5 Discoveries In Neuroscience That Support Montessori Teaching
“The first duty of education is to stir up life, but also to allow it to develop freely,” Maria Montessori claimed over a hundred years ago. The educational triangle on which her education and her fundamental principle are based are proven by neuroscience.
After years of experimentation, Steven Hughes, a neuropsychologist, pediatrician and Montessori father, maintains that Montessori teaching strengthens brain functions, helping to expand cognitive development. He has also nicknamed the method “the original system of learning based on the brain”.
Neurological development is enhanced by learning through Montessori teaching. This claim is supported not only by hundreds of successful developmental cases since its establishment, but also by the various discoveries made by today’s neuroscience. Let’s look at 5 of these:
Picture by Karin Taylor.
The hands are the instruments of human intelligence
Man takes in information about his surroundings with his hands. These are the tools of intelligence. The hands are creative, they can produce things. The sense organs and coordination are developed through manual activities “ , claimed Maria Montessori.
Today we know that the resources that the brain uses to process stimuli that it receives through the hands are superior to receiving stimuli from other parts of the body, so we could say that exploration through the hands is like going through the great gate to our brain and therefore they must play a central role in learning.
Natural experimentation strengthens children’s skills and abilities
“Education is a natural process performed by the child and which is not obtained by listening to words, but through experiences in the environment,” claimed Maria Montessori.
Promoting free and natural experimentation means encouraging children to move and communicate with their surroundings. Children learning through Montessori education spend more time moving than in traditional schools; in other words, an active relationship is required with the medium that promotes a better mastery of motor, sensory, emotional and cognitive skills.
So the benefit of promoting an active attitude in relation to the environment makes children more competent when it comes to recognizing the intentions of others. This finding is supported by various studies. Encouraging children to do something helps them learn much faster than if they just observe, as stated in a text published in 1981 by Kandel et al.
Executive functions and Montessori
Executive functions are the cognitive skills that allow us to manipulate ideas mentally. These mental abilities promote an active, voluntary and effective solution to the problems that appear in daily life.
Learning to be flexible and to accept changes in the environment, to concentrate on a task, to continue with a goal, to resist our impulses, and to take in information to work with are invaluable abilities for appropriate development.
The term “executive functions” classifies these abilities into three categories: inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. If these functions are not well developed, this can also give rise to a false diagnosis of disabilities such as ADHD and other learning difficulties.
With Montessori learning, developed at a time when this was not yet known, help is given to the development of fresh functions through various activities, such as waiting, looking for materials by going through a maze, etc. Research shows that children who have gone at Montessori preschools showed a better performance in this family of cerebrospinal mental processes.
The sensitive periods or benefits of opportunities in childhood
Maria Montessori observed that during childhood there were sensitive periods for learning. During these evolutionary occasions, there is great neuro-emotional potential, and education is therefore important. It is important for children to explore their world in the most autonomous way possible in the period between the ages of 0 and 11 years.
We can therefore talk about the creation of the Montessori microcosm or micro worlds. This is the creation of a world of children: child-sized furniture, small toys that encourage the exploration of cognitive flexibility, etc. Neuroscience has identified these stages where the brain needs a certain stimulus to develop.
Mirror neurons as the basis for learning
Mirror neurons can be found in the frontal lobe. They help absorb information about the environment through the senses. This was discovered by Maria Montessori through observation and was later corroborated by the discovery of these neurons specializing in imitation.
As we can see, the Montessori method is something that has received a lot of scientific support and must continue to be studied because it guarantees the creation of a universe based on care and respect for the individual rhythms of each child and environment.
