Angeline Lillard's Book Shows Montessori Ideas Supported by Research

    Angeline Lillard may have changed the rules of engagement for debates on educational reform.

    With the February publication of her first book, Montessori: The Science Behind The Genius, she has gone far toward moving the burden of proof from Montessori advocates to those who ignore the approach or criticize it in ignorance.

    While, for reasons she explains well in the book, no one can offer definitive proof that the results of Montessori programs are superior to those of other programs, she demonstrates with great clarity that almost every school characteristic shown to promote learning and healthy development is integrated into the Montessori package.

    If reformers argue for research-based strategies, can they blithely ignore an approach that has for nearly 100 years shown to have successfully integrated nearly every proven element of successful school environments?

    As we all know, they can. But now there is a book to place in front of those reformers with the gentle suggestion, "Maybe you should read this."

    Lillard, an associate professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, builds on at least two important modern traditions.

    Like books such as From Neurons to Neighborhoods and Ghosts from the Nursery, she has translated an enormous amount of academic research on child development into a form accessible to the lay reader.

    Like John Chattin-McNichols and David Kahn and his colleagues at the North American Montessori Teachers' Association, she has gone a long way toward making information on Montessori education accessible to those committed to research-based educational strategies.

    Chattin-McNichols, in his 1992 book, The Montessori Controversy, summarized the limited research on Montessori education and meshed it with a well-crafted explanation of how Montessori classrooms and schools operate and the ways in which they are frequently misunderstood.

    One NAMTA project focuses on making research on Montessori education available with an inviting online database.

    Lillard took on the task of looking at the rest of the research world, finding areas where disparate studies conducted with no reference to Montessori classrooms support the essence of Montessori classrooms.

    She touches only briefly on research directly focused on Montessori education, pointing out results that suggest success coming from a recent AMI-guided study of Milwaukee public Montessori students and a decades-old study of preschool programs in Ohio. But that is not her focus.

    After doing a good job of restating the de rigueur argument that every educational reformer makes against our "factory model" of education, Lillard identifies eight "insights" or "principles" of Montessori education:

• the relationship between movement and cognition
• choice
• interest
• rewards
• learning from peers
• learning in context
• teacher behavior
• order

    Then, devoting a chapter to each, gathers research on the topic, summarizes the main findings from that research and explains how those findings have been incorporated in Montessori classrooms for decades.

    She concludes with a summary chapter addressed to questions that lie outside the psychological research. That chapter includes answers to frequently asked questions-work that was handled as well or better in both Chattin-McNichols' book and NAMTA publications. More important, it includes a succinct analysis of both the need for change she outlined in her introduction and a survey of the obstacles that have slowed acceptance of Montessori education.

    If the book will be of value to both Montessori education advocates and others who search with open hearts and minds for the best ways to honor our children, it is not above organizational disagreements, and that may affect the way some Montessorians use the book.

    Lillard, a member of one of American's most prominent AMI families (See profile), makes clear that in describing Montessori classrooms she is referring to those accredited by AMI.

    She makes the reasonable case that programs that have high thresholds for permitting innovation provide a standard of practice that makes research reliable, but she shows little sympathy for those who do innovate, suggesting in perhaps too global a fashion that these teachers and teacher educators may not have an adequate understanding of Montessori principles or have experiences that lead them astray.

    "Montessori classrooms that adhere more closely to her original methods and materials are more appropriate places to study the method and its outcomes than are classrooms that attempt to innovate," she wrote.

    That justifiable concern for uncontrolled innovation may explain her unfortunate failure to recognize Chattin-McNichols' work.

    Similarly, she is not encouraging about public programs:

    "Even when they reject traditional practices personally, teachers at public Montessori schools are often required to adopt such mainstream practices as using workbooks or testing children frequently."

    If she is not ready to subscribe to the idea that if someone calls it Montessori, it is Montessori, she is not totally dismissive of others.

    In the end, she notes "there are certainly excellent schools that are not recognized by AMI...but using AMI's recognized school list is one way that a newcomer to Montessori can be assured they are seeing a school that complies closely with Dr. Montessori's methods." Although she offers a helpful checklist of what to look for when observing a classroom, the reader has no guide beyond AMI-affiliation to identifying those other schools.

    Throughout the book, Lillard identifies areas where more research is needed and her set of suggestions comprises a research agenda that educational researchers should take seriously. Notably, she decides that it is premature to link Montessori education to the growing literature that links brain development and sensitive periods.

    Lillard took on an important challenge and completed it admirably. The question is whether her book will get the attention it deserves.