| Montessori Education |
Traditional Education |
| Child reinforces own learning by repetition of work and internal feelings of success. |
Learning is reinforced externally by repetition and rewards. |
| Directress(or) has an unobtrusive role in the classroom. |
Teacher is center of classroom as a “controller”. |
| Child sets own learning pace. |
Instruction pace usually set by group norm. |
| Child discovers own concepts from self-teaching materials. |
Child is guided to concepts by teacher. |
| Mixed age groupings encourages children to teach and help others. |
Most teaching done by teacher. |
| Child spots own errors from feedback of material. |
If work is corrected, errors usually pointed out by teacher. |
| Child can choose work where he wishes, move around and talk at will (yet not disturb the work of others) – group work is voluntary. |
Child usually assigned one chair and desk. They are encouraged to participate, sit still and listen during group sessions. |
| Mainly individual instruction. |
Group and individual instruction. |
