Montessori teachers in public schools navigate a system daily that often does not align with their pedagogy, and district policies push them to stray from high-fidelity implementation. Using Weick's sensemaking theory and literature on Montessori teacher identity, I contend that Montessori teachers' identity plays a crucial role in how, or if,…

Montessori pedagogy is a century-old, whole-school system increasingly used in the public sector. In the United States, public Montessori schools are typically Title I schools that mostly serve children of color. The present secondary, exploratory data analysis examined outcomes of 134 children who entered a lottery for admission to public…

Circle time is commonplace in traditional preschools, yet there are few references to the practice in Montessori's writings or in major Montessori organizations' and teacher education standards. This article investigates whether circle time is frequent in Montessori 3-6-year-old classrooms using data from a widely distributed Qualtrics survey. The…

Early childhood education plays a critical role in establishing positive social-emotional behaviors and promoting the development of skills needed to succeed in elementary school. Although inclusion of children with disabilities (CWD) in early childhood classrooms is increasing throughout the world, numerous social, logistical, and political…

Montessori education is distinct for its implementation in 154 countries around the world. Lacking a Montessori trademark or comprehensive overseeing body, the expansion of the Montessori approach has often been diffuse and fragmented among competing organizations. The absence of centralized, accurate, and consistent accounting has made it…

The Neurosequential Model in Education (NME) is described as a developmentally sensitive and biologically respectful approach to development and learning. This paper postulates that the NME shares many commonalities with the Montessori Method in that it, too, is developmentally sensitive and adheres to biologically respectful concepts. This paper…

Childhood adversity and trauma are pervasive and have powerful, far-reaching consequences for health and well-being. Recent years have seen increased recognition of the need for trauma-informed practice, which aims to promote understanding, healing, and the prevention of retraumatization. Historical data show that the early Montessori schools were…

Indigenous educators desire to use culturally restorative and decolonized pedagogies reflective of their own cultural values and beliefs in their science programs but have lacked models for how to start. They also often lack confidence in their ability to teach the sciences. This three-year qualitative case study used grounded theory methodology…

The transition to distance learning in the spring of 2020 caused by COVID-19 was particularly challenging for Montessori educators and students because key elements of the Method were not directly transferable to this new and hastily designed format. Hands-on learning with Montessori materials and learning in a community, as well as careful…

This study offers a contextualized understanding of the distance-learning experiences of Montessori educators and students in the spring of 2020 in the wake of the COVID-19 global pandemic. In this article, we build on results reported in a separate article published in this issue of the "Journal of Montessori Research." First, we…

This work reports, from a qualitative research perspective, the development of an English Corner project for a preschool Children's House classroom in central Mexico over the course of a 3-year period. It shows the transition of a language specialist over six consecutive periods of work, from a traditional understanding and practice of teaching…

Maria Montessori strongly advocated for music learning to be fully integrated into the classroom; however, many Montessori classrooms are dominated by materials aimed at developing children's visual sense. The purpose of this critical participatory action research (CPAR) study was to address this perceived learning disparity by developing and…

Project SYNC (Systems, Yoked through Nuanced Collaboration) details perspectives of a community of stakeholders committed to the enhancement of early childhood (i.e., prekindergarten through grade 3) education. Although there is a growing number of public-school programs informed by the Montessori philosophy, Montessori educational experiences…

Montessori teacher education includes an intensive and ongoing teacher transformation. This experience aids in the development of a clearly defined teacher identity. Research on teacher identity broadly has shown that while such an identity can offer guidance and support, it can also limit teachers and prevent them from exploring other strategies…

Prior research has demonstrated that the characteristics of school environments can impact the development of creativity in children. Thus, we explored the construct of creativity in the context of a Montessori environment. We used the Evaluation of Potential Creativity to measure creativity in children during one academic year. The study sample…