Cognitive Performance in Montessori and Nursery School Children

Abstract

Cognitive performance was measured in fourteen pairs of children, matched in social class, CA, sex and IQ, selected from a Montessori and from a "traditional" nursery school. No differences were found between the parents in these schools on such measures of social and parental attitudes and behavior as: achievement orientation, traditional family ideology, dogmatism, anomie, parental control behavior, or task oriented vs. person oriented values. The nursery school children were significantly more creative on a measure of non-verbal creativity, were more socially oriented, and less task oriented than the Montessori children.Style of approach to tests was felt to be a critical outcome of the two educational environments. The Montessori children used significantly more physical characteristics to describe commonplace objects, whereas significantly more functional terms were used by the nursery school children in their descriptions. Montessori children's drawings had people present significantly less often and geometric forms significantly more often than the nursery school children's drawings.