, mindfulness is not always a solo pursuit. Montessori-style learning helps kids learn the fine art of shared concentration by encouraging them to engage in tasks with a classmate or two — a critical skill in the age of teamwork.
“The term ‘mindfulness’ insinuates that engagement only occurs between a child and an activity, but that’s not the case,” says Feltin. Working in twos and threes promotes mentoring and knowledge transfer; children share their enthusiasm for a task and build up the confidence of younger students.
Mindful Together
How does this Montessori-style mindfulness benefit children? Greater confidence, longer attention spans, and natural self-motivation are a few of the rich rewards, according to Feltin. “What’s so wonderful is the confidence they gain. Their attention spans have been lengthened. They’re going to meet their academic goals, but they’ll do it more naturally because their motivation comes from within.”
But mindfulness isn’t something teachers can achieve for students — like every other outcome in Montessori learning, students have to work toward it themselves. They’re not going to reach that state of mindfulness unless they get there themselves,” says Hirsch. “We can’t take them there, but we can go there with them.”
Malia Jacobson is a nationally published freelance writer specializing in parenting topics. She’s working on adopting Montessori-inspired principles of mindfulness at home.
Students at the Center; Structure at the Forefront.
Montessori education constitutes a major shift in how we think about what learning looks like, and how learning environments should be organized to support optimal development. This shift, which matches what neuroscience tells us about how the human mind works, comes down to two major concepts: student-centered activity and structure to support that activity.
The table below offers more detail on how that shift takes place within a Montessori classroom.
Conventional Classroom
Montessori Environment
Textbooks, pencil, paper, and worksheets
Hands on materials, developed to enable discovery, self-correction, and independence; Specially developed reference materials
Intellectual and social development is disconnected
Working and learning matched to the social development of the child
Narrow, unit-driven curriculum
Unified, time-tested curriculum
Individual Subjects
Integrated subjects and learning based on developmental psychology
Block time, period lessons
Uninterrupted work periods
Single-graded classrooms
Mixed age classrooms
Students passive, quiet, at desks
Students active, talking with periods of spontaneous quiet, freedom to move
Montessori education constitutes a major shift in how we think about what learning looks like, and how learning environments should be organized to support optimal development.
What is the difference between Montessori and conventional education?
Montessori is a developmental approach to education. Its most significant hallmarks are (1) a child-centered orientation and (2) a highly structured, hierarchical curriculum. The balance of freedom and limits represents a major shift in the organization of the classroom and the role of adults in relation to children’s learning. It also matches the way human beings actually learn.
For children six and under, Montessori emphasizes learning through all five senses, not just through listening, watching, or reading. Children in Montessori classes learn at their own, individual pace and according to their own choice of activities from hundreds of possibilities. They are not required to sit and listen to a teacher talk to them as a group, but are engaged in individual or group activities of their own, with materials that have been introduced to them 1:1 by the teacher who knows what each child is ready to do. Learning is an exciting process of discovery, leading to concentration, motivation, self-discipline, and a love of learning.
Above age 6 children learn to do independent research, arrange field trips to gather information, interview specialists, create group presentation, dramas, art exhibits, musical productions, science projects, and so forth. There is no limit to what they can create in this kind of intelligently guided freedom. There are no textbooks or adult-directed group lessons and daily schedule. There is great respect for the choices of the children, but they easily keep up with or surpass what they would be doing in a more traditional setting. There is no wasted time and children enjoy their work and study. The children ask each other for lessons and much of the learning comes from sharing and inspiring each other instead of competing with each other.
How important is it to start by age 3?
The years from birth to age six are a critical period of development, one that can be optimally supported in a highly enriched learning environment that features mixed age grouping and adults who are specially trained to support emerging abilities in language, movement, independence, and social/emotional well-being. To make the most of the child’s inherent drive to learn and to establish skills and habits that set the child on a positive trajectory, it is essential to start early.
Ideally, Montessori environments are organized to include three age levels: birth-3, 3-6, 6-9, 9-12, and so on. Students remain with their community for three years and benefit intellectually, socially, and emotionally from being both the youngest and the oldest in the class. Likewise, children benefit most when they enter the community at the beginning of a three-year cycle.
How do Montessori schools approach families?
In part because Montessori education begins so early (for children as young as three months), and in part because Montessori is less an approach to school than a way of life, ongoing family engagement is an essential ingredient in successful Montessori programs. The most successful Montessori programs establish strong partnerships that include thorough parent information sessions prior to enrollment, regular parent-teacher conferences, guided observation of Montessori learning environments, and school-home partnership agreements that feature commitments to attend school events, extend Montessori principles to the home, and limit screen time.
Is Montessori good for children with learning disabilities? What about gifted children?
Based in the assumption that children learn at different rates and through different avenues, all Montessori instruction is differentiated to meet the needs of each child in the classroom. For children who experience learning challenges, this means addressing difficulties early. For children who require additional challenges, there is no ceiling to learning. A classroom whose children have varying abilities is a community in which everyone learns from one another and everyone contributes. Moreover, multi-age grouping allows each child to find his or her own pace without feeling “ahead” or “behind” in relation to peers.
Are Montessori children successful later in life?
Research studies show that Montessori children are well prepared for later life academically, socially, and emotionally. In addition to scoring well on standardized tests, Montessori children are ranked above average on such criteria as following directions, turning in work on time, listening attentively, using basic skills, showing responsibility, asking provocative questions, showing enthusiasm for learning, and adapting to new situations.
Are Montessori schools religious?
No. Montessori educates children without reference to religious denomination. As a result, our classrooms are extremely diverse, with representation from all peoples, cultures and religions.
Who accredits Montessori schools?
In the United States Montessori is regulated by two primary professional organizations: The American Montessori Society (AMS) and the Association Montessori Internationale (AMI).
If children are free to choose their own work, how do you ensure that they receive a well-rounded education?
Montessori children are free to choose within limits, and have only as much freedom as they can handle with appropriate responsibility. The classroom teacher and assistant ensure that children do not interfere with each other, and that each child is progressing at her appropriate pace in all subjects.
Montessori classrooms don’t look like regular classrooms. Where are the rows of desks? Where does the teacher stand?
The different arrangement of a Montessori classroom mirrors the Montessori methods differences from conventional education. Rather than putting the teacher at the center of the class, with children dependent on her for information and activity, the classroom revolves around the needs, interests, and work of the children. Children work at tables or on floor mats where they can spread out their materials, and the teacher circulates about the room, giving lessons or resolving issues as they arise.
Are Montessori schools as academically rigorous as traditional schools?
Yes; Montessori classrooms encourage deep learning of the concepts behind academic skills rather than rote practice of abstract techniques. The success of our students appears in the experiences of our alumni, who compete successfully with traditionally educated students in a variety of high schools and universities.
Since Montessori classrooms emphasize non-competitiveness, how are students adequately prepared for real-life competition later on?
Montessori classrooms emphasize skills and dispositions that have been shown to have greatest impact on success in later life: self-regulation, collaboration, conflict-resolution, and a variety of other executive skills aimed at continuous improvement. Students typically become comfortable with their strengths and learn how to address their weaknesses. In older classes, students commonly participate in competitive activities with clear “winners” (auditions for limited opera roles, the annual spelling bee, etc.) in which students give their best performances while simultaneously encouraging peers to do the same. It is a healthy competition in which all contenders are content that they did their best in an environment with clear and consistent rules.
Thanks to the Michael Olaf Montessori Company and the Montessori Administrator’s Association for providing earlier versions of this FAQ.
