Theses and Dissertations from UMD
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New submissions to the thesis/dissertation collections are added automatically as they are received from the Graduate School. Currently, the Graduate School deposits all theses and dissertations from a given semester after the official graduation date. This means that there may be up to a 4 month delay in the appearance of a give thesis/dissertation in DRUM
More information is available at Theses and Dissertations at University of Maryland Libraries.
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Item Critical Montessori Education: Centering BIPOC Montessori Educators and their Anti-Racist Teaching Practices(2023) D'Cruz Ramos, Genevieve; Liu, Rossina Z; English Language and Literature; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)While many BIPOC Montessori educators engage in anti-racist and culturally responsive teaching, Montessori education remains predominantly race-evasive. As a philosophy, it is rooted in colorblind perspectives in its focus on "all children" and lack of explicit centering of BIPOC students’ experiences. Teaching must account for race and racial lived realities in order to better support BIPOC students’ ways of knowing in culturally relevant and sustaining ways. This study seeks to center the voices of BIPOC Montessori educators and disrupt the pattern of Montessori research conducted without a critical racial lens. Framed by Critical Race Theory, this study focuses on the strengths, assets, and anti-racist teaching practices that one BIPOC educator brings to her classroom. I use critical ethnographic methods to better understand how a BIPOC Montessori teacher at a public charter Montessori school interprets and enacts the Montessori method to support BIPOC students. I consider how her racial identity informs her practices, and the structural barriers she faces at her school when enacting anti-racist and strength-based approaches. The guiding research questions of this study are: How does a Black Montessori teacher interpret the Montessori philosophy to more relevantly support her BIPOC students? How does she practice the Montessori method through culturally relevant and sustaining practices? What are the structural barriers that continue to challenge her as a Black educator doing her work? My analysis suggests that the teacher maintains her classroom space as a tangible and intangible cultural space that reflects and maintains her students' identities; that her own identity as a Black woman deeply contribute to the school's work around anti-racism and culturally responsive pedagogy; and that there are external barriers that both the teacher and the school face, that prevent them both from fully achieving culturally responsive teaching practices. At the core of the study, I seek to understand the possibilities and challenges of Montessori education from the perspective of BIPOC Montessori educators, and how we could learn from them to better support BIPOC students. I hope to begin a path toward more counter-stories in the Montessori community to specifically support BIPOC Montessori educators and understand the structural barriers they face to anti-racist teaching in Montessori programs in the United States.Item Cultural Relevance and Montessori(2006-12-11) Massey, Corinne Margueritte; Johnson, Martin; Curriculum and Instruction; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This master's thesis research consists of a study in which the theoretical and practical congruencies between Equity Pedagogy, an essential component of multicultural education, and the pedagogical elements of Montessori Education are examined. The goals of this study are multi-tiered, existing on both a practical and an intellectual plane. On a practical level, the goals relate to Montessori classroom practice and Montessori teacher education programs. In considering the praxis of a small set of public school teachers, the practical relationship between Montessori and Equity Pedagogy begins to emerge. Praxis was explored using non-intrusive observational techniques with no videotaping. The researcher observed the teacher's manner of addressing the students in a variety of classroom contexts. Student's actions were recorded only as they are pertinent to the teacher's praxis, and identifiable student characteristics were not recorded. At no time during classroom observations will the researcher interrupt or attempt to intervene in teacher-student interactions. Interviews will follow observations in order to examine any discrepancies between teacher praxis and teacher ideology. This research will present an ethnographic case study of the public Montessori program in a suburban county bordering on a large city.