ABSTRACT
More than a century ago, Italian born physician Maria Montessori (1870–1952) founded her first experimental preschool in a low-income Rome neighborhood. Using a research-based approach that focused on observation of students engaged in free play, Montessori developed educational materials and methods that facilitated and replicated children’s natural inquiry and self-direction. Initially working with special needs populations, Montessori built on her discoveries that children can teach themselves, which led to strong performance gains on state-level reading and writing exams. These approaches and their subsequent results led to one of the world’s most famous educational movements of the 20th century.
