The power of authority and the Montessori teachers’ (in)ability to learn – research intervention report

The article concentrates on the issue of Montessori teachers’ attitude towards pedagogical knowledge they develop during different forms of training. The analysis presented in the text is based on quasi-experiment rooted in Critical Realism research paradigm. Eighty-two Montessori teachers participated in a workshop and were asked to comment on eight different quotes. Half of them knew that these extracts had been taken from the publications by Maria Montessori and the other half did not have that knowledge. As a result, the first group of teachers formulated numerous critical remarks whereas the other one concentrated on positive interpretations. This experiment might shed some light on the power of authority and limitations to transform teachers’ implicit pedagogical presuppositions. The teachers that took part in this experiment were provided with the opportunity to problematize their personal teaching theories.


Introduction
A few years ago I was asked to conduct a training workshop for some Montessori teachers during one of the most popular gatherings organized for this group of educators in Poland by one of the most widely recognized association. Initially, I intended to provide the participants with such a self-reflection experience that could have the potential of disclosing and thus problematizing their personal (implicit) teaching theories (Fox 1983: 151-154).
In other words, my primary aim was not scientific thus I did not mean to make this event an occasion to gather data for further analysis, rather I thought of helping the teachers to awaken their emancipatory and critical competences (Hogan 1988: 189) so the workshop had a practice oriented purpose.
Nevertheless, both the process, its results and consequences provoked me to initiate a deeper insight into the matter. The research report summarized in this article was created a posteriori and the data that had been gathered promptly after the workshop became the most important input for the analysis presented.
It must be said that the Montessori teachers' personal/implicit theories or ideologies is not a matter or topic that is widely empirically explored by educational researchers both in my local national context as well as in a broader global scale 1 (cf. Marshall 2017). This fact is intriguing, especially if we take into account the abundance of teachers-personalor-implicit-theory-oriented research conducted with the reference to other various levels and approaches of education (Hatch, Freeman 1988;Spodek 1988;Runco, Johnson 2002;Hoy et al. 2006;Baudson, Preckel 2013;Wallace 2014: 17-31 and many others). Perhaps this aspect of Montessori education is less important for the researchers than its efficiency. For example, the landmark research in Montessori education carried by Angeline Stoll Lillard, attempting to verify most of Montessori's theses, mentions a few times the ideal characteristics of the teacher and their desired actions but explicitly does not address the concept of teachers beliefs and personal knowledge of education (Lillard 2007: 257-288).
The aforementioned lack of the research of this type might also come as a surprise since Maria Montessori herself underlined many times the importance of the teachers' inner knowledge on education (see for example : Montessori 2009: 11, 71) and also some Montessori enthusiasts write about it (Duffy, Duffy 2012;Fletcher 2012) yet these publications -however inspiring -are not validated scientific research reports with rigid methodologies implemented.
Thus both the literature review as well as the workshop experience provoked me to formulate a research question related to one domain of the implicit teachers theories. The concept of personal theory includes presumptions of numerous aspects of education including inter alia: aims, methods, desired and undesired goals, relations between different actors etc. (Elbaz 1991: 1-19;Kincheloe 2012: 91-109;Tripp 2012: 28-30).
However, what I am particularly interested in here is the issue of positioning oneself in relation to a given authority. Therefore, the research question can be formulated in this way: how do Montessori teachers conceptualise and perceive their position in relation to: (a) known and appreciated authority and (b) the author that is not known? To put it in a different way -I am interested in the ways in which the participants of the research approach some pedagogical opinions in two situations: (1) when formulated by the author that is important in their teaching career (i.e. M. Montessori) and (2) when the author of opinion is not known.

Approach
The research procedure described later is deeply rooted in the paradigm referred to as Critical Realism (CR) (Bhaskar 2008: 176-189) which -at least at its initial stage -is not connected with some specific data gathering techniques but rather questions both purely objectivist illusion (Bhaskar 2008: 179) as well as various solipsistic versions of constructivism or methodological anarchism (Bhaskar 2008: 182;cf. Lakatos, Feyerabend 1999). According to Amber J. Fletcher, the most significant tenets of CR is that ontology […] is not reducible to epistemology […]. Human knowledge captures only a small part of a deeper and vaster reality. In this respect, CR deviates from both positivism and constructivism (Fletcher 2012: 182). CR in this perspective can be treated as a form of synthesis in "constructivist-positivist war" since it names three dimensions of the reality that are sometimes portrayed with the use of 'iceberg metaphor' where what is above the surface is related to empirical level whereas what lies beneath are the actual and real levels. The deepest level refers to causal mechanisms or structures that cause events at empirical level to occur (Fletcher 2012: 183).
In this sense, by initiating some 'quasi-experimental' (Cook 1987: 74-94) events (empirical level) that can be experienced and/or interpreted by a certain group of people (actual level) the researcher might make an attempt to penetrate possible underlying mechanisms or structures (real level).

Procedure and Participants
The procedure in this 'exercise' or 'experiment' started with the formulation of the initial hypothesis that can be stated as follows: Montessori teachers treat pedagogical opinions and suggestions in a different way depending on their author. Put another way, Montessori teachers' critical stance towards pedagogical opinions differ depending on who the author is.
Following this hypothesis the author organised a workshop for Montessori teachers entitled: How to find a way in the garden of forking paths? The workshop had been advertised among the teachers two months in advance and the leaflet contained both a brief description of the workshop as well its main aim that was put in this way: "searching for possible answers in the world of educational complexity". The teachers "were invited to take part in the intellectual exercise that should help them discover what criteria they use when decide to follow or/and reject some pedagogical recommendations". I had suspected that the authority of Maria Montessori might have influence on how the teachers would read some quotes by this famous Italian educator.
As a result, eighty-two Montessori teachers enrolled for this ninety-minute workshop. I did not gather data concerning their gender, years of experience, level of education or any other commonly used variables, however all of them but two were female, most of them working in pre-schools and the first three years of primary education (ECE). The teachers were twice randomly divided. First, they formed two large groups (G1, G2) of forty-two and later each group was again randomly divided into eight subgroups of five or six members (G1.1-G1.8; G2.1-G2.8). G1 and G2 were given each a set of eight quotations by Montessori, however only G2 got them with the signature of the author as well as all bibliographical data. In this way, only half of the teachers (G2) knew that they were supposed to form an opinion about the quote of the authority that is very important in their professional life, and the other half did not realize that they were to discuss quotes by Montessori.

Material
The quotations chosen for this exercise met three criteria: 1. all of them were written by Maria Montessori; 2. they referred to 'hot' and thought-provoking aspects of education; 3. they were 'problematic' in the context of paidocentric model of education. The teachers were distributed the following quotes: Q1: "(…) take the little children to church with you. Let them accompany you to all religious exercises (…)" (Maria Montessori, The Child, Society and The World, p. 38). Q2: "The characteristic of children under 6 years of age is that it is almost impossible to teach them; the children of this age cannot take from the teacher" (Maria Montessori, The Child, Society and The World, p. 44). Q3: "If you have given children freedom and good environment and they are still disorderly, then you must pray to God to help you, because then these hurt children cannot be helped without a miracle" (Maria Montessori, The Child, Society and The World, p. 80). Q4: "(…) to speak of a democratic school community seems to be asking for misunderstanding. It is community of children, a community of future men and women (…)" (Maria Montessori, The Child, Society and The World, p. 104). Q5: "The child who is very poor may suffer physically from lack of food, but he finds himself in natural conditions, and so has inner wealth" (Maria Montessori, Education for a New World, p. 49). It must be clearly stated here that these quotations are not in any way representative to Montessorian pedagogy, neither are they the opinions of Montessori herself. All of them are deprived of wider context, sometimes they were presented in the cited publications in a critical way or as free associations. They were used as a workshop material or pre-texts intended to provoke and initiate a certain learning experience in which the participants could hopefully get to know a bit about their own personal teaching ideologies.
As I mentioned earlier, half of the teachers knew the author and the source whereas the other one did not. The exercise had two most important stages: small group work and public justification of the opinion. Each group was asked to take notes about all the standpoints and ideas discussed within the group and then put them on the wall beneath each quote. The aim was not to reveal 'the trick' as long as possible.

Ethical constraints
As mentioned before, this research intervention was created after the workshop (with purely pedagogical aim) had been conducted and therefore participants had not been asked for their consents to take part in the research project. In other words, I had been an educator at this particular moment caring for the Montessori community and only later "became" a researcher. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that asking for the permission of the participants would address most of the ethical constraints related to this research. However, there are theorists who support the idea that the awareness that one is being observed alters their behaviours and thus the consents is not a methodological imperative as long as the empirical project does not provoke any risk for the participants (Miller, Wertheimer 2010).
Two most important ethical aspects of this research that had to be dealt with are (1) confidentiality, which is sometimes thematised as essential (Gray 2004), and (2) participants' protection from harm (Fraenkel et. al. 2012). These issues were solved by the anonymisation and modification of some insignificant details of the research.

Results
Before I outline more detailed results of the 'experiment' a few general remarks should be made.
First of all, G1 was much more sceptical towards all of the quotations regardless their content and the subgroup. All the subgroups (G1.1-G1.8) formulated some critical comments related to the quotes.
G2 did not find virtually any negative possible interpretations/meanings of the quotes. While observing the subgroups at work (G2.1-G2.2) I did spot some doubts, but they were very quickly neutralised and petrified by the other members of the subgroups. As a consequence, in none of the documents gathered in G2 could I find negative interpretations/ meanings of the quotes.
Having put their work results on the walls the subgroups were regrouped again in such a way that G1.1 was combined with G2.1, G1.2 with G 2.2 and so on. In this way the groups of ten to twelve were provided with the opportunity to talk about the experience as well as to explain their motives while interpreting the quotes.
For some of the participants it was, as I was informed later, an important yet difficult lesson but the others did not treat this workshop as an occasion to problematise their personal/tacit knowledge on education and themselves as professionals.
The table below shows some of the teachers' interpretations (quoted directly) in more detail. G1 formulated numerous doubts and even severe critique. In this group the number of arguments was twice as large as in G2. Naturally, this quantitative comparison might not serve as some kind of proof, yet it does provoke questions related to the teachers' attitude towards authority. One must also bear in mind that almost all the participants had already completed pricy as well as long-lasting training courses and might have a feeling that they are 'in possession' secret and valuable answers and therefore should not be 'weakened' by questioning (cf. Jendza, Zamojski 2015). This situation may cause two types of reactions. If a given opinion is not associated with Montessori approach, it is immediately rejected but if the teacher knows that the source of some pedagogical claim comes from Montessori publications it is entirely accepted.
The commodification of education and therefore also theory of education (Ball 2012: 17-28)  It is needless to say that all of us are -to some extent and perhaps in a slightly different conditions -vulnerable to the influence of the deindividualizing authority (Milgram 1963(Milgram , 1973cf. Doliński, Grzyb 2019). It does matter who is saying. It does matter what the status of the author is and what their function is in circulating discourses (Foucault 1979: 13-20), especially when the author is treated as an 'always-right-celebrity'.
If we combine the possible power of the author and a specific educational or school culture we might find ourselves in a vicious circle of uncritical repetition with no way to 'escape'.
Following Roland S. Barth, I perceive school culture as a complex pattern of norms, attitudes, beliefs, behaviors, values, ceremonies, traditions, and myths that are deeply ingrained in the very core of the organization. It is the historically transmitted pattern of meaning that wields astonishing power in shaping what people thing and how they act (Barth 2002: 6).
Some Montessori teachers when referring to the educational organizations of the dominant, conservative culture use the adjective 'conventional' implying (or at times expressing openly) that Montessori is not conventional.
However, the results of the 'experiment' described in this article show that they might be more 'conventionalised' than they think. Some of the teachers realized that during the experience and were emotionally and intellectually moved by what had happened during our session.
It is also important to remember that the participants' values, patterns of behaviour and norms have been shaped in specific cultural codes characteristic for Polish reality (Zamojski 2018: 416-433). By becoming members of the Montessori community they had in a way rejected traditional schooling… yet -as aforementioned Barth observesthis transmitted pattern of thinking and acting through generations is astonishingly strong and durable.

Discussion and conclusions
The research strategy implemented in the project presented is far from ideal scientific investigation. The sample is not random, the number of participants is insufficient to extrapolate the results onto wider population.
Nevertheless, the results may serve both an inspiration for further, perhaps more rigid research but undoubtedly this 'experiment' provokes questions related to a few significant issues or inquiries.
Is it desirable for both educational practice and theory to keep Montessori pedagogy away from serious multi-dimensional public and scientific (and therefore critical) verification?
To what extent is it possible to apply pedagogies originating from specific times and particular educational culture in totally different social context? How should the education of teachers look like assuming that the power of authority limits their authorship?
The answers to these questions cannot be developed thoroughly in article but undoubtedly some considerations may be formulated. As the reply for the first question seems to be negative, the other two cover complex problems and demand further research investigations. What seems to be of vital importance is the need to (re)think teachers' education both in public and private HE institutions as well as in the training centres. If the authority is so overwhelming even for the teachers searching for alternative forms of education, we -as teachers' educators -must pay much more attention to critical and emancipatory competences and provide the trainees with such programmes that are based on detailed and critical studies of various pedagogical systems as well as challenge them with study-experiences that have the potential to transform their tacit knowledge and therefore modify their cultural scripts of reasoning and acting.