Mindfulness Practices in Education: Montessori’s Approach
Angeline S. Lillard
Abstract Mindfulness training has had salutary effects with
adult populations and it is seen as a potentially helpful to
children’s development. How to implement mindfulness
practices with young children is not yet clear; some
meditation practices, like sitting still for long periods with
internally-self-regulated focused attention, seem developmentally
inappropriate. Montessori schooling is a 100-year-old
system that naturally incorporates practices that align with
mindfulness and are suited to very young children. Here I
describe how several aspects of Montessori education,
including privileging concentrated attention, attending to
sensory experience, and engaging in practical work, parallel
mindfulness practices. These aspects might be responsible for
some of the socio-emotional and executive function benefits
that have been associated with Montessori education, and they
could be adapted to conventional classroom methods.
Keywords Education . Mindfulness practices . Montessori .
Attention . Concentration
Introduction
Recent years have seen an increase in research incorporating
mindfulness practices in education with the aim of
improving children’s well-being. Mindfulness is a quality
of focused attention on the present moment accompanied
by a non-judgmental stance; its “systematic cultivation […]
has been called the heart of Buddhist meditation” (Kabat-Zinn
1990, p. 12), although it need not be accompanied by
subscription to Buddhism or any other belief system.
Mindfulness interventions with adults are clearly related to
well-being (Brown et al. 2007); by contrast, lack of
attention on the present, or mind-wandering, is associated
with less happiness (Killingsworth and Gilbert 2010).
While bringing standard yoga and meditation practices to
high schools and even middle schools appears to have
positive outcomes for students (Britton et al. 2010;
Broderick et al. 2010; Mendelson et al. 2010) research with
very young children is in the early stages and is challenged by
the issue of age-appropriate practices (Burke 2010; Thompson
and Gauntlett-Gilbert 2008). For example, one successful
pilot clinical intervention with anxious 7- to 8-year-old
children found that 3–5 min of sitting focusing on the breath
was age-appropriate (Semple et al. 2005); how long might
be appropriate for preschoolers? Interestingly, in Tibetan
monasteries in the north of India, formal meditation training
does not begin until ages 17 or 18 (Tsoknyi and Zajonc 2010).
One place to look for approaches to helping even
younger children to be mindful is Montessori education.
Montessori education includes many practices and values
whose goals and structures are consistent with mindfulness
(Hanh 1999; Kabat-Zinn 1990). Montessori education was
initiated over 100 years ago by Maria Montessori, one of
the first women physicians in Italy (Povell 2009). Dr.
Montessori used materials stressing sensory discrimination
to improve the cognitive achievements of children with
mental retardation, which led to development of a full
activity-based educational program for children from birth
through age 12; development of the adolescent program
was ongoing when she died in 1952. Although Montessori
education has very positive impacts on school achievement
(Dohrmann et al. 2007; Lillard and Else-Quest 2006), it is
fundamentally aimed at the development of the whole
A. S. Lillard (*)
Department of Psychology, University of Virginia,
P.O. Box 400400, Charlottesville, VA 22904-4400, USA
e-mail: Lillard@virginia.edu
Mindfulness
DOI 10.1007/s12671-011-0045-6
person (Montessori 1932/1992). Its emphasis on deep
concentration, integration of mind with body, practical
work, and specific exercises like “The Silence” and
“Walking on the Line” all echo mindfulness practices.
These as well as other points of similarity in mindfulness
and Montessori practices and values are discussed below,
followed by a discussion of parallel outcomes.
Deep Concentration
In both Montessori education and mindfulness practice,
concentrated attention is central (Hanh 1999; Lillard 2005).
In Buddhist practice, meditation is a means to mindfulness.
One meditates by focusing one’s thoughts on a single idea
or experience like the breath, and this builds the capacity
for focused attention (Jha et al. 2007). Although trained by
meditation, concentrated attention is not confined to
meditation but is to be applied throughout life, to listening
and to eating, to every act and movement. Hanh (2001/
2009) recommends that, “When you eat an orange, [you]
try to practice concentration” (p. 79) because “Joy and
happiness are born of concentration” (p. 770).
Concentration is also highly valued in the Montessori
classroom. Dr. Montessori believed concentration led to a
psychologically healthy state she called “normalization”—a
term she borrowed from Anthropology that essentially
meant “being a contributing member of society” (Shaefer
Zener 2006), but which also meant that children were
constructive and kind in their behavior. Further, she
believed that this state is the most important outcome of
focused work (Montessori 1967). Dr. Montessori described
the event that brought her to this realization: a child was so
deeply engrossed in her work (placing ten graduated
cylinders in their correct holes) that her chair was lifted
up in the air, and the other children (at Dr. Montessori’s
direction, as an experiment) danced and sang around her
without breaking her concentration (Montessori 1912/1965).
Once children have begun to concentrate on work, according
to Dr. Montessori, they become “completely transformed …
calmer, more intelligent, and more expansive,” bringing
out “extraordinary spiritual qualities” (Montessori 1917/
1965, p. 68). “After this phenomenon of concentration the
children are really ‘new’ children. It is as though a connection
has beenmade with an inner power…and this brings about the
construction of the personality” (Montessori 1989a, p. 21).
Children who have come to concentrate are said to behave
better, no longer “prey to all their little naughtinesses”
(Montessori 1989a, p. 16).
To support the development of deep and sustained
concentration, Montessori education has 3-h work periods
during which a child can pursue a single line of self-focused
work. The goal is full absorption. In contrast, conventional
schooling is typically organized around shorter periods of
work focusing on the external stimulus of the teacher (NICHD
NECCR 2002). For example, in elementary school, there
might be a 40-min math lesson when the teacher stands
at the board, first going over the previous night’s
homework then instructing children in a new math
procedure (Greenwood et al. 1989; Hiebert and Wearne
1993; Stigler et al. 2000). In kindergarten classrooms,
activities might change every 10–15 min (e.g., http://users.
stargate.net/~cokids/Classroom_Schedules.html). Attention
spans and the ability to control one’s attention increase with
age (Posner and Rothbart 2007) as the prefrontal cortex
develops (Diamond and Amso 2008). Attention is trainable in
children (Rueda et al. 2005), and certain school experiences
might serve to provide such training (Diamond et al. 2007).
Having longer work periods focused on interesting, absorbing
work is consistent with the mindfulness practice of training
the attention, and observation of good Montessori classrooms
suggests that when the work is absorbing, challenging, and
self-directed, young children do engage in deep and sustained
concentration for long periods (Montessori 1917/1965).
Grounding the Mind in Sensorimotor Experience
Mindfulness training involves particular attention to sensory
experience. One mindfulness exercise, for example, is to fully
experience eating a raisin or some other food, considering its
texture and shape and color, how it feels in the mouth,
how it tastes on different receptors on various parts of
the tongue, and so on (Kabat-Zinn 1990). Attention to all
sensory experiences—the sounds of birds, the feeling of
one’s chair, the color of a flower—is emphasized. Attention
to motor movement, from focusing on how one walks in
walking meditation to body flexibility in yoga to one’s
movements in activities of daily life, is also prominent
(Kabat-Zinn 1990). The sensory and motor systems connect
the mind and the body, taking sensory information in from
the environment and executing motor acts that change one’s
position in the environment and the environment itself. Thus
when one attends closely to sensory and motor experiences,
one integrates body and mind. Hanh (2001/2009) writes,
“Our motto is: Body and mind together” (p. 43). Psychology
is also increasingly acknowledging that bodily experiences
influence cognition and vice versa (Glenberg 1999; Niedenthal
et al. 2005).
Montessori education begins with grounding in sensory
experience via motor movement. Three-year-old children
learn to make fine distinctions between different smells,
sounds, tastes, colors, textures, and so on, manually pairing
those whose sensory qualities match. For example, primary
(3- to 6-year-old children) classrooms contain sets of
musical bells, eventually used to make music, but
Mindfulness
initially used to train the ear to distinguish sounds. The
teacher will even set the various bells around the room,
and the child needs to pair up the ones that match by
moving around the classroom, playing each one, carefully
attending to its sound and holding that sound in mind while
moving to a different bell to play its sound. In addition to
establishing sensorial focus, this exercises working memory
(attention capacity). Montessori also has tasting and smelling
exercises, where a child pairs objects that taste or smell the
same, often while the child is blindfolded. Another Montessori
activity that involves attention to sensory and motor
experience is “The Silence Game”. The teacher chimes a bell
and the entire class falls silent and listens, with the aim of
becoming fully aware of their surroundings. When the silence
is broken, children can discuss what they experienced, in
particular, what they heard. Dr. Montessori (1989a) noted that
young children “love silence to an extraordinary degree”
(Montessori 1989a, p. 53; italics in original). “All those who
are on a higher spiritual plane […] have felt a need for
silence” (p. 57). In addition, Dr. Montessori noted that once
Silence lessons were instituted in classrooms, children
became more careful in all their actions, and even “became
more kind” (Montessori 1989b, p. 81).
The attention to sensorimotor experience in Montessori
education extends to the care Montessori children are asked
to take in how they move in and interact with the
environment. The Montessori curriculum includes “Lessons
of Grace and Courtesy,” in which one attends to one’s
behaviors and their effects on others. Children are given
lessons in how to walk carefully around the room, not
stepping on others’ workspace, and how to carefully push
in a chair so it is straight and even and not in others’ way.
“Every exercise involving movement where mistakes can
be corrected … is of great assistance to a child… Our
children become agile and alert by learning how to walk
around various objects without bumping into them”
(Montessori 1966, p. 124–125). In a good Montessori
classroom, children are asked to be mindful of their every
action and how it might affect others. “Walking on the line”
is a specific Montessori game that resembles walking
meditation: the child carefully places on foot in front of
the other, exactly on a circular line. Children attend to the
feeling of placing the foot and moving their weight from
one leg to the other, learning to walkmindfully and in balance.
“The attention of the child is centered, concentrated, upon this
line… This exercise also shapes the personality” (Montessori
1989b, p. 65).
Children in Montessori classrooms often get their work
on trays that must be carried carefully and parallel to the
floor or the contents will slip. This requires attention to how
the tray looks and feels in one’s hands. Once they arrive at
their work place, children need to carefully set up their
materials as the teacher has shown them to do. Each object
has a place and method of use, such as the objects in a
Japanese tea ceremony. In addition, children often do their
work on rugs, which are kept rolled up in a container in the
classroom. When a child wants to work on a rug, he or she
takes one out, finds an appropriate place on the floor for it—
where there is room, and outside of pedestrian channels—and
unrolls it. Then the child walks—not skips or runs, which can
disrupt others—and gets the work. The child returns to the rug
and sets down the materials, then carefully sets them up and
carries out the work. When finished, the child carefully
replaces the objects in their correct positions on the tray and
returns the tray to the shelf, lining its edge up with the edge of
the shelf, and then goes back to roll up the rug. Rugs are to be
rolled tightly, with attention to evenness—just as one might
carefully roll up the yoga mat. All a child’s actions in a
Montessori classroom are thus to be carried out with attention
to the body and the objects in the environment.
Mindfulness practice incorporates this same level of care
regarding movement. For example, Hanh (2001/2009)
describes an incident from his days as a novice monk,
when his teacher asked him to do something and in his
excitement he went out the door mindlessly. The teacher
called him back, and he knew it was so he could close the
door “with 100% of my being… Since that day, I have
known how to close the door behind me” (p. 79). Kabat-
Zinn (1994) discusses using care in going up the stairs,
with full awareness of the body’s experience in the
moment (pp. 201–202).
In conventional schools, in contrast, activities highlighting
attention to sensory experiences and movements are not
typically part of the curriculum, except in “specials” like art,
music, and physical education or sports. By first grade, most
of the child’s school day is spent sitting in chairs listening to
the teacher’s words (Hamre and Pianta 2007). Even if
children are in activity-based classrooms, specific attention
to how one moves and what one senses, as goals in and of
themselves, is not a key part of the typical early school
curriculum, which focuses on literacy, math, science, social
science, and art (Chien et al. 2010; NICHD ECCRN 2002).
Montessori education includes all these areas, but incorporates
movement throughout and gives equal prominence to
sensorial education and “Exercises of Practical Life”
(Montessori 1989b).
The Practical Work of Life
Closely linked to grounding in sensorimotor experience is
attention to the functional activities needed to sustain
everyday life. A Zen proverb states that one should chop
wood and carry water, before and after enlightenment, and
Kabat-Zinn (1990) suggests that one “attempt to bring
moment-to-moment attention to the tasks, experiences, and
Mindfulness
encounters of ordinary living such as setting the table, eating,
washing the dishes, doing the laundry” (p. 134), and so on.
An emphasis on finding meaning in everyday activities
that sustain life is seen in Montessori education as well,
where children from a very young age engage in the
“Exercises of Practical Life” (Montessori 1989b). A
budding toddler can carry his or her food to the table and
clean the table after clearing dishes. In the primary
classroom, young children become absorbed in scrubbing
furniture, polishing shoes and brass, and arranging flowers.
Specific organized steps are followed in carrying out each
of these activities. The Montessori adolescent programs
often include hard work on farms and nature preserves, as
part of community service work. Dr. Montessori observed
that, “There is a strict relationship between manual labor and
deep concentration of the spirit” (Montessori 1956, p. 71).
Practical activities are fundamental in Montessori education,
and children can engage in them and see their
meaning from a very young age. The child needs
“activity concentrated on some task that requires movement
of the hands guided by the intellect” (Montessori
1966, p. 138). Learning to polish a shoe, for example, a
child carries out a careful sequence of steps, knowing the
goal—the shinier shoe that he or she will really wear—and
seeing how each step serves this eventual goal. When society
is agriculture-based, probably many more of children’s daily
activities have this clear connection between an action and a
practical, cognized goal to which young children can relate,
connecting body and mind. It is much more difficult for a
young child watching an adult typing at a computer to grasp
the practical end: the abstractions underlying journal
publications, grant submissions, financial spreadsheets, or
stock purchases are beyond their intellectual capacities. The
activities of practical life in Montessori education are
thought especially important, because they provide a
functional (“important to my life today”) goal to which a
child can relate and a series of bodily movements—guided
by the mind and attentively engaged with—that the child
can use to get there.
Conventional schooling has little of this. Instead,
children are steeped in abstract mental pursuits or what is
provided as relief from them, a recess (Pellegrini and Smith
1993), with little attention to how body and mind can work
together to pursue practical aims. In most American
schools, children do not engage in activities to sustain
daily functioning—working in the cafeteria to prepare food
or do dishes, sweeping the hall, and so on, although in
Asia, such practices are common (Lewis 1995; Stevenson
et al. 1990). Instead, conventionally schooled children are
told it is important to listen so they can do well on a test so that
they eventually can get a degree thatmight help them get a job
to support themselves—distant goals that lack tangible
meaning even for adolescents (Allen and Allen 2009).
Other Points of Similarity
Three other points of similarity across Montessori education
and mindfulness practices are an emphasis on simplicity, an
avoidance of judgment, and grounding in stories. An
additional interesting intersection lies in the training of
Montessori teachers.
Simplicity
In mindfulness practices and Montessori education alike,
there is a value on simplicity (Kabat-Zinn 1994). Mindfulness
practice is fundamentally simple: focus on the breath.
Pay attention. Be aware. A meditation retreat is an exercise
in simplicity: do yoga, sit, eat, walk, sit, do yoga, sit, eat,
sit, and so on. Buddhist texts repeat the same material again
and again. Through repetition of simple yet profound
exercises, one is expected to reach higher levels of
engagement and understanding. Montessori also uses
repetition within simple frameworks to bring about higher
levels of understanding. The Montessori classroom is
uncluttered and pristine, with only as much material as the
children need to further their development. “Overabundance
debilitates and retards progress” (Montessori 1917/1965,
p. 79). Unused materials are removed or rotated out until
there is a need for them. For the most part, there is only
one set of material for each type of work (Montessori
1989a)—one pink tower composed of ten cubes, one set of
12 metal insets, one binomial cube, one set of material for
flower arranging, and so on.
Non-Judgment
To be mindful is to be non-judgmental: one is to notice, but
not make good–bad judgments. “Mindfulness is cultivated
by assuring the stance of an impartial witness to your own
experience. To do this requires that you become aware of
the constant stream of judging…and learn to step back from
it” (Kabat-Zinn 1990, p. 33). Meanwhile, one needs to learn
to “trust in your intuition and your own authority” (p. 36).
Yet, in conventional schooling, we train children that
teachers are the judges and will reinforce their judgments
with grades, gold stars, and demerits. A child’s own sense
of authority is rarely paramount in this setting; rather, they
are subjected again and again to adult judgment.
Montessori education avoids extrinsic authority judgments
in many ways. First, it uses self-correcting materials.
A child who needs to match 20 sensory objects into ten
pairs, for example, will typically notice if he or she made an
error because she will reach the last two and discover they
do not match. When the errors are not noticed, the
assumption is that through repetition, children will come
to recognize many of their mistakes and self-correct. When
Mindfulness
that’s not the case, the teacher will re-present a material—
not by telling a child he or she is wrong, but rather by
simply gently re-presenting how to use the material. In
these ways, a Montessori child can avoid feeling judged by
adults. Learning takes place within the individual through
concentrated interaction with interesting materials; the child
becomes his or her own authority. Children do continually
make judgments as part of the work—which piece of
sandpaper is more rough or smooth, for example—but they
are not repeatedly subjected to a teacher assigning grades.
Learning from Stories
Another point of similarity betweenMontessori education and
mindfulness is the use of stories. Buddhismis based in tales—
monks tend to educate with parables, tales of what happened
to the Buddha or in their own lives that can instruct us. Stories
are a powerful way for humans to learn, as we tend to
represent experiences as narratives (Bruner 1990). Montessori
education, particularly at the elementary level, also bases
learning in stories. The underlying structure of the elementary
curriculum is actually five great stories: the birth of the
universe, the beginning of life on earth, the beginning of
humankind, and the invention of symbols and math. At five
points in the first few weeks of each school year, the teacher
seats all the class in a circle for these stories, and tells one of
these stories in dramatic style, replete with props (for
example, there is often an explosion in conjunction with
the Big Bang in the first story). These core stories are
followed by several other narratives associated with five core
areas of the curriculum (although the interconnection among
the different areas is a key component of Montessori
education). Montessori’s elementary curriculum is called
“cosmic education” and its main underlying point is that
everything is interconnected. “To teach details is to bring
confusion; to establish the relationship between things is to
bring knowledge” (Montessori 1948/1976, p. 94). For
example, the invention of the Pythagorean theorem might
be detailed in a story about Pythagoras on vacation going
down the Nile, watching the rope stretchers redraw property
lines after a flood. This connects math, history, geography,
and language. In Buddhism as well, stories are repeatedly
used to help the students understand, and there is also an
emphasis on the interconnectedness of all things—the
interconnection of life and death, our own interconnections
with all people and things (Sogyal 1992).
Dr. Montessori might have been directly influenced by
Eastern philosophical traditions when creating the elementary
curriculum, since she designed much of the elementary
curriculum during her years in India, where she was establishing
a training course whenWWII broke out. Because she was
unable to return to Europe during the war, she had an extended
and productive 7-year-stay in India.
Teacher Training
As a final point, in Montessori, education teachers are asked to
examine their inner selves, reminiscent of mindfulness
training. They are to become aware of their own psychological
“issues,” so they can keep them aside and focus on the
child’s needs, without allowing their own unsatisfied desires
to interfere. “A teacher must prepare himself interiorly by
systematically studying himself… A good teacher does not
have to be entirely free from faults and weaknesses [but
should know what they are]” (Montessori 1966, p. 149). The
attitude Montessori counseled teachers to have toward the
children bespeaks “loving-kindness”—a basic precept of
mindfulness (Salzberg 2004). “A teacher … [must be] ready
to be there whenever she is called in order to attest to her
love and confidence. To be always there—that is the point”
(Montessori 1956, p. 76). In addition to being always there
and always loving, Montessori teachers are asked to be
very careful observers of children, tuned in and aware of
when a given child would be ready for the next lesson.
This Dr. Montessori believed was the most fundamental
quality of a good teacher (Montessori 1917/1965, p. 130).
In order to help Montessori teachers reach a point in
their own development when they can serve children in
these ways, their training involves an intensive full
academic year with a deeply experienced teacher–trainer
(at least as implemented by the Association Montessori
Internationale which Dr. Montessori founded to carry on
her work). These teacher–trainers have spent at least 4 years
as apprentice trainers, after at least 5 years as Montessori
teachers and at least one in their own training, thus they are
themselves very deeply grounded in Montessori education.
In my own Montessori teacher training, every morning for
30 min, we lay on the floor in a darkened room and listened
to Pachelbel’s Canon, while the trainer guided us through a
relaxation. In all training courses, the trainer also observes
emerging teachers working with children and discusses
their interactions. Thus Montessori teachers are expected to
be transformed, as people in their training to become
teachers, in ways that are akin to the changes brought on by
engaging in mindfulness practices (Brown et al. 2007).
Do these elements of Montessori schooling translate into
outcomes similar to those seen in Mindfulness research?
The next section explores some parallels.
Outcomes Research
The research on outcomes ofmindfulness practices in adults is
burgeoning, and there is a growing literature on the outcomes
in children and adolescents. Research on the outcomes of
children in Montessori programs is much more limited. Here,
I note parallels in the outcomes in two areas (attention and
Mindfulness
social behavior/knowledge) where they exist, but with an
important caveat: noting parallels across the program outcomes
does not mean that the outcomes necessarily stem from
the same source. Although Montessori education includes
practices that bear similarity to mindfulness ones, Montessori
education also includes practices that bear no similarity, for
example, 3-year age groupings, and allowing children free
choice in their activities. These features of the program might
be important sources of outcomes. Because Montessori is a
whole system, one cannot remove aspects to test the impact of
parts. Thus these points of similarity in outcomes are offered
speculatively: in mindfulness interventions using randomly
assigned groups, we can be fairly sure that it was the
mindfulness intervention that caused the change, but with
Montessori education outcomes, other aspects of the program
could be necessary to the found outcomes.
First I will describe the methods used in the four highquality
studies of Montessori outcomes with which I am
familiar. I consider these high quality because (1) they used
randomly assigned samples or attempted to match samples,
and (2) they used high-quality Montessori programs (“Montessori”
is not a trademarked term, and there are many schools
that use the label, but do not follow the practices described in
her books very closely).
There are four quality Montessori studies whose outcomes
parallel those in mindfulness intervention research.
Two used an experience sampling method with middle
school students who were matched with middle school
students from conventional schools. One paper focused on
the level of engaged interest (Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi
2005a), and the other on social relationships and time
use in school (Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi 2005b). A
third study compared children at ages 5 and 12, whose
parents had entered them in a random lottery to go to a
public city Montessori school, when they were 2–3 years of
age (Lillard and Else-Quest 2006). Half of the children had
been admitted to the Montessori, and the other half was
enrolled at other mostly public schools in the district.
Children were tested on a variety of social and cognitive
outcomes. A fourth study compared 2- to 6-year-old children
in classic Montessori classrooms (those following Dr.
Montessori’s program very strictly) with children in supplemented
Montessori and conventional classrooms (Lillard
2011). Income, ethnicity, and parent education were the same
across classrooms, and the conventional schools were ones
that Montessori parents most often said they would send
their children to in areas where Montessori is not available.
A range of social and cognitive outcomes was tested.
Attention
Children randomly assigned to Montessori primary classrooms
in which they have 3-h work periods have been
shown to have better executive function than children who
lost the Montessori lottery and instead went to other
schools (Lillard and Else-Quest 2006). In addition, children
in classic Montessori classrooms show significantly greater
increases in executive function over the course of the
school year than do children in conventional or supplemented
classrooms (Lillard 2011). In addition, Montessori
middle school students report feeling significantly “greater
affect, potency (i.e., feeling energetic), intrinsic motivation,
flow experience, and undivided interest (i.e., the combination
of intrinsic motivation and high salience or importance)”
(p. 341) while doing schoolwork than do matched students in
conventional middle schools (Rathunde and Csikszentmihalyi
2005a). These findings of improved attention are paralleled
in mindfulness research. Even a short-term course of
meditation training improves attention skills (Jha et al. 2007;
Tang et al. 2007) and 3 months of training was sufficient to
improve performance on a dichotic listening task and show
underlying changes to neural networks involved (Lutz et al.
2009). The attentional networks of long-term meditaters
(over 44,000 h) are especially efficient (Brefczynski-Lewis
et al. 2007). Mindfulness interventions benefit focused
attention over and above good control procedures like
relaxation training (Jain et al. 2007).
Social Outcomes
Mindfulness training programs encourage loving-kindness
and empathy (Kabat-Zinn 1990), which would seem likely
to improve relationships. Intervention studies with medical
professionals have shown social relationship benefits
including increased empathy (Beddoe and Murphy
2004; Krasner et al. 2009), and therapy with nondistressed
couples has been shown to improve relationship
quality (Carson et al. 2004). Brown and Ryan (2003)
found a relationship between degree of mindfulness and the
“relatedness” subscale of eudaemonic well-being. Such
findings are also paralleled in Montessori research. For
example, Montessori middle school children will more likely
claim their schoolmates are also their friends (Rathunde and
Csikszentmihalyi 2005b) as compared with matched controls.
In the random lottery-based study, the 12-year-old Montessori
students will more likely report trust in their classmates and
choose the most positive option in social problem-solving
tests. Montessori 5-year-old students will more likely engage
in positively shared peer play and less likely engage in
ambiguous rough-and-tumble play on the playground, will
more likely choose a more advanced form of moral reasoning
in a social problem-solving task, and will more likely perform
better on theory of mind tasks (Lillard and Else-Quest 2006).
The latter two results were also shown in children in more
classic Montessori classrooms (playground testing was not
conducted; Lillard 2011).
Mindfulness
Thus there are parallels in social and attention-related
outcomes for participants in Montessori classrooms and
participants in mindfulness practices. Whether the parallel
outcomes stem from parallels in activities in the two realms is
not known.
Summary
Many points of similarity have been discussed here
between mindfulness and Montessori education, such that
one might even view Montessori education as a form of
mindfulness education. In both programs, there is an
emphasis on deep concentration as a source of personal
development, leading to balance and joy and, by extension,
to healthy relationships with other people and the environment.
In both, the close connection between body and mind
is respected; Montessori’s sensorial exercises are a unique
educational format in which this connection is emphasized,
but the connection runs throughout the curriculum, as the
educational program involves hands-on materials in which
the body and mind work together to solve interesting
problems. The exercises of practical life are also an
extension of this and resonate with the call to chop wood
and carry water. The self-grounding effects of functional
activities are recognized in Montessori and mindfulness.
Each encourages attention to the body and its every
movement, to executing every act with care and precision.
Several other points of similarity were also raised: the use
of parables, the value of simplicity, and the absence of
judgment. An additional point of interest is the mindfulness
inherent in Montessori teacher training programs.
Some educators today are interested in how we can
incorporate mindfulness practices in education, and Montessori
education offers several ideas to consider. Very young
children can and will focus attentively on meaningful work
that incorporates body and mind. They also will be mindful of
their actions when shown how to be so by attentive and loving
adults. As education’s goals grow beyond having more
children circle more right answers on multiple-choice tests,
Montessori education might provide some guidance for an
alternative route that can nurture wiser and kinder and also
knowledgeable human beings—a far more important goal that
is perfectly compatible with doing well on those tests.
One of the most striking findings in studies of the impact of
school-based mindfulness programs like sitting meditation
and yoga concerned the control groups. For instance, on
measures relating to psychological health, across the course of
the year, while children in mindfulness programs tended to
improve, those in control groups clearly declined (Broderick
et al. 2010). As Eccles et al. (1993) have pointed out, our
conventional schools have a poor person–environment fit, and
mindfulness interventions help ameliorate these ill effects.
Incorporating practices from other school programs that are
consistent with, and might be another form of, mindfulness
intervention is worth considering for American education.
Acknowledgment The author would like to acknowledge the
support from the Brady Education Foundation through a grant and
the National Science Foundation grant 1024293. This paper was
presented at the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute, June,
2010, Garrison, New York.
References
Allen, C., & Allen, J. (2009). Escaping the endless adolescence: How
we can help our teenagers grow up before they grow old. New
York: Random House.
Beddoe, A., & Murphy, S. (2004). Does mindfulness decrease stress
and foster empathy among nursing students? The Journal of
Nursing Education, 43(7), 305–312.
Brefczynski-Lewis, J. A., Lutz, A., Schaefer, H. S., Levinson, D. B.,
& Davidson, R. J. (2007). Neural correlates of attentional
expertise in long-term meditation practitioners. PNAS Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of
America, 104(27), 11483–11488.
Britton, W., Bootzin, R., Cousins, J., Hasler, B., Peck, T., & Shapiro,
S. (2010). The contribution of mindfulness practice to a
multicomponent behavioral sleep intervention following substance
abuse treatment in adolescents: a treatment-development
study. Substance Abuse, 31(2), 86–97.
Broderick, T., Khalsa, S.B., Greenberg, M., Reichl, K.S., & Kabat-
Zinn, W. (2010). Developing and evaluating contemplative
practices for children and youth. Paper presented at the Mind
and Life Summer Research Institute, Garrison, NY.
Brown, K., & Ryan, R. (2003). The benefits of being present:
mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology, 84(4), 822–848.
Brown, K., Ryan, R., & Creswell, J. (2007). Mindfulness: theoretical
foundations and evidence for its salutary effects. Psychological
Inquiry, 18(4), 211–237.
Bruner, J. (1990). Acts of meaning. Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press.
Burke, C. (2010). Mindfulness-based approaches with children and
adolescents: a preliminary review of current research in an emergent
field. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 19(2), 133–144.
Carson, J., Carson, K., Gil, K.,& Baucom, D. (2004).Mindfulness-based
relationship enhancement. Behavior Therapy, 35(3), 471–494.
Chien, N., Howes, C., Burchinal, M., Pianta, R., Ritchie, S., Bryant, D.,
et al. (2010). Children’s classroom engagement and school
readiness gains in pre-kindergarten. Child Development, 81(5),
1534–1549.
Diamond, A., & Amso, D. (2008). Contributions of neuroscience to
our understanding of cognitive development. Current directions
in Psychological Science, 17(2), 136–141.
Diamond, A., Barnett,W. S., Thomas, J., &Munro, S. (2007). Preschool
program improves cognitive control. Science, 318, 1387–1388.
Dohrmann, K. R., Nishida, T. K., Gartner, A., Lipsky, D. K., &
Grimm, K. J. (2007). High school outcomes for students in a
public Montessori program. Journal of Research in Childhood
Education, 22(2), 205–217.
Eccles, J. S., Midgley, C., Wigfield, A., Buchanan, C. M., Reuman,
D., Flanagan, C., et al. (1993). Development during adolescence:
the impact of stage-environment fit on young adolescents’
experiences in schools and in families. The American Psychologist,
48(2), 90–101.
Mindfulness
Glenberg, A. (1999). Why mental models must be embodied. In G.
Rickheit & C. Habel (Eds.), Mental models in discourse
processing and reasoning (pp. 77–90). Amsterdam: Elsevier.
Greenwood, C. R., Delquadri, J. C., & Hall, R. V. (1989).
Longitudinal effects of classwide peer tutoring. Journal of
Educational Psychology, 81(3), 371–383.
Hamre, B. K., & Pianta, R. C. (2007). Learning opportunities in
preschool and early elementary classrooms. In R. C. Pianta, M. J.
Cox, & K. L. Snow (Eds.), School readiness and the transition to
kindergarten (pp. 49–84). Baltimore: Paul H. Brookes.
Hanh, T. (1999). The miracle of mindfulness. Boston: Beacon.
Hanh, T. (2001/2009). You are here: The power of the present moment
(S.C. Kohn, Trans.). Boston, MA: Shambhala.
Hiebert, J., & Wearne, D. (1993). Instructional tasks, classroom
discourse, and students’ learning in second-grade arithmetic.
American Educational Research Journal, 30(2), 393–425.
Jain, S., Shapiro, S. L., Swanick, S., Roesch, S. C., Mills, P. J., Bell,
I., et al. (2007). A randomized controlled trial of mindfulness
meditation versus relaxation training: Effects on distress, positive
states of mind, rumination, and distraction. Annals of Behavioral
Medicine, 33(1), 11–21.
Jha, A. P., Krompinger, J., & Baime, M. J. (2007). Mindfulness
training modifies subsystems of attention. Cognitive, Affective &
Behavioral Neuroscience, 7(2), 109–119.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living. New York: Delta.
Kabat-Zinn, J. (1994). Wherever you go, there you are: Mindfulness
meditation in everyday life. New York: Hyperion Books.
Killingsworth, M. A., & Gilbert, D. T. (2010). Awandering mind is an
unhappy mind. Science, 330, 932.
Krasner, M., Epstein, R., Beckman, H., Suchman, A., Chapman, B.,
Mooney, C., et al. (2009). Association of an educational program
in mindful communication with burnout, empathy, and attitudes
among primary care physicians. JAMA, 302(12), 1284.
Lewis, C. C. (1995). Educating hearts and minds. New York:
Cambridge University Press.
Lillard, A. S. (2005). Montessori: the science behind the genius. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Lillard, A.S. (2011). Academic year change in classic vs supplemented
Montessori vs conventional preschool programs. University of
Virginia.
Lillard, A. S., & Else-Quest, N. (2006). The early years: evaluating
Montessori education. Science, 313, 1893–1894.
Lutz, A., Slagter, H., Rawlings, N., Francis, A., Greischar, L., &
Davidson, R. (2009). Mental training enhances attentional
stability: neural and behavioral evidence. The Journal of
Neuroscience, 29(42), 13418–13427.
Mendelson, T., Greenberg, M., Dariotis, J., Gould, L., Rhoades, B., &
Leaf, P. (2010). Feasibility and preliminary outcomes of a schoolbased
mindfulness intervention for urban youth. Journal of
Abnormal Child Psychology, 1–10.
Montessori, M. (1912/1965). The Montessori method. New York:
Schocken.
Montessori, M. (1917/1965). Spontaneous activity in education: The
advanced Montessori method (F. Simmonds, Trans.). New York:
Schocken.
Montessori, M. (1932/1992). Education and peace. Oxford: Clio.
Montessori, M. (1948/1976). From childhood to adolescence. New
York: Schocken.
Montessori, M. (1956). The child in the family (N.R. Cirillo, Trans.).
New York: Avon.
Montessori, M. (1966). The secret of childhood (M.J. Costello,
Trans.). New York: Ballantine.
Montessori, M. (1967). The absorbent mind (C.A. Claremont, Trans.).
New York: Henry Holt.
Montessori, M. (1989a). The child, society, and the world: Unpublished
speeches and writings (Vol. 7). Oxford: Clio.
Montessori, M. (1989b). Creative development in the child I (R.R,
Trans.). Madras, India: Kalakshetra Press.
NECCR, N. I. C. H. D. (2002). The relation of global first-grade
classroom environment to structural classroom features and
teacher and student behaviors. The Elementary School Journal,
102(5), 367–387.
Niedenthal, P. M., Barsalou, L. W., Winkielman, P., Krauth-Gruber,
S., & Ric, F. (2005). Embodiment in attitudes, social perception,
and emotion. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 9(3),
184–211.
Pellegrini, A., & Smith, P. (1993). School recess: implications for
education and development. Review of Educational Research, 63
(1), 51.
Posner, M. I., & Rothbart, M. K. (2007). Educating the human brain.
Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.
Povell, P. (2009). Montessori comes to America. Lanham, MD:
University Press of America.
Rathunde, K. R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005a). Middle school
students’ motivation and quality of experience: a comparison of
Montessori and traditional school environments. American
Journal of Education, 111(3), 341–371.
Rathunde, K. R., & Csikszentmihalyi, M. (2005b). The social context
of middle school: teachers, friends, and activities in Montessori
and traditional school environments. Elementary School Journal,
106(1), 59–79.
Rueda, M. R., Rothbart, M. K., McCandliss, B. D., Saccomanno, L.,
& Posner, M. I. (2005). Training, maturation, and genetic
influcences on the development of executive attention. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Science, 102(41), 14931–14936.
Salzberg, S. (2004). Lovingkindness. Boston: Shambhala.
Semple, R., Reid, E., & Miller, L. (2005). Treating anxiety with
mindfulness: an open trial of mindfulness training for anxious
children. Journal of Cognitive Psychotherapy, 19(4), 379–392.
Shaefer Zener, R. (2006). The secret of childhood: Normalization and
deviations. http://www.michaelolaf.net/lecture_secret.html.
Sogyal, R. (1992). The Tibetan book of living and dying. San
Francisco: Harper Collins.
Stevenson, H. W., Lee, S.-Y., Chen, C., & Stigler, J. W. (1990).
Contexts of achievement: a study of American, Chinese, and
Japanese children. Monographs of the Society for Research in
Child Development, 55(1–2), 123. 221.
Stigler, J. W., Gallimore, R., & Hiebert, J. (2000). Using video
surveys to compare classrooms and teaching across cultures:
examples and lessons from the TIMSS video studies. Educational
Psychologist, 35(2), 87–100.
Tang, Y., Ma, Y., & Posner, M. I. (2007). Short-term meditation
training improves attention and self-regulation. Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, 104, 17152–17156.
Thompson, M., & Gauntlett-Gilbert, J. (2008). Mindfulness with
children and adolescents: Effective clinical application. Clinical
Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 13(3), 395.
Tsoknyi, R., & Zajonc, A. (2010). Professions of human improvement.
Paper presented at the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute,
Garrison, NY.