Effects of Montessori Education on the Academic, Cognitive, and Social Development of Disadvantaged Preschoolers: A Randomized Controlled Study in the French Public‐School System

Abstract

Previous research on Montessori preschool education is inconsistent and prone to analytic flexibility. In this preregistered study, disadvantaged preschoolers in a French public school were randomly assigned to either conventional or Montessori classrooms, with the latter being adapted to French public education. Adaptations included fewer materials, shorter work periods, and relatively limited Montessori teacher training. Cross-sectional analyses in kindergarten (N = 176; M age = 5-6) and longitudinal analyses over the 3 years of preschool (N = 70; M age = 3-6) showed that the adapted Montessori curriculum was associated with outcomes comparable to the conventional curriculum on math, executive functions, and social skills. However, disadvantaged kindergarteners from Montessori classrooms outperformed their peers on reading (d = 0.68). This performance was comparable to that of advantaged children from an accredited Montessori preschool.Social and economic disparities have a tremendous impact on the academic, cognitive, and socioemotional development of children and adolescents. For example, in the United States and across Europe, socioeconomic status (SES) explains up to 15% of the variance in reading and math performance of highschoolers (OECD, 2016). Disadvantaged children also lag behind more advantaged peers on measures of cognitive and socioemotional abilities (Farah, 2017). These SES-related differences emerge as early as age 4 and tend to grow over time (Jordan & Levine, 2009; OECD, 2016). Thus, it is increasingly believed that interventions aimed at reducing inequalities should focus on early childhood, a period of enhanced brain plasticity during which cognitive skills may be the most responsive to cognitive and social stimulation (Thomas & Knowland, 2009). This has led to a renewed interest in preschool programs as a way to reduce the influence of SES disparities on early childhood development (Campbell et al., 2014;Duncan & Magnuson, 2013).Interest in early childhood education emerges from a large body of evidence showing that structured preschool programs can have a positive impact on school readiness and cognitive development of disadvantaged children (Campbell et al., 2014;Heckman, Moon, Pinto, Savelyev, & Yavitz, 2010). To date, policies have largely focused on structural factors such as teacher qualification (Jackson, Rockoff,We owe a debt of gratitude to A. Gascher and all of the teachers from both schools. This research would not have been possible without their involvement and dedication to the project. We also thank A

The Behavioral Effects of Montessori Pedagogy on Children’s Psychological Development and School Learning

“…Recently, Courtier et al [ 30 ] conducted a randomized study that measured the language, mathematical, executive, and social skills of children at a public kindergarten in a disadvantaged socio-economic area in France. The children had been randomly assigned to classes applying Montessori pedagogy (with a measure of implementation fidelity) or conventional pedagogy.…”

“…Finally, if we analyse the latest studies published very recently, most beneficial effects are observed when researchers test students from high socio-economic backgrounds voluntarily enrolled in private schools (Denervaud et al [ 46 , 47 ] and in Montessori private group tested by Courtier et al [ 30 ]). In contrast, almost no effect (except in reading) is observed when students are randomly assigned to Montessori classes and come from public schools in underprivileged neighbourhoods (in both the Montessori public group and the conventional public group tested by Courtier et al [ 30 ]).…”

“…Therefore, it seems crucial to take these factors into account to understand past results and implement future studies. These future researches may be addressed by considering the assessment of implementation fidelity through systematic observations in the classrooms by trained external observers, ensuring the flexibility of analyses using preregistration to share the specificities of the research in a public field before conducting the study as Courtier et al [ 30 ] did, in this sense the difficulty of publishing null results can be addressed by registered reports.…”

The Effects of Mild but Chronic Stress at School on Brain Development: A Comparative Morphometric Study Between Traditionally and Montessori-schooled Children

“…While chronic stress among adolescents and children has increased during the last decades, diminishing consequently their school performance 23 , Montessori-schooled children are consistently scoring higher on academic tasks 18,[24][25][26] . Other comparative studies further reported differences specifically in working memory abilities and semantic memory organization 18,25,27 , suggesting possible underlying differences within their hippocampus.…”

Preschool Education Resource Allocation Model for Index System Evaluation Based on Nonlinear Random Matrix

“…Education is the cornerstone of social progress, national development, and national rejuvenation [1,2]. Education is an important part of national public services, and its development direction, scale, speed, and quality are greatly a ected by national policies.…”