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THE CHILD’S EXPERIENCE IN A MONTESSORI EARLY HEAD START PROGRAM
Jon Korfmacher
Erikson Institute
Paul Spicer
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center
Note: This paper is adapted from an earlier paper: Korfmacher, J., & Spicer, P. (2002). Towards an understanding of the child’s experience in a Montessori Early Head Start Program. Infant Mental Health Journal, 23(1). In press. Support for this research was provided by the Administration on Children, Youth, and Families (90YF0017) and the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation. This work would not have been possible without the staff and families of the Family Star Early Head Start program.
Introduction
This paper illustrates the development of an approach to understanding program processes in a center-based Early Head Start (EHS) program using both quantitative and qualitative methods. The data we discuss here are derived from two studies that were pursued in parallel as part of our local research in the national evaluation of Early Head Start. The first was an inquiry into child responses to classroom environments using teacher reports, the second an ethnographic study of the Early Head Start classroom environments and the meaning of the same to families and children. These studies were developed as distinct approaches to understanding program processes, but we soon realized that there would be significant opportunity to focus our attention on common areas of concern as well. Although there are different ways to combine these approaches, here we will illustrate them through the use of case studies.
Understanding individual participant response to programs and services is increasingly recognized as an important aspect of study in early childhood intervention research (Emde, Korfmacher & Kubicek, 2000; Hauser-Cram, Warfield, Upshur & Weisner, 2000). Examining outcome differences between a treatment and comparison group provides only a narrow perspective on the value and meaning of program services for families and communities. It ignores the complexity of individual participant response to an intervention over time and avoids a consideration of factors within participants’ histories, environments, and cultures that may mediate their response to the program. Similarly, outcome studies commonly treat the program as stable, with a lack of attention to features within the program that may change over time. Focusing on program processes and participant experience of these processes allows a greater understanding of the intervention as it exists in the daily life of families.
Typically, the parent is the gatekeeper to the family and the target of much of the intervention, so understandably most process research has focused on the parent’s response to the program services (Emde et al., 2000). In most cases, however, young children are also participants in the intervention, and understanding their experience is also important. This is not often done, as measuring a child’s experience and engagement in intervention services is difficult. Young children cannot be directly queried about the meaning they ascribe to program services, so their engagement must be inferred from their attention and behavior toward program activities and objectives. From the childcare literature (Howes & Smith, 1995; Ridley, McWilliam & Oates, 2000) we know that children vary in how they engage and respond to program practices and a center-based environment, but it remains a complex task to disentangle child maturation, initial temperament, and cognitive abilities from program response. Few studies have examined the young child’s adaptation to a day care environment over time (see, for example, Fein, Gariboldi & Boni, 1993).
Qualitative or ethnographic methods are also possibilities for examining child program experience. While there are some reports in the literature using qualitative data to explore the meaning of interventions to parents and program staff (Gilkerson & Stott, 1998; Nauta & Hewett, 1988), these approaches have generally not been used to explore the same issues for children, in no small part because qualitative researchers tend to rely on interview data, which cannot be collected from infants and toddlers. Yet, the strengths of qualitative approaches in exploring the core issues of meaning and experience are well recognized. Calls for combining the two approaches are increasingly heard in the field of preventive and early childhood intervention (Hauser-Cram et al., 2000; Freel, 1996; NIMH, 1993).
A Montessori Early Head Start Program
Family Star is a full-day, center-based EHS program that uses a Montessori curriculum modified for the cultural make-up of the community it serves, a largely Hispanic neighborhood in Northwest Denver. The program is directed towards promoting child individuality, social competence, practical and intellectual skills, and a curiosity in learning in an environment that emphasizes safety and appropriate opportunities for experiencing sensory stimulation and activity. By structuring the child’s classroom environment, and by promoting attention and interest in activities and materials, the program hopes to provide a sense of self-direction in children that will then be taken into the life of the family. In this sense, the child becomes the gatekeeper for promotion of strengths, which makes the experience of the child in the classroom central to understanding the value of the program to participating families.
At the beginning of our research, there were two kinds of program classrooms: Infant classrooms, known as Nidos (nests), and toddler environments, known as Infant Communities (ICs). Throughout the period of our research, the program experimented with various models and new classroom configurations. Among these was a non-transitioning “Organic” classroom, which started as a Nido and then, as the children aged, became an IC. Also developed was a Bridge Program, which is intended to introduce older children (approximately 30-36 months) to more advanced Montessori materials. There were three Nidos and three ICs when the program opened in 1997. A fourth IC was soon added to accommodate additional children, and one of the original three Nidos was the organic classroom, which became an IC as the children there became toddlers. The Bridge program, when it opened, became the 8(th) classroom. Thus, at the conclusion of our research with the program, there were two Nidos, five ICs, and the Bridge program. With the exception of the children in the organic classroom, who did not transition to a new classroom, the children made at least one transition (from the Nido to the IC) during their time in the program. Many children also made a transition from the IC to the Bridge program.
Child Program Experience
Two methods were used to examine the child's experience. Teachers in the classrooms completed weekly rating forms that assessed their perspective on the child’s reaction to the classroom environment, including physical materials, adults, and peers. In addition, an ethnographer (Dr. Spicer) made observations of the classroom on a regular basis and visited select families in their homes to discuss their thoughts about the program in more detail.
Teacher Rating Forms
Classroom teachers completed a report of the child’s experience in the classroom. We identified activities, behaviors, and events used by teachers to track a child’s engagement in the classroom. Items were adapted from the Infant Behavior Questionnaire (Rothbart, 1981), a measure of child temperament. Additionally, program staff communicated to us the importance of opportunities in early morning and late afternoon for teachers to communicate with parents about the child's experience and help bring Montessori principles into the home. For this reason, five items were created to measure the parent’s interaction with the teachers (e.g., “How much did you talk to the child’s parent(s) at the end of the day?”). In the final version, teachers rated each child on 26 items using a seven-point scale once a week for a particular day, varying from week to week. If a teacher did not see the child in the situation described in the item, they coded the item as not applicable.
To assist in data reduction, factor analysis was used as a tool to explore how initial groupings of the items (based on discussions with program staff) fit with patterns of responses. Six major factors were identified, accounting for 68 percent of the variance. Reviewing items that loaded on these factors, five logically-derived subscales were developed that seemed to capture well the beliefs and ideas that emerged from the initial discussions with teachers and program directors:
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Positive Classroom Engagement (7 items): Child orientation and attention to objects, sense of pleasure in activities, and positive social interactions with peers.
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Distress & Upset (4 items): Child crying and fussing during transition times or daily routines, such as eating, toileting, and napping.
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Tantrum & Fighting (4 items): Strongly adverse reactions when limits were set or when interacting with peers.
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Child seeks help (3 items): Child use of teacher for comfort, help, or company
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Parent Seeks Help (5 items): Parent request assistance about child’s behavior or development.
Children varied considerably in the number of individual ratings that they had over their participation in the program, since their level of participation in the program varied. Although the average level of participation was 22 months, this could range from 0 days (for children randomized into the program but whose families elected not to continue participation) to 34 months (for children who entered the classroom at 2 months of age).
On average, each child received approximately 54 ratings over time from their teachers. For the illustrative purposes of this paper, we selected children who had at least 60 ratings, or approximately two a month for their time in the program. From this group, we selected two children on whom we also had substantial data from our ethnographic work. Given the highly selected nature of this sample, it is important to emphasize that data from these children may not represent average or modal data from participants in the EHS program. The cases have been selected for discussion in this paper because they demonstrate some of the kinds of responses that children can show to this program and because they illustrate the possibilities of combining qualitative and quantitative data to understand services for infants and toddlers.
Ethnographic Methodology
There were two principal components to the ethnographic research reported here: (a) extensive participant-observation in the classroom environments, and (b) detailed case studies on the impact of the program on 12 families. We had two main goals in designing this ethnographic research: First, we wanted to understand the program’s Montessori intervention as it was actually delivered and, second, we wanted to know what the intervention meant to parents and children living in poverty.
Participant-observation in the classrooms of the Montessori Early Head Start Program began when the program opened in early 1997 and continued through the end of 2000, when the majority of children had moved on to other programs. Over the first year of the research, the ethnographer would regularly spend one morning and one afternoon in each classroom before moving on to another classroom. In the second year, these observations were scaled back to one morning in each classroom. The focus of the participant-observation work in the classroom was on the child’s experience of the Montessori curriculum as it was implemented in particular classrooms.
The ethnographic case studies component of the research was designed to more fully illuminate the families’ experiences of the intervention and especially the ways in which the Montessori intervention had been brought to their homes (either through the child bringing home behaviors learned from the classroom, or through family members absorbing information through contact with staff). Families were recruited directly by the ethnographer based on his familiarity with them and their children from his participant-observation work. Participating families were visited three times over their child’s second year of attendance at the program. The home visits that formed the basis for these case studies were fairly open and unstructured, although all of them involved some discussion of the child’s development, family life, and their experience with the program. These visits were audiotaped and the ethnographer made detailed notes on the topics and themes that emerged during each visit.
Case Studies
As we have already noted, the two components of research on program process discussed here—quantitative ratings of child and family experiences and ethnographic research on the same—were pursued somewhat independently of each other, but the shared focus on program process and the experience of the intervention permits us to combine data in several ways. For this paper, we present the data at the level of individual cases, using two children from the subset of 12 families that were included in the ethnographic case studies.
To protect the confidentiality of these two cases, we have assigned them the pseudonyms of Jesse and Peter. Jesse and Peter began in the same Nido, but transitioned to different IC classrooms. Our presentation strategy in each of these areas is to first present data from the teacher ratings of these children and then to present data from the ethnographic work, in both the classrooms and in the home visits, that aids in our interpretation of the quantitative findings. We have deliberately selected examples where our ethnographic work would illuminate the patterns seen in the quantitative data.
Positive Classroom Engagement
Figure 1 shows teacher ratings of Jesse’s attention and orientation to classroom materials and positive interaction with peers over time. What is evident is a generally positive trend in Jesse’s ratings on this dimension, suggesting a gradual increase in his engagement with the classroom environment. His upward trajectory, however, is punctuated by a sharp drop at his transition from the Nido to the IC, noted by the “x” on the graph, which is followed by a rebound and continued improvement in ratings. This pattern suggests that moving to a new classroom was difficult for Jesse, but that the difficulties were transient.
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Several aspects of this quantitative data gain support in our ethnographic work. Our participant-observation work in the EHS program’s classrooms underscored for us generally the significance of the classroom transition in children’s experience with the intervention. While not always a disruptive influence on children, it was one of the most significant changes they would encounter in their time in the program, despite the careful and gradual procedure program staff developed for introducing the children to their new environments. When we began to observe patterns in the teacher ratings such as those evident in these graphs, we were confident that these reflected real changes in the child’s reaction to their new environments, rather than simply being an artifact of the shift to a new rater (an alternate possibility we considered).
Indeed, as one of the first and youngest children in his Nido, Jesse was a favorite of the classroom staff there and was generally greeted with a great deal of enthusiasm when dropped off in the morning. Jesse did not enjoy the same amount of enthusiasm among the staff in the IC—a fact that was evident not only in our classroom observations, but also in comments his parents made to the ethnographer in his conversations with them. Our observations in Jesse’s IC and our conversations with his parents suggest that the transition to the IC marked a loss of the special attention he had been receiving in the Nido. Thus, it is not surprising to us to see that the transition to the IC was somewhat stressful to him. Our subsequent observations of him in the new classroom indicate that he was eventually able to adjust well to his new surroundings after this initial stress, but as we shall see, there were some important differences in his adaptation to the new environment.
Negative Emotions, Tantrums, and Fighting
To illustrate the more negative dimensions of distress/upset and tantrum/fighting, we use a graph from Peter, who shows an interesting pattern in his negative emotional responses to the classroom (see Figure 2). The picture of Peter that emerges from these graphs is of a more challenging child whose expressions of negative affect did not significantly decrease over time, as one might have been hoped.
Teacher management of negative affect and aggressive behavior is a major focus of this center-based EHS program, which emphasizes the use of gentle verbal control of children wherever possible and the redirection of children’s attention when conflicts develop over the use of particular materials. However, our ethnographic work in the classrooms made clear that certain children did not respond well to these more subtle techniques, challenging the teacher’s capacity to control them and maintain an orderly environment for the other children. And our ethnographic observations with Peter, both in the classrooms and in his home, suggest that, indeed, this was the case with him. He showed a tendency toward aggression with other children in the classroom (and his siblings in the home) and he would often react negatively when frustrated. Throughout our research, Peter remained a somewhat challenging child—both for his mother and for classroom staff—and this appears to be reflected in his teacher’s ratings of his behavior.
Child Seeks Help
Figure 3, which plots Jesse’s use of his teachers, illustrates one pattern of how children in this program use their classroom teacher for guidance and emotional support. There is evidence that Jesse was developing independence in the Nido classroom, but the graph also suggests that Jesse appears to have used his IC teacher for help or comfort much less than he had used his Nido teacher. As we have already noted, our ethnographic work underscores the special relationship that Jesse had with the staff in his Nido, which did not continue in his relationships with the IC staff. In part, this appears to explain the difference in Jesse’s use of his teachers between the Nido and the IC.
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But it is also important to note that the loss of Jesse’s special relationship with the teachers of his Nido was not necessarily a bad thing from the perspective of his developing independence. Indeed, some program staff expressed concerns that the affection of Nido staff toward Jesse kept them from encouraging his independence to the extent emphasized by the program’s Montessori model. Thus, it may well be the case that Jesse’s decreasing reliance on his IC teachers was a desirable outcome of the program and may, in fact, have been facilitated by his relatively more distant relationship with the teachers of his IC. While we cannot be sure to what extent Jesse’s decreased reliance on his teachers in the IC was a function of normal development (no single case could demonstrate what is normative in this context), our ethnographic work in the program and with Jesse’s family underscores the extent to which the patterns evident in the ratings of Jesse’s classroom behavior may make sense in the context of the program’s approach to encouraging independence.
Parent Seeks Help
Figure 4 documents parents’ use of teacher for Peter. Notable are abrupt shifts upward at her child’s transition from the Nido to the IC and downward when he moves from the IC to the Bridge. Thus, it appears that Peter’s mother felt more comfortable seeking out the IC teacher for guidance and support about Peter’s development.
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Our ethnographic work in Peter’s classrooms confirms that Peter’s mother spent more time in his IC visiting with the teacher than in the other two classroom environments.
Furthermore, observations of actual interactions between the two suggest that communication between them was generally quite easy and comfortable. In contrast, the relationship between Peter’s mother and Nido staff, while not unpleasant, was definitely more guarded and strained. Further confirmation that this was the case comes from one of our ethnographic home visits, when Peter’s mother declared that she felt she could talk to his IC teacher about virtually anything—an opinion which she did not express about the teachers in either of his other two environments.
Discussion
The cases presented demonstrate the way different children experience a high-quality, theoretically-driven early childhood environment. There is an expectation in the program model’s theory of change that children will show increased orientation and attention to their environment, ability to work independently on developmentally-appropriate activities, and better affect regulation (shown in particular by decreases in child distress and upset during daily transitions and routines). While one of the children presented here does show this pattern, the other child does not, suggesting that our complementary data-gathering approaches may well be capturing meaningful variations in child experience of this Montessori program.
Examining individual cases highlights aspects of experience that deserve further attention. One example is the importance of transitions between classrooms for children, such as the move from the infant to the toddler classrooms. Marked (if temporary) decreases in the child’s classroom engagement were often observed by both the teachers and the ethnographer. Our combined data also helped us to appreciate that these transitions can have a significant impact not only on children but parents as well, who can develop special relationships with one set of classroom staff that are not easily transferred to the staff of a new classroom.
Both approaches to data collection described here relied on different forms of observation. Collecting data from teachers offered a unique and powerful way of following children over many different points in time from the perspective of observers who knew the children in-depth, creating running records of child progress. But teacher ratings exist in the context of program philosophy, values, and daily operations, which would be largely unarticulated without concurrent ethnographic work. The value of ethnographic observation is that this context can be explored, to gain greater understanding of how it influences the ratings and the child's response to the program environment.
It is important not to over-interpret these unfolding snapshots of the children’s lives in the program. It can be difficult to disentangle program effects from other influences, such as normative child maturation in these skills, or environmental or life circumstances outside of the program. Viewing results from classroom ratings and observations in the context of the outcome evaluation—including independent observations of the child’s abilities and behaviors conducted both in home and laboratory settings—will be critically important in interpreting the meaning of children’s trajectories.
Linking analyses of program process to outcome data will inevitably involve aggregation, moving beyond the level of the individual child to look at children’s experiences in the classroom environments more generally. The cases discussed here, however, detail some of the ways that ethnographic and quantitative report data can be used to tell more satisfying stories about children’s experiences of an intervention than would otherwise be the case using a single method alone. As such, these cases illustrate the very real promise of a multimethod approach to the understanding of program process.
References
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