Liberty, discipline and pedagogy: mapping pathways towards social and cultural independence through the regulation of activity and attention in a Montessori classroom. Feez, S. 2008. Presenters: _:n6105
Liberty, discipline and pedagogy: mapping pathways towards social and cultural independence through the regulation of activity and attention in a Montessori classroom [pdf]Paper  abstract   bibtex   
The term discipline weaves together, through its etymology and use, both learning and regulation, suggesting that one cannot be achieved without the other. It is in this sense, that Dr Maria Montessori applied the term as she designed her distinctive pedagogy during the first half of the twentieth century. Her aim was for children to regulate their activity and their attention through interaction with meticulously designed objects combined with precise language, including the language of educational disciplines. What distinguishes Montessori pedagogy is that children’s liberty is identified as both the means and the end of this regulation. Liberty and discipline were considered by Dr Montessori (1998 [1939], p. 41) to be ‘two faces of the same coin, two faces of the same action’. Montessori’s emphasis on liberty locates her pedagogy in the Enlightenment tradition, but her simultaneous emphasis on discipline, in both senses, reveals an orientation out of step with the tradition of Rousseau, the tradition which remains in the foreground whenever pedagogy is linked with the legacy of the Enlightenment. This paper presents Montessori’s pedagogy of liberty and discipline as one realisation of another, less visible, Enlightenment tradition. This tradition comes into clearer view when human development is perceived as socially, and therefore, semiotically, mediated (Vygotsky 1986 [1934]) and pedagogy is perceived as discipline knowledge embedded in a regulating social order (Bernstein 2000).

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