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Home > About NMS > Our Philosophy > Piaget > Piaget v. Montessori HOW DOES PIAGET DIFFER FROM MONTESSORI? Parents familiar with a Montessori system of education will notice many similarities in the New Morning School approach, including:
There are a number of differences between a Piagetian approach to education and a Montessori approach; however, both Jean Piaget and Maria Montessori were constructivists. (Read this article about constructivism for a more complete understanding of constructivism, especially as it relates to learning.) In his article entitled Jean Piaget's Genetic Epistemology: Appreciate and Critique, Clemson University Professor Robert L. Campbell points out that: The experimental nursery school in Geneva, La Maison des Petits, where Piaget carried out his first studies of children in the 1920s, was a modified Montessori institution, and Piaget was for a number of years the head of the Swiss Montessori Society (see Rita Kramer, Maria Montessori: A biography, New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1976, pp. 311, 321, 326). Piaget seems to have grown dissatisfied with Montessori's lack of theoretical rigor in psychology, but disgust with her long and ultimately futile collaboration with the Mussolini regime in Italy (1922-1934) may have played a more decisive role... ...In fact, an article by David Elkind, written in 1967 when both thinkers were getting renewed interest in the United States (Piaget and Montessori, Harvard Educational Review, 37,535-546) correctly identifies several points of agreement without showing any awareness of Piaget's role in the Montessori movement.
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