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Abstract
Did the work of Maria Montessori have an influence on the educational methods used in the infant and elementary school classrooms in England and Wales between 1910, when her work was first publicized in England, and 1933, when the Consultative Committee of the Board of Education published its report on Infant and Nursery Schools? To answer this principal question the following factors are considered: the effect on educational practices of the slow development of government provided education, the characteristics of the British Infant School, the social and political circumstances which were effecting education in 1910, the nature of Montessori's fame, and the official reaction to Maria Montessori and her work.
For information concerning the methods actually being used in the classrooms from 1928 to 1933, the primary sources are memoranda submitted during that period to the Consultative Committee on the Primary School and to the Consultative Committee on Infant and Nursery Schools. The documents were analyzed for references to Montessori, for evidence of teachers having attended Montessori training courses, and for descriptions and advocacy of classroom methods which, according to a definition given by the Consultative Committee in its published report, reflect a Montessori influence. Eleven of thirteen Junior School Inspectors, six of thirteen Infant School Inspectors, and eleven of sixteen Heads of Infant Schools, according to the criteria used, advocate Montessori methods for more than half of the curriculum areas which they discuss. This evidence from the memoranda submitted to the Consultative Committees, combined with conclusions drawn from historical evidence, indicate that Maria Montessori did have considerable influence on the schools of England and Wales.
