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FORZA VITALE!
May 26, 2010
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The Importance of Self-Regulation in Early Childhood
By David Ayer
On April 21, 2010, the Montessori Institute Northwest hosted
Dr. Kathleen Lloyd, a Montessori teacher with 18 years of classroom experience
who is now the assistant director of the Center for Teaching and Learning of
Oregon State University. Dr. Lloyd
spoke on current research which supports Montessori educational philosophy, and
what follows is a summary, however imperfect, of her inspiring and moving
presentation.
Maria Montessori spoke
and wrote passionately during her lifetime about the role of education in
bringing about world peace: "Preventing
war is the work of politicians. Bringing about peace is the work of education." She regarded the development of the
will, and the ability to make good choices, as a crucial element of this
work. Dr. Lloyd had been a
passionate advocate for children and Montessori for many years when she began
to ask herself why we seem to be still so far from that goal after so many
years. When she decided to enter
the academic world of Human Development and Family Science, she began to ask
how the will could be studied in that context. "The will?" she was told, "How can you measure that? Maybe
you should ask the Philosophy department."
But philosophy was not where she felt the work needed to be
done, and certainly not the department where educational research and policy
development took place. On further
investigation, she found a psychological concept that seemed to relate to the
same idea: that of self-regulation.
In the world of developmental psychology, self-regulation
has been major field of study in the area of early childhood education for
about 30 years. It brings together
the ideas of executive function, impulse or ego control, and attention. Mary Rothbart and Michael Posner at the University of Oregon define self-regulation like this:
· the ability to control reactions to stress
· the capacity to maintain and focus attention
· the capacity to recognize and interpret the
emotional states of others
Psychological research indicates that this capacity begins
to develop in infancy and has its greatest growth during the preschool years.
(Readers familiar with Montessori will recognize some parallel elements to our
work with children already.) Self-regulation is linked to nearly every human success or failure, and
low self-regulation correlates with most negative outcomes, including drug
addiction, criminal activity, relationship challenges, and much more. It is seen as essential to co-operation
and peace.
The human development literature presents a received and
accepted view of activity that supports the growth of self-regulation. Foremost are caring, loving, supportive
relationships with children. We
know that nothing can move development well without respect, rapport, and
connection. In addition, children have
been shown to develop self-regulation through conflict and negotiation,
especially successfully mediated and resolved conflict. Montessori does well in both of these
areas, with its mixed-age classrooms which provide time for the development of
relationships, and with its emphasis on conflict resolution within the
classroom. 'Play-based' programs
are also well-supported by educational research, and Montessori's de-emphasis
on dramatic play is one reason we are not well-represented in the academic
mainstream.
New research is emerging, however, which adds to this
picture. Functional magnetic
resonance imaging (or fMRI) suggests that self-regulation is a complex
behavioral system in the brain that can be activated through interaction with
the environment. Further, a
specific type of interaction and activity seems to activate this system. This activity is known as effortful control, which is itself a
behavioral system which allows for voluntary control of emotions and behavior.
Five-year-old doing four digit addition with stamp game.
Effortful control itself is a new addition to the Rothbart
and Derryberrry's model of temperament. Temperament is considered a
framework that underlies human personality, and is thought to be biologically
or neurologically based and to some extent hereditary. Temperamental traits are thought to be
fairly stable, although subject to some influence from environment. The effortful control trait is defined
as "voluntary control versus automatic or recursive behavior," or the ability
to activate behaviors when necessary--even when you don't want to.
Obviously, children are not always capable of activating or
inhibiting behavior, even when it is in their own self-interest to do so. However, the development of this
ability follows a well-established trajectory. Under 22 months of age, it is described as 'modestly
coherent.' By 33 months, it is
typically highly coherent; by 45 months it is stable, and robust differences
can be seen between individuals; and by four years, it is stable over time and
comparable to IQ.
A strong effortful control system brings many benefits. It has been shown to be protective
against a range of behavioral disorders. Effortful control is associated with lower levels of psychopathology and
maladjustment, with the development of empathy, and with less delinquent
behavior, aggression, and depression in young adolescents. Effortful control is
seen in this model as a key component of self-regulation, and low
self-regulation is associated with a host of behavior problems.
So what can we do to support this aspect of
temperament? It turns out that
this aspect is supported by yet another behavioral system, the executive attention network. This is a system in the brain
responsible for attention, focus, and decision-making, which experiences
considerable development both naturally and in response to the environment
between the ages of two and seven. In addition, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's research into optimal experience theory, popularized
as flow in his book with that title, also relates to effortful control and hence self-regulation. Csikszentmihalyi's 'flow' state occurs
when a subject is working at a high level of skill offering a high level of
challenge, so control, focus, and the executive functioning systems of the
brain are all called upon to function at their highest levels. The ability to sustain attention, as in
the 'flow' state, supports self-regulation throughout the entire human
lifespan. These findings spurred
one researcher to suggest, that a systematic training of attention might be an
important addition to preschool education.
 Five-year-old focusing on trinomial cube.
How does this all relate to Montessori? As part of her
research, Dr. Lloyd conducted extensive interviews with AMI Montessori teacher
trainers, the professionals with the fullest and most representative
understanding of the Montessori approach. Without being prompted with terms from Lloyd's human development
research, the trainers' description of the development of the first-plane
child, and in particular the concept of normalization,
resonated strongly with the research findings.
Research has indicated that children have an innate
potential for effortful control, and hence self-regulation, as part of their
temperament. Temperament is
inborn, yet plastic in response to environment. Dr. Montessori observed that when the environment is
appropriately prepared, a form of self-regulation spontaneously emerges which
she termed normalization. According to the trainers,
Normalization is an observable
phenomenon which occurs after children are given freedom to follow their
interests, using their hands and minds to engage in purposeful work that
results in an experience of deep mental concentration.
The conditions that promote normalization, according to
Montessori, are opportunities for concentration, opportunities for purposeful
work which is integrated into the life of the community, freely chosen
activities, and activities with a good balance between challenge and
skill. It's easy to see how this
lines up with the executive attention network, effortful control, and optimal
experience theory (flow). The
hallmarks of normalization included concentration, a love of work, spontaneous
self-discipline, and a refined sense of sociability and expressions of
kindness. Again, this seems to
match up fairly well with the correlation between self-regulation and positive
behavioral outcomes.
It's not surprising to many of us in Montessori work to find
Dr. Montessori's observations borne out by research--we see these effects in
children every day. But it is
critical to the expansion of Montessori beyond our own world to continue to tie her observations to concrete, reproducible,
and theoretically grounded results.
In addition, Montessori's unique contribution, once again decades ahead
of her time, is the idea that the prepared environment itself can have such a profound
influence on development. As we
see the importance of the environment become a factor in conventional research,
this could become yet another area in which the connections to Montessori are
strengthened.
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About David Ayer: David discovered Montessori through his daughter, Virginia, who attended Whole Child Montessori School, and his wife, Elise, who was teaching in the upper elementary at Montessori School of Beaverton. He earned his primary diploma at the Montessori Institute Northwest in 1995. David taught at Vancouver Montessori School before starting the Montessori Adolescent Project Northwest with Elise. He continued his Montessori adolescent work at the Hershey Montessori Farm School and the Franciscan Montessori Earth School before joining Sunstone Montessori School as Assistant Director.
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Reprinted by permission of the author.
Oregon Montessori Association
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Brought to you by the Oregon Montessori Association.
The Oregon Montessori Association is a group of schools and individuals who support vibrant Montessori education in Oregon and Southwest Washington...and beyond.
Visit www.oregonmontessori.org
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