Date of Award

2009

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Curriculum, Instruction, and Media Technology

Abstract

There are two purposes of the current study. First was to examine whether or not children in the elementary school in Taiwan who had received Montessori early childhoodEducation obtain significantly higher scores on tests of language arts, math, and social studies than children who attended non-Montessori pre-elementary programs. Second one was to examine whether or not the number years of MontessoriEducation has a positive impact on the students' scores when they are in elementary grades. According to Chattin-McNichols (1992b), children from MontessoriEducation program are doing better in some respects than other programs. Some studies have found that in the United States, Montessori students have strong academic outcomes especially in language arts than non-Montessori students (Daux, 1995; Hobbs, 2008; Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006; Manner, 1999). The present study involved 196 participants from a private Catholic elementary school in Taipei City, Taiwan. Ninety-eight first, second, and third grade students had Montessori early childhood experience and 98 first, second, and third grade students did not have Montessori early childhood experience. Using one-way MANOVA as a statistical tool, there were mixed results in the present study. The results showed students who had Montessori early childhoodEducation experience had higher test scores of language arts than the students who did not have MontessoriEducation experience. In conclusion, the present study partially supports the findings of other studies and shows that MontessoriEducation has some long-term impact on the students' language arts learning.

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