fwaris_whatmakesaqualityeducationalapproach_012719.docx -...

What Makes A Quality Educational Approach ? 1
What Makes a Quality Educational Approach?
Fayeza F. Waris
Rasmussen College
Author’s Note
This paper is being submitted on January 27, 2019, for Victoria Snyder’s EEC3318
Section 05 Intentional Teaching Practices - Online Plus - 2019 Winter Quarter Term 1 course

What Makes A Quality Educational Approach ? 2
What Makes a Quality Educational Approach?
In the present era of technological revolution, the globalization is much greater than ever
before. The society has become a melting pot where the presence of diversity is visible
everywhere including in the classroom environment. The adopted educational approach highly
influences the tone of today ’s classrooms. Among many early childhood educational approaches
“Waldorf, Montessori, and Reggio Emilia are three progressive approaches to early childhood
education that appear to be growing in influence in North America” (Edwards, 2002, p. 4). All
these three approaches share many similar attributes but have their distinct idealism.
Part 1
Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), a maverick Austrian scientist and philosophical thinker was
the founder of Waldorf education. During World War I, he was invited to Waldorf-Astoria
cigarette factory in Stuttgart, Germany to establish a school raising awareness for a just and
peaceful society incorporating coeducation, open admission of children from all background,
comprehensive, and free of external control. The effort was to bring liberation to the field of
education (Edwards, 2002, p. 3). According to this theory, children from birth to age 7, learn
through imitating and doing. Imagination is the active ‘work’ of children that they use to mature
in all developmental domains. “The educational focus is on bodily exploration, constructive and
creative play, and oral (never written) language, story, and song” (Edwards, 2002, p. 5).
The Montessori approach was established by Maria Montessori (1870-1952), who was
the first woman physician in Italy. Her initiation was rooted in working with children with
disabilities when she started her Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House) in 1907 for children ages
4 through 7 in the slums of Rome. Initially, her movement was condemned by the Fascist regime
in Italy making her left the country, but soon the Montessori approach became popular in other

What Makes A Quality Educational Approach ? 3
countries and “in the 1950s, American educator Nancy Rambush led a movement of renewal, and
Montessori education spread as an independent school movement (Loeffler, 1992) (Edwards,
2002, p. 4).” In this approach, from birth to age 6, children use their sensory, physiological
movement, order, and freedom to engage in activities that are carefully planned by teachers.
“The Montessori curriculum is highly individualized but with scope and sequence and clear-cut
domains” (Edwards, 2002, p. 6). Montessori classroom usually has more than one teacher, and
the teachers introduce and demonstrate new learning content when children indicate readiness to
move advance in the sequence of self-correcting across different academic disciplines.