Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget

The two influential educators that I am researching for this project are Maria Montessori and Jean Piaget. I'm going to talk about them separately so I'll start with ladies first.

Maria Montessori was a woman who was born in Italy in 1870. She was the first female physician in the whole of Italy but about 5 years after graduating from medical school she started to become more interested in psychology and returned to school once again to pursue this new career. The ideas and groups that she is best known for are the Montessori method of education, the philosophy of children teach themselves, the "glasshouse schoolroom" exhibit and the Association Montessori Internationale. The Montessori method basically is letting the child grow and learn at their own pace and creating environments to stimulate that child. This method emphasizes individuality, social interaction and real world learning. Children are not drowning in facts and figures that are thrust at them. They learn the way that they, individually, need to learn. Her philosophy of children teach themselves is pretty self-explanatory. She believed that children have an inherent love of learning that can be helped along by willing and able teachers.

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Montessori : the science behind the genius


Jean Piaget was born in Switzerland in 1896. He is considered to be the father of cognitive psychology. He first began his illustrious career with a paper on albino sparrows when he was 11 years old. Eventually, his interests turned to psychology and, after having children, he developed his theory of cognitive development in children. This theory includes four stages of development: the sensorimotor stage (0-2 years), preoperational stage (2-7 years), concrete operational (7-11 years) and the formal operational stage (11+ years). His theory has helped to develop the constructivist method of teaching children. This method basically is a philosophy that we learn from our own experiences and we each have our own unique ways of thinking.

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Child Development 11th Ed. (pgs. 211-228)