Teachers' and University Students' Evaluation of Chosen Didactic Materials According to the Maria Montessori Pedagogy/Učiteljska i studentska procjena odabranoga didaktičkog materijala prema pedagogiji Marije Montessori

Abstract

The goal of this research was to explore teachers' and university students' perceptions of material, cognitive and affective-motivational characteristics as well as the acceptance of didactic materials used in Montessori schools. It has been found that both teachers and university students are not familiar enough with alternative pedagogical concepts and believe there's an insufficient number of them in Croatia. While teachers prefer Cosmic Education and Mathematics materials, university students like Language Education materials more, although teachers show more willingness to use Language Education materials in teaching whereas university students use Cosmic Education materials more readily. Both university students and teachers find it most demanding to make Cosmic Education materials, but they also believe such materials to be most concrete. The results have shown that both university students and teachers are more willing to use in teaching such positively evaluated examples of Montessori didactic materials, which have been explored in this research, when they believe them to be valuable, desirable, necessary and useful.

Key words: Cosmic Education; Educational Pluralism; Language Education; Mathematics