Montessori classrooms have become more popular and known overtime and have become one of the preferred ways of arranging and conducting classrooms for preschools. The Classroom Assessment Scoring System (CLASS) is the most used observation system used in research, practice, and policy to look at classroom process quality. CLASS focuses mostly on teacher-child interactions as the site of learning, and Montessori classrooms focuses mostly on child-environment interactions, which might cause Montessori classrooms to score lower than conventional classrooms on CLASS.
Montessori preschool classrooms tend to have more students, causing a higher child to teacher ratio, which may not seem efficient to some people. However, these classrooms see that children’s development and learning occur not only through teacher to child interactions, but through a relationship between the child, the environment, and the teacher. This is not something that CLASS typically looks at but is shown to be effective in children’s development.
Montessori preschool classrooms with larger class sizes had higher emotional support and classroom organization than conventional classrooms using CLASS. They also found that classrooms with higher child to adult ratios lead to higher instructional support. This goes to show the advantages of Montessori classrooms that CLASS observations might miss!
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Angelina Stofka
UConn KIDS, Research Assistant