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At the beginning of the 20th century, Italy’s first female physician, Maria Montessori, sought to turn education on its head. Using methods developed through her work with developmentally disabled children, Montessori created a ‘child-centered’ approach that emphasizes rich environments, freedom, and respect for the student’s point of view.

“Education is not what the teacher gives,” wrote Montessori, a devout Catholic whose classical empiricism echoes that of St. Thomas Aquinas, in a 1946 book. “Education is a natural process spontaneously carried out by the human individual, and is acquired not by listening to words.”

Instead of emphasizing drills and memorization, with students all doing the same thing at the same time the same way, the Montessori method deploys student-selected work, small-group instruction, a lack of exams and grades, and collaboration, often between students of different ages. Montessori stressed the importance of developing social skills alongside academic ones.

Her approach has caught on. The International Montessori Index estimates that there are some 4,000 certified schools in the United States and about 7,000 worldwide. (‘Montessori’ is not trademarked, and other estimates say there are roughly 20,000 such schools around the globe.) In the United States, this includes hundreds of public schools, as well as some high schools.

Montessori Education vs. Conventional Education

But does it actually work? How does a Montessori education stack up to a conventional one?

The evidence tilts in Montessori’s favor. A 2006 study of 112 students in a Montessori school and conventional public schools in Milwaukee found that the Montessori students performed significantly better on both cognitive and social measures.

Half of the students in the study were 5 years old, and half were 12. The Montessori 5-year-olds performed better than those their age at other schools when it came to identifying letters and words, solving basic math problems, and ordering and categorizing. The young Montessori students interacted more positively on the playground and were more likely to deploy reasoning in social negotiations, often with appeals to abstract values such as justice and fairness. The researchers found no differences between the spatial reasoning, vocabulary, and concept formation skills between the two groups of 5-year-olds.

The differences between the two groups of 12-year-olds were less pronounced, but still present. Essays written by Montessori students used more complex sentence structures and were rated as more creative, but the students in the conventional public schools appeared to have “caught up” on many of the researchers’ other measures. The Montessori students tended to select more constructive responses to hypothetical social problems, and they reported feeling a stronger sense of community at their school.

In a 2006 interview with Scientific American, University of Virginia psychologist Angeline Lillard, who led the study, speculated that the less-conspicuous differences in academic performance between the Montessori and non-Montessori 12-year-olds could have been a result of the school being only three years old when the 12-year-olds enrolled back in 1997. Lillard noted that it takes time for a school to put Maria Montessori’s method into practice.

“This was very authentically implemented Montessori,” she told Scientific American. “It’s actually a fairly small percentage of schools that are this strict.

Other studies loosely corroborate Lillard’s findings on the effectiveness of a Montessori education, but they vary in the details. A 2009 study, also in Milwaukee (which is attractive to researchers because students are placed via lottery), found that high school students who had attended a Montessori school performed significantly better on math and science tests, but not in English and social studies.

What accounts for the outcomes among Montessori kids? It could be that the Montessori method teaches them to be more motivated and focused. A 2005 survey of 290 middle-school students by psychologists Kevin Rathunde and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi found that the Montessori students were more likely to report being driven by an interest in academic tasks, and that they were more likely to report getting joyfully immersed – feeling “in the zone” – when doing their work.

Such finding would be very much in line with Montessori’s educational philosophy, which emphasizes devoting long uninterrupted blocks of time to tasks. “The child who concentrates,” wrote Montessori in her book The Absorbent Mind, “is immensely happy.”

The same holds true for adults, even into old age. A number of studies have found that Montessori-based activities can benefit the elderly, particularly those experiencing dementia.

So if the Montessori method is so effective, then why are most American students still getting twelve years of standardized, test-driven, teacher-centered, school-bell-interrupted pedagogy? Part of the reason is that the Montessori method is so tricky to implement. Read this sweet, yet daunting, essay, “Owner’s Manual for a Child,” written by author and educator Donna Bryant Goertz, who founded a Montessori school in Austin, Texas.

Taking the perspective of a toddler writing to a parent, Goertz describes how demanding child-centered learning can be. She writes:

“I want to be like you. I want to be just like you, but I want to become like you in my own way, in my own time, and by my own efforts. I want to watch you and imitate you. I do not want to listen to you except for a few words at a time, unless you don’t know I’m listening. I want to struggle, to make a grand effort with something very difficult, something I cannot master immediately. I want you to clear the way for my efforts, to give me the materials and supplies that will allow success to follow initial difficulty. I want you to observe me and see if I need a better tool, an instrument more my size, a taller, safer stepladder, a lower table, a container I can open by myself, a lower shelf, or a clearer demonstration of the process. I don’t want you to do it for me or rush me or feel sorry for me or praise me. Just be quiet and show me how to do it slowly, very slowly.”

Goertz’s essay is directed at parents, not teachers, but it’s easy to see how only the most skilled and patient educators can consistently adhere to this method, even as the child is ultimately leading the way.

Originally published on The Christian Science Monitor by Eoin O’Carroll

Written by Malia Jacobson, ParentMap

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.