MONTESSORIAN METHODOLOGY AND BILINGUALISM

APPROXIMATIONS TO THE PEDAGOGICAL PRAXIS

Abstract

This paper intends to explore whether the methodological approach built by the Italian educator, researcher and physician Maria Montessori would represent a possibility of intervention to favor the children learning of a second language, be that a precocious acquisition or not. This research employs a bibliographical inventory that includes Maria Montessori’s works and the found results are shown in a threefold structure. In the first section, we introduce the pedagogical approach under analysis, and we highlight useful concepts to a wider understanding of Montessori’s thought, such as materials presentation, classroom arrangement, the contact and relationship between student and environment, the idea of absorbent mind and, consequently, the children’s sensitive periods (which comprise language, the main topic of this investigation). The second section delivers a brief connection between neurological assets and differences regarding bilingual children’s brains and emphasizes important features between bilingual and monolingual individuals, such as inhibitory control and attention. Finally, in the third section, we explore the hypothesis of how Maria Montessori’s methodological approach can help in bilingual contexts, by considering its concepts and procedures. We attempt to establish connections among the teacher, the material, his/her bilingual and monolingual students, and the Montessorian classroom, so we can create bonds that allow to interpret the methodological approach as an enabler with regard to the learning of a second language. The gathered results highlight the lack of studies, mainly in the Brazilian academia, committed to investigate the favorable associations we glimpsed between Maria Montessori’s theory and bilingual learning practices. Such a scenery is nearly unexplored, and it demands further studies so the theoretical conceptions may be transposed to children’s learning activities.