Emerging Public Montessori research
By Katie Brown
Four new studies from the AMS Montessori Event poster session
Four new studies from the poster session at the American Montessori Society’s Montessori Event in March suggest promising avenues for public Montessori research and growth.
The research poster session has been a component of the Event since 2019, allowing researchers studying topics pertinent to Montessori to share their work with practitioners in the field in an informal, conversational way. Researchers create a three-by-four-foot poster outlining their research questions, methods, and findings. These posters are displayed on large bulletin boards, and participants can walk around the venue, read the posters, and talk to the authors about their work. This year’s poster session featured four projects with particular salience for public Montessori educators and advocates.
Public Montessori students shown better outcomes
Dr. David Fleming presented a collaborative project with his Furman University colleague, Dr. Brooke Culclasure, examining academic outcome and engagement metrics for over 18,000 Montessori students across four states (A Multi-State Analysis of Public Montessori Programs). In every case where a comparison could be made, Montessori students fared as well as or better than their counterparts in non-Montessori schools.
The researchers found that public Montessori students, as a group, were not demographically representative of the states as a whole; White students and economically disadvantaged students were overrepresented in the Montessori schools. Because of this overrepresentation, the researchers created a demographically matched comparison group to look at outcomes across Montessori and non-Montessori settings. They tested for differences in performance on language arts and math standardized tests; attendance; chronic absenteeism; and disciplinary events, including in-school and out-of-school suspensions.
Overall, Montessori students:
–performed better on English language arts assessments,
–demonstrated higher rates of attendance
–were less likely to experience chronic absenteeism
–had fewer disciplinary incidents than non-Montessori students
When the results were disaggregated by subgroup, these results held for Black, white, and economically disadvantaged students. There were no differences in language arts outcomes for Hispanic students, Asian students, and students of other races in Montessori and non-Montessori settings, though Hispanic students and students of other races did have better disciplinary outcomes in Montessori contexts.
The authors conclude that the Montessori programs examined in this study were quite racially and socioeconomically diverse, though White students were overrepresented in three of the four states studied. Though the academic achievement comparisons were not a slam dunk for Montessori, “at a minimum, these analyses suggest that any positive effects associated with Montessori participation are not limited to White or high-income students.” In particular, the results pertaining to attendance and school discipline suggest that Montessori programs may produce higher levels of engagement and belonging in schools.
Research posters are not the same as published, peer-reviewed studies, but if these results hold through the submission process, now underway, they will be very strong for public Montessori.
Who knows affects who goes
One reason for the under-representation of Black students in public Montessori schools could be that this group is less aware of Montessori as an option. Another could be Black families’ levels of support for Montessori. Another poster dug into these questions and found some surprising answers.
Dr. David Fleming’s study Who Knows Affects Who Goes: How Race and Income Influence Public Opinion on Montessori Education investigates parents’ levels of knowledge and support for Montessori education, including how these factors vary by subgroup within the US parent population.
Researchers surveyed a national sample of 750 parents of children under 18. Almost 50% of participating parents reported that they were at least “slightly knowledgeable” about Montessori, and their performance on a nine-question quiz about Montessori suggests this is true: on average, they answered about half of these true/false questions correctly. Parents without prior knowledge of Montessori were then provided with a brief description of the approach, and asked if they would support it. Overall, Montessori had a fairly high level of support both among parents who were (58%) and were not (54%) initially knowledgeable about the method, though Fleming notes that “parents demonstrated low knowledge levels when it came to the existence of public Montessori schools.”
Fleming classified participants into four groups: supporters (knowledgeable and supportive), receptive (not knowledgeable but supportive), unconvinced (not knowledgeable and not supportive), and skeptics (knowledgeable but not supportive).
Respondents were also grouped by race, income level, and level of education. Generally speaking, high-income, high-education parents were most likely to be supportive of Montessori, while low-income, non-college-degree-holding parents were more likely to be unconvinced or skeptical. Among racial groups, Black parents were most likely to be supportive of or receptive to Montessori, with almost three-quarters reporting positive views of Montessori, though they were also the least likely to have heard of Montessori.
As the title of this poster suggests, Fleming argues that the demographic composition of public Montessori schools is related to “who knows” about Montessori: “This analysis suggests that the reason that white and high-income students are overrepresented in some Montessori programs is not because the Montessori model does not appeal to other parents. Rather, diversity in these schools could be enhanced if more parents of color knew about Montessori and if other barriers these parents face were diminished.” This indicates that public Montessori schools must be intentional in their outreach and recruitment efforts in order to create schools that are representative of the communities they serve.
What do teachers think about policy, and what can they do about it?
Doctoral candidate Heather Gerker interviewed public Montessori teachers to find out how, if at all, these teachers shift their pedagogy in response to education policy, and how they perceive their ability to respond to or influence policymakers (Montessori Pedagogy and Policy in Public Schools: Exploring the Challenges and Moving toward Advocacy).
Study participants included eight teachers, representing early childhood through high school, working in district Montessori programs across five different states. Participants were interviewed weekly for three weeks, a format that allowed both the participants and the researcher to reflect on themes emerging from these conversations. These themes included the idea that Montessori is “more than the materials,” and is in fact a comprehensive pedagogical approach. They felt that as Montessori programs existing within the context of a public school district, they were sometimes treated as “a square peg in a round hole.” Lastly, they felt that their expertise as teachers was not always recognized at the district level. Though state and federally mandated assessments are often named as key conflicts for public Montessori educators, the mandates that these educators wrestled with the most were district-specific.
These conversations coalesced around a set of recommendations for district leaders:
— to teachers–and act on their suggestions.
–Create and solicit input from a district Montessori advocacy group.
–Provide education about Montessori for all stakeholder groups in the community.
–Create policies that are flexible enough to be implemented in a way that’s appropriate for each school.
–Provide Montessori professional development for Montessori educators.
They also suggested that Montessori teacher education programs include advocacy and policy work as part of teacher preparation. As teachers are integral to the success of any Montessori school, public or private, districts hoping to launch or sustain a Montessori program should take heed of these insights to better support teachers and their work.
What do districts need to know?
The final study to be highlighted here, a joint venture between the National Center for Montessori in the Public Sector (Dr. Katie Brown–the author) and Montessori Partnerships for Georgia (Dr. Ian Parker and Annie Frazer), also focused on Montessori in district contexts (Public Montessori as a Reform Model: Questions and Considerations for School Districts).
Recognizing that district Montessori programs are a key lever for increasing access to Montessori, the researchers asked: What questions would school district leaders need answered about a new curriculum, like Montessori, in order to consider its implementation?
To answer this question, we interviewed 11 district-level leaders from eight different school districts across five regions of the United States. Five of these districts had an established Montessori program, one had a nascent Montessori program, and the other two had no Montessori program at all.
When asked what questions and concerns they would have about launching a new program like Montessori, school leaders responded with ideas across three general categories:
–their own understanding of the program
–the local sociopolitical context within which they work
–the nuts-and-bolts practicalities of what launching the program would mean.
Generally speaking, most district leaders had some experience with Montessori in their personal lives, often as a Montessori parent or grandparent, and had positive views of the pedagogy. However, they recognized that they would need more knowledge than this in order to effectively oversee a Montessori program.
District leaders were also cognizant of the context and climate within their district at any given moment, and reported that they would need to think carefully about funding constraints, political capital, and how–or if–they could solicit buy-in from teachers. Interestingly, district leaders did not report any significant role for families in this decision-making process, though teachers’ views were influential.
Lastly, district leaders had very specific questions about concrete concerns like teacher training and recruitment; facilities; and lotteries, transportation, and access. Interestingly, these responses indicate that district leaders might be open to the types of suggestions identified by Heather Gerker in her study, at least at the outset of a new program. The authors conclude that the expansion of district Montessori programs could be supported and accelerated by outreach and education for district leaders, including an implementation road map to guide the start-up process.
It’s gratifying to see researchers turning their attention to key questions and problems of the public Montessori movement. Taken together, these studies highlight the promise and potential of public Montessori schools, as well as opportunities for continued growth.
Katie Brown
Katie Brown is the Director of Professional Learning at NCMPS.