A comparison of the achievement test performance of children who attended Montessori schools and those who attended non-Montessori schools in Taiwan.

摘要

There are two purposes of the current study. First was to examine whether or not children in the elementary school in Taiwan who had received Montessori early childhood education obtain significantly higher scores on tests of language arts, math, and social studies than children who attended non-Montessori pre-elementary programs. Second one was to examine whether or not the number years of Montessori education has a positive impact on the students' scores when they are in elementary grades. According to Chattin-McNichols (1992b), children from Montessori education program are doing better in some respects than other programs. Some studies have found that in the United States, Montessori students have strong academic outcomes especially in language arts than non-Montessori students (Daux, 1995; Hobbs, 2008; Lillard & Else-Quest, 2006; Manner, 1999). The present study involved 196 participants from a private Catholic elementary school in Taipei City, Taiwan. Ninety-eight first, second, and third grade students had Montessori early childhood experience and 98 first, second, and third grade students did not have Montessori early childhood experience. Using one-way MANOVA as a statistical tool, there were mixed results in the present study. The results showed students who had Montessori early childhood education experience had higher test scores of language arts than the students who did not have Montessori education experience. In conclusion, the present study partially supports the findings of other studies and shows that Montessori education has some long-term impact on the students' language arts learning.