Christine Quarfood

• Professor (Full) at University of Gothenburg

On 6 May 2022, 70 years after Maria Montessori’s death, Stockholm University and the Department of Education and Didactics organized an international Montessori symposium. The idea was to present a breadth of research on Maria Montessori. The symposium dealt with Maria Montessori in the interwar period, an analysis of the history of ideas. Another...

Maria Montessori (1870-1952) was an Italian physician, anthropologist, and educator known around the world for her educational philosophy and pedagogy. Her work encourages educational environments tailored to the child where autonomy and independence are encouraged in the contexts of building community and peace education. The Bloomsbury Handbook o...

This chapter reconstructs the British Montessori debate 1919–1923 as reflected in the Times Educational Supplement. Focus is on the reception within the teaching community from which the Montessori movement recruited most of its followers, as well as the response from leading educationalists. While the latter group embraced the Montessori principle...

During the turbulent interwar years, educational theories and methods became increasingly mobilised for political causes. During an entire decade, 1924–1934, the Italian fascist regime supported Montessori schools, training courses and journals. This chapter presents the state of research on the problematic Montessori/Mussolini alliance. In the dis...

The Introduction proposes a new approach to the history of the multifaceted movement surrounding Montessori, situating it more firmly within the wider European debate in the interwar period with a focus on the way Montessorism—the special worldview and social agenda of the movement—was received in widely different cultural and national contexts. Th...

This chapter makes an important contribution to the research on the initial phase of the politicisation of Italian Montessorism. Reorganised in 1924, the Italian Montessori Society—ONM—was from 1926 led by Gentile, who had included the Montessori method programme in his school reform. Montessori’s lectures from the first regime-sponsored teacher tr...

This chapter deals with the psychopedagogical dimensions of Montessorism as presented in the movement’s Dutch and Austrian publications 1923–1925. Inspired by the psychodynamic theories that were in vogue at the time, Montessori sharpened her critique of parent–child interaction, describing the tensions between the generations as a regular war. As...

With reference to the Foucauldian concept of heterotopia, this chapter develops the claim that the cultural critique, social agenda and utopian tendencies of Montessorism contributed to the movement’s rapid expansion and were of vital importance to its impact on public opinion. Addressing questions about children’s status and rights, the Montessori...

This chapter throws new light on the dynamic phase during which the International Montessori movement was consolidated and the Italian regime’s interest in Montessorism reached its peak. With the creation of AMI in 1929, Montessori and her son Mario hoped to make Italy the centre of their international network. During this period of intensified col...

This chapter highlights the Montessori teacher’s task in relation to the prepared classroom environment and the non-intervention principle. The point of departure is the 1915 San Francisco World Exposition, where Montessori in a spectacular way exhibited a live model class in a glass-house setting. Her aim was to demonstrate the powerful effects of...

This chapter offers new insights into the circumstances that led to the dismantling of Opera Nazionale Montessori. Montessori had in 1932 intensified cooperation with the New Education Fellowship and her involvement with the peace movement. She also announced that her next international course would take place in republican Spain. These factors may...