[em-bee]

montessori methodology and training (at least as certified by AMI) is a strong selector for teacher quality. trainees have to spend 90 hours in class just observing children and writing reports about their observations as part of their training. they learn to understand what the kids need and how to teach them. i am not aware that traditional teacher education does any of that.

likewise peer quality should not be even a factor because of the way how montessori education works. children are not given the opportunity to disrupt others.

the methodology is all-encompassing. it affects the children from the moment they enter the school, until they leave to go home. most of the potential other factors in the school are eliminated by the methodology itself.

it's hard to envision. you have to observe a class in action to understand why.

[bonoboTP]

You aren't contradicting me.

Teachers who pass the tests required for this probably are from the top of their teacher cohort regarding intelligence, consciousness, empathy, motivation etc and they are likely better paid, so less stressed from life stuff like bills or whatever.

The peers all come from non-random families who generally have good life outcomes either way. These kids will model good behavioral norms. If kids can interact, they will influence each other. It's not only disruption or no disruption, but likely more subtle.

The effects were only shown here up to end of kindergarten. It likely disappears later.

My default assumption remains that these fashionable methodologies do very little actually. The correction is probable almost entirely due to who the people involved are. I know that the study participants were randomized to Montessori or not, but the rest of peers and the teachers are not random.

The real test would be for a Montessori kindergarten to drop the methodology while keeping the same people.

[em-bee]

my point is that if we give every teacher montessori training, the teacher quality would rise.

[bonoboTP]

Okay, that's an empirical question. I rather doubt it and think that the more adept teachers are more likely to apply there and to get through it. It's a filtering mechanism.

[em-bee]

if montessori is adopted as part of a national or state curriculum then there would not be a filter anymore. and i do not think may people would fail the training. from what i saw it is rigorous and intensive, but it is not difficult. certainly not more difficult that traditional teacher education. the only teachers that would struggle would be lazy ones that enter the training with a preconceived idea of what teaching is about and find that idea challenged.

[bonoboTP]

Ok, and I'm saying that in that case you wouldn't see an effect, precisely because there would be no filtering.

[em-bee]

but there should be an effect, namely better teachers, because they receive better training.