Maria Montessori (1870–1952)

Maria Montessori was an Italian physician and clinical psychologist, whose method of early childhood education is still in use today.

Montessori was born in Chiaravalle, Italy, but moved to Rome in early childhood with her family (Giardiello, 2013). Montessori aspired to be an engineer, but later changed her mind and began studying at the University of Rome in the faculty of medicine in 1889. She earned her medical degree with a specialization in psychiatry in 1896 and began working as a clinical psychologist in Rome’s public medical clinics. While working at the psychiatric clinic, Montessori became interested in solving the issue of how to care for children with mental deficiencies in educational settings, and presented two papers at the first two Italian pedagogy conferences in 1898 and 1901. Through this exposure, she was invited by the National League for Care and Education of Mentally Deficient Children to become the director of their newly established school for children with special educational needs. She returned to the University of Rome in 1902 to study philosophy and began teaching pedagogical anthropology at the university in 1906. In 1907, she was invited by the Roman Institute of Real Estate to become the director of their “Children’s Houses”. These “Houses” were community residences designed to care for children of low-income families when they were not in school, allowing low-income mothers the freedom to work. Montessori used this setting as her experimental laboratory, where she observed the children and began developing her instructional method (Giardiello, 2013).

Giardiello (2013) describes how the core features of the “Montessori Method” are rooted in experimental science. It places an emphasis on the child’s liberty and facilitates the child’s development across various domains, including the acquisition of cognitive, sensorimotor, and social skills. Montessori believed that children should be given the freedom to realize their individual potential, and the classroom should be an environment which facilitates their independent learning. Her method involves equipping the classroom with materials that promote self-directed learning, as well as the development of age-appropriate psychological skills. Montessori emphasized the importance of “sensitive periods” for developing certain skills, and thus the specific resources chosen for the classroom should depend on the age of the children and the critical skills which are typically associated with that age. Moreover, the classroom is to be arranged in a way that does not restrict the child, such that the materials are dispersed throughout the classroom and the child has the freedom to explore the resources at their own pace. The teacher’s role in this approach is to observe the children and facilitate the flow of learning while allowing the children to lead their own instruction. Montessori’s rationale behind this was that children should are not motivated by extrinsic rewards, but rather, by their own desire to complete a task. As such, children are intrinsically motivated to accomplish a task when they have the freedom to choose, and thus, learning itself becomes intrinsically motivating to the child. Furthermore, Montessori also placed emphasis on practical skills, such as independence and social competence, highlighting the focus on the individuality of the child at the centre of her method. By 1910, the Montessori Method was being taught to teachers around the world and continued to gain popularity over the next decade. However, this approach was not as well accepted in Italy, whose schools only began implementing the method in the 1920s (Giardiello, 2013).

 Lillard (2019) states that the Montessori Method continues to be implemented in modern education, and a number of recent studies have demonstrated the efficacy of this method. Specifically, these studies suggest that children attending Montessori schools demonstrate superior academic performance, executive functioning, and social competence compared to children on a waitlist, or those attending conventional schools. In addition, children in Montessori classrooms are encouraged to develop independently, and their capabilities are realized through various tasks which they choose based on interest. They are also taught to be accountable, as students learn to recognize and correct mistakes, in addition to taking initiative to seek out new knowledge. Through hands-on experiences and a deep understanding of concepts, children not only become knowledgeable but can also develop a sense of self. This is because students of different ages often work together, fostering mentor-mentee relationships. Self-growth in the context of an inclusive community helps children recognize their individuality (Lillard, 2019).

While Montessori is best known for the development of the Montessori Method, she also contributed significantly to the growing experimental literature on child development and education throughout her career (Giardiello, 2013). She published several notable texts, including The Montessori Method (1909), Pedagogical Anthropology (1910), and To Educate the Human Potential (1948). In addition to her work as a psychologist, Montessori was also heavily involved in the feminist movement and was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 1949. Her dedication to freedom and independence of all individuals is exemplified by her psychological career as well as her political pursuits (Giardiello, 2013).

Maria Montessori was an extremely accomplished scientist, activist, and psychologist, whose ideals continue to impact modern psychology and education.

References

American Montessori Society: Education that transforms lives. (n.d.) Why Choose Montessori Education. https://amshq.org/Families/Why-Choose-Montessori

Frierson, P. (2018) Maria Montessori In Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (Eds.), Encyclopedia of evolutionary psychological science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2440-1

Giardiello, P. (2013). Maria Montessori. Pioneers in early childhood education (pp. 78-92). Routledge. https://doi-org.libaccess.lib.mcmaster.ca/10.4324/9780203084304

Lillard, A. (2019). Shunned and admired: Montessori, self-determination, and a case for radical school reform. Educational Psychology Review, 31, 939–965. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-019-09483-3

Contributors

• Faheel Ahmad
• Maha Salman Cheema
• Peter Liu
• Julia Gollob

Helen Thompson Woolley (1874–1947)

Helen Thompson Woolley pioneered educational reform in the US in the early 20th century, and was renowned for her research, teaching, and writing in the fields of educational, experimental, and developmental psychology.

Woolley was born in Chicago, America, to a mother involved in missionary work and a father who enjoyed inventing (Morse, 2002). As valedictorian of her high school, Woolley earned a scholarship to attend the University of Chicago, where she studied philosophy, psychology, and education. She graduated in 1897 and remained there as a graduate fellow, majoring in psychology and minoring in neurology. Her dissertation, titled Psychological Norms in Men and Women, was directed by James R. Angell, and was the first experimental study to investigate the differences between men’s and women’s performance on a large variety of psychological tests. Woolley tested 50 undergraduate students (25 men, 25 women), controlling for confounding variables such as economic status and educational background. The participants completed a total of 77 psychological tests, including measures of perception, motor skills, response times, memory, etc. Her paper included thorough explanations of her methodology and graphs of men’s and women’s score distributions for all tests. Woolley reported that although men and women sometimes slightly outperformed each other on different tests, most of the differences were statistically insignificant. She proposed that the slight differences reflected environmental (societal) influences, rather than differences in biology. Woolley received her Ph.D. in 1900, and her thesis was published in 1903. After graduating in 1900, she received a fellowship and travelled to France and Germany where she studied psychological testing for one year. Upon returning to the US in 1901, Woolley was appointed Professor of Psychology at Mt. Holyoke College for Women, where she helped establish a psychological laboratory and became its director. In 1905, she got married and moved to the Philippines with her husband who obtained a job there, and ended up working for the Philippines Bureau of Education as an experimental psychologist. She moved back to the US in 1907 when she became pregnant and settled in Cincinnati with her husband. She began lecturing at the University of Cincinnati on a part-time basis since her marital status disqualified her from obtaining a full-time position. Her success in Cincinnati, however, was primarily defined by her work with the Cincinnati Vocation Bureau, which attempted to improve “working conditions for women and children” (Milar, 1999, p. 220, as cited in Morse, 2002).

Woolley was appointed director of the bureau in 1911, at which time she began a 5-year longitudinal study on the mental and physical development of school children compared to that of working children (Morse, 2002). Her findings from this study were first published in 1914 in the paper Mental and Physical Measurements of Working Children, demonstrating that children who stayed in school performed better on almost all measures. These findings helped Woolley to obtain funding from external agencies for scholarships to allow children from low-income families to stay in school. Moreover, her research informed the use of psychological testing in Cincinnati schools for assigning children with mental impairments to specialized classes.* Woolley was renowned for her ongoing work in Cincinnati, however, in 1921, she left her position at the bureau when her husband’s work moved the family to Detroit. There, she became a psychologist and assistant director at the Merrill-Palmer School, established an experimental nursery school for studying early childhood development and education and began writing and publishing her observations. In the winter of 1926, she was offered a position as director of the Institute of Child Welfare Research at Columbia University’s Teachers’ College. Once settled in at the Teachers’ College in the fall of 1926, she set up two nursery schools for conducting research and began teaching as a Professor of Education and Child Development. Shortly after, Woolley, unfortunately, suffered a nervous breakdown and was advised to take a year off of work. During this leave, she travelled to various experimental nursery schools in Europe to observe their methods, and returned to her full capacity of work in 1928. Over the next two years, Woolley presented two of her papers at the International Congress of Psychology, and one at the first International Congress on Mental Hygiene. She also contributed a chapter to Carl Murchison’s text, A New Handbook of Child Psychology. Despite her continuous contributions to the fields of educational and developmental psychology through her research, teaching, and writing, she was forced to resign from the Teachers’ College in 1930 when William Russel took over as dean, and due to the economic depression, she was unable to find any work hereafter. While her treatment at the end of her career is certainly unjust and inexplicable considering her prominence, Helen Thompson Woolley made outstanding contributions to educational reform and proved time and time again her exquisite skills as a scientific psychologist.

*For a more detailed summary of the Vocational Bureau of Cincinnati and Woolley’s contributions, see Burns (2009).

References

Burns, S. (2009). Legacy of the Vocational Bureau of Cincinnati: Research advances social justice. The Career Development Quarterly, 57, 237–247. https://doi.org/10.1002/j.2161-0045.2009.tb00109.x

Morse, J. (2002). Ignored but not forgotten: The work of Helen Bradford Thompson Woolley. NWSA Journal, 14, 121–147. https://doi.org/10.2979/nws.2002.14.2.121

Inez Beverly Prosser (1895–1934)

Inez Beverly Prosser was the first African American woman to receive a Ph.D. in psychology and was an accomplished educator and researcher.

Prosser was born in San Marcos, Texas into a large family (Benjamin, Henry & Mcmahon, 2005). Growing up as an African-American in the south during the early 20th century meant Prosser’s early education consisted of attending a racially segregated school. Prosser graduated as valedictorian of her high school class in 1910. She had a brother who graduated the same year and her parents could only support one child attending college. They were originally planning to send her brother, but he convinced them to send Inez, since her desire to further her education was greater than his. As a result, Prosser attended Prairie View State Normal and Industrial College where she earned her teaching certificate in 1912. She began teaching right away, working as both a teacher and principal in several schools. Prosser was taking courses at Samuel Huston College while teaching in order to earn her bachelor’s degree, minoring in English and psychology, and graduated in 1926. On top of teaching and working toward her bachelor’s degree, she also began taking summer courses for a master’s degree at the University of Colorado. She earned her Master of Arts degree in education in 1927 with the thesis The Comparative Reliability of Objective Tests in English Grammar. In this investigation, Prosser measured the split-half reliability for four types of tests—true-or-false, multiple-choice, completion, and matching—as well as the correlations between the four test types for 303 students at Anderson High School. The results demonstrated that the internal consistencies (split-half reliabilities) of the tests were all high, yet the correlations between scores on each test type were relatively low. Prosser believed that each test type might be assessing different core abilities and concluded that a variety of test types should be used to evaluate students’ understanding of grammar. Although her thesis was not published, it encouraged Prosser to further her education in psychology. Moreover, her implications resemble the considerations for modern intellectual testing and the importance of using a variety of modalities when testing children’s overall intelligence or abilities in a specific domain (Benjamin et al., 2005).

In 1927, Prosser began teaching education and psychology courses at Tillotson College, where she was highly active in many other aspects of the college as well, especially regarding administrative responsibilities (Benjamin et al., 2005). She was an important member of the faculty at Tillotson for three years, and then transferred to Tougaloo College in 1930. Prosser not only worked at the college but was also appointed as principal of the Tougaloo High School which was affiliated with the college. After only one year, however, Prosser left Tougaloo when she received a doctoral fellowship to study educational psychology at the University of Cincinnati. Her doctoral dissertation was a follow-up of Mary Crowley’s dissertation, which investigated the differences in academic achievement between African American children in segregated schools and mixed schools. Prosser’s dissertation aimed to measure the socioemotional outcomes of these same groups, such as personality, self-esteem, social skills, etc. While Crowley found that the two groups performed similarly on academic achievement measures, Prosser reported that the children in segregated schools had better socioemotional outcomes. She noted in her discussion that segregated schools are not necessarily always superior to mixed schools, and believed that children and families should have the right to choose based on the child’s personality characteristics and socioemotional needs. For example, Prosser asserted that African American children in need of affection, whether due to a personality characteristic or a lack of affection at home, would benefit from segregated schooling. This study was conducted during a time when the debate of segregated vs. mixed schools was on the rise, and was therefore met with several criticisms from individuals who believed that segregated schools perpetuated the view that African Americans were inferior to White Americans. The criticisms were primarily regarding her limited sample size as well as the negative impact that the results would have on society. While the attack on sample size is a valid criticism of the scientific research, proponents of segregated schools agreed with Prosser’s assertion that voluntarily segregated schooling is the most optimal situation until African American children can be treated appropriately by White teachers and peers, which at the time was not the case. Nevertheless, she received her Ph.D. in 1933 and returned to her positions at Tougaloo College and High School. Over the next year, she promoted teacher training for coloured schools in Mississippi by publishing articles on teaching and hosting workshops for teachers. Tragically, Prosser died in a car accident in 1934, just one year after receiving her Ph.D. Despite this unfortunate event, Prosser achieved excellence in her career and in her life, inspiring and helping people to pursue teaching, and improving education for African American schooling (Benjamin et al., 2005).

References

Benjamin Jr., L., Henry, K., & Mcmahon, L. (2005). Inez Beverly Prosser and the education of African Americans. Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 41, 43–62. https://doi.org/10.1002/jhbs.20058

Featured psychologists: Francis Cecil Sumner, PhD and Inez Beverly Prosser, PhD. (2021). American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/resources/ethnicity-health/psychologists/sumner-prosser.

Francis Cecil Sumner (1895–1954)

Francis C. Sumner, often referred to as the “Father of Black Psychology”, was an impressive 20th-century psychologist, and played a pivotal role in supplying quality higher psychological education to African American scholars.

Sumner was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, during a time when racism was heavily prevalent in the American south (Sawyer, 2000). Due to the poor quality of the schooling in segregated schools for African Americans, Sumner received his  high school education from his father. Although he did not have a high school diploma, Sumner was accepted into Lincoln University after passing a written examination. Leading up to his graduation in 1915, Sumner contacted James Porter, a professor of psychology and Dean of Clark University, leading to his acceptance at Clark for the following year. During this time, G. Stanley Hall was the president of Clark University; although his public opinion of African Americans was anti-Black, he allowed and encouraged Black students to enroll at Clark (Guthrie, 2000). Sumner earned his second bachelor’s degree from Clark in 1916, and returned to Lincoln as a graduate student (Sawyer, 2000). While completing his Master’s degree during the 1916-17 academic year at Lincoln, Sumner taught courses in German and psychology, including the psychology of religion, experimental psychology, and social psychology. After having earned his Master’s degree in 1917, Sumner realized that he wanted to further his education in psychology and began to seek out schools that could offer him financial aid (Guthrie, 2000). He was turned down by American University and the University of Illinois, and reached out to Hall to discuss the possibility of returning to Clark. Hall accepted Sumner as a senior fellow of psychology in 1917, and approved his candidacy to complete his doctorate degree. Unfortunately, Sumner’s studies were interrupted in 1918 when he was drafted to serve in WWI. During his training, Sumner continued to correspond with Hall. Hall even wrote a recommendation for Sumner to attend an army officer training camp, although the recommendation arrived too late to be of effect. After being discharged from the army, Sumner returned to Clark in 1919 to complete his degree, and in 1920, became the first African American to receive a Ph.D. in psychology. He was Hall’s last graduate student, and his dissertation was titled Psychoanalysis of Freud and Adler, which was later published in 1922 (Guthrie, 2000).Sumner held teaching positions in psychology and philosophy at Wilberforce University and Southern University following his graduation from Clark, and then became the Professor and Chair of the Psychology and Philosophy Departments at West Virginia Collegiate Institute in 1921 (Sawyer, 2000). The main theoretical perspectives for his curriculum whilst at West Virginia were introspection and behaviourism.

Although Sumner was able to attain a professorship, the challenges of being an African American scholar were apparent to him (Guthrie, 2000). In addition to being denied external funding for all of his research during this period, Sumner was only permitted to teach at an all-Black institution, most of which were located in rural areas that were difficult to get to and severely lacking in funding compared to White institutions. In two separate papers published in 1926 and 1927, Sumner expressed ways to improve higher education for African Americans. One suggestion was to condense the number of smaller Black institutions into fewer, larger institutions in more accessible locations, and combine the resources to provide better facilities and faculty salaries. In addition to these articles on African American education, Sumner also published a handful of papers during his time at West Virginia, one of which was on his research of emotions in children. In 1928, Sumner left West Virginia for Howard University, where he was appointed as Associate Professor and Chair of the Psychology Department, becoming a full professor in 1930. Upon his arrival at Howard, the department of psychology was still immersed in education and philosophy, thus Sumner and Howard’s president, Mordecai W. Johnson, established an independent department of psychology with Sumner as its director. Sumner, along with Frederick P.Watts and Max Meenes, comprised the psychology department at Howard, and together they trained several Black students at the undergraduate and graduate levels (Guthrie, 2000).

Sumner’s main area of interest in his later career was the psychology of religion (Guthrie, 2000). In 1931, he presented at the First International Congress for Religious Psychology in Vienna, Austria. In 1934 he published the manuscript The Structure of Religion: A History of European Psychology of Religion. He also studied psychology in relation to the law by assessing the justice-related attitudes of 2000 Black and White college students. In addition to his research and teaching, Sumner wrote over 3000 English abstracts for German, French, and Spanish articles in the Psychological Bulletin and the Journal of Social Psychology. He was a member of several organizations:the American Educational Research Association, Eastern Psychological Association, Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and District of Columbia Psychological Association. Moreover, he was awarded a fellowship in both the American Psychological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science for his outstanding contributions to the field of psychology. Francis Sumner was an extraordinary scholar, writer, teacher, and psychologist (Guthrie, 2000).

References

Guthrie, R. V. (2000). Francis Cecil Sumner: The first African American pioneer in psychology. In Portraits of pioneers in psychology (pp. 211-226). Psychology Press.

Sawyer, T. F. (2000). Francis Cecil Sumner: His views and influence on African American higher education. History of Psychology, 3, 122–141. https://doi.org/10.1037/1093-4510.3.2.122

Contributors

• Peter Liu
• Fermin Retnavarathan

Margaret Mahler (1897-1985) (**SC)

Written by: Taryn Simon

Margaret Mahler is an important figure and contributor to the field of child development and abnormal psychology.

Born in 1897 in the Hungarian town of Sopron, Mahler grew up the daughter of a highly respected Jewish physician (Coates, 2004). She grew up greatly admiring her father and his intellect, leading to her pursuing higher education, a rare feat for women at the time. Mahler began her medical studies at the University of Budapest, later transferring to the University of Munich to complete clinical training in pediatrics. However, Mahler was forced to leave the University before completing her training due to experiencing anti-Semitism. She then transferred to the University of Jena, where her work with children began. Her time there inspired her interest in child development and the importance of play and love. After completing her studies in 1922, she moved back to Vienna to work at several children’s institutes and clinics. Importantly, she noticed that when sick children are kept with their mothers during treatment, this resulted in higher survival rates. Later, Mahler decided to pursue psychoanalytic training instead of continuing as a physician, but shortly after completing her training, Mahler escaped the country when the Nazis annexed Austria. Mahler ended up in America, where Mahler finally had the ability to develop her theories (Coates, 2004).

Mahler’s most significant contribution was her separation-individuation theory of child development (Mahler, 1963). This theory states that as an infant grows into a toddler, they view the caregiver as a separate individual and develop their own identity away from their caregiver. Therefore, Mahler emphasized the importance of the early relationship between mother and child, with disturbances to this relationship leading to problems in development. Her legacy ultimately illuminated issues in early development that lead to disturbances later in life. Her work is often viewed alongside attachment theory when discussing the role experience plays in developing mental representations( Mahler, 1963).

Margaret Mahler’s work illuminated the complex relationship between mother and child, and the importance of healthy early childhood environments. Her work has laid foundations for research on overall life development, and the adversities she has experienced provide inspiration to all academics.

References — needs formatting

Blum, H. P. (2004). Separation-individuation theory and attachment theory. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 52(2), 535-553.

https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Margaret_Mahler

https://www.goodtherapy.org/famous-psychologists/margaret-mahler.html

Coates S. W. (2004). John Bowlby and Margaret s. Mahler: their lives and theories. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, 52(2), 571–601. https://doi.org/10.1177/00030651040520020601

Mahler M. S. (1963). Thoughts about development and individuation, The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, 18(1), 307-324.

https://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/mahler-margaret

Georgi Lozanov (1926 – 2012) (**SC)

Written by: Maria Gaydarova

Georgi Lozanov was a Bulgarian physician and psychologist, who explored the processes of learning, and founded the groundbreaking teaching system of “suggestopedia”.

Georgi Lozanov was born in 1926 in Sofia, Bulgaria. He began his career as a physician, but his interest in psychology caused him to pursue the role of a psychotherapist. Through reading and studying various textbooks on the subject, Lozanov discovered the power of suggestion on the human mind (Lozanov & Gill, 2013). Many hours of research led Lozanov to find that human memory was more powerful than originally thought, and that “everything in the memory remained as it was taken in . . . one only needed a way to tap into it” (Lozanov & Gill, 2013). From this observation, Lozanov’s theory of “suggestology” was born in the early 1960s. Suggestology explores how signals (suggestions) from the environment are absorbed by the unconscious mind before conscious information is taken in (Bancroft, 1976). For example, when listening to somebody talking, the context of what is said is processed consciously, but the listener also processes the environment, the tone of the speech, the inflections, and  “everything which for the moment is linked with the words that are spoken”, whether they realize it or not (Lozanov, 2005).

With the help of musician and researcher, Evelina Gateva, who was also his wife, Lozanov applied suggestology to the field of pedagogy to create “suggestopedia” (Lozanov & Gill, 2013). Suggestopedia is a teaching system based on the idea that a teacher can access the unlimited reserve (memory, intellectual activity, creativity, the whole personality) capacities of a learner (Lozanov, 2005). The teacher also inhibits the previous negative associations the student has with learning, such as that learning is scary and that humans have limited capacities for learning new information  (Lozanov, 2005). At first, suggestopedia was used to help people learn new languages at a faster, yet less stressful pace, which is why Lozanov is referred to as “the father of accelerated learning.” Suggestopedia is still used as an effective method of learning languages today.

After introducing suggestopedia to the academic community, Lozanov became the director of the new Institute of Suggestology in Sofia, Bulgaria (Lozanov & Gill, 2013). However, Lozanov’s research did not always agree with the standards of the communist system in Bulgaria, and this eventually prevented Lozanov from sharing his ideas with the world. The government did not allow Lozanov to leave the country, communicate with foreigners, attend conferences or publish papers, and even removed him as director of the Institute. As a consequence, Lozanov’s name and ideas were used without his knowledge for years. Some published academic materials under his name without his consent, and companies, schools and training programs even went as far as trademarking themselves using his name and the name of his theories (Lozanov & Gill, 2013)

However, with the fall of the Iron Curtain in the early 1990s, Lozanov was able to leave Bulgaria and share his ideas with the world. In 2005, Lozanov opened the Lozanov International Centre for Teacher Training in Austria, where teachers are trained using the suggestopedia method. Research in suggestology today focuses on how subtle psychological processes can be applied to practical use.

Further Reading

Bancroft, W. J. (1976). Suggestology and Suggestopedia: The Theory of the Lozanov Method.