Maria Montessori

Maria Montessori was an Italian educator who devoted her life to the education of children from six to sixteen. Her method mainly consisted in letting children work with specific materials within a rich environment that had been carefully created by the teacher. For instance, children at kindergarten would work with materials that foster the development of autonomy and organizational skills. Then at elementary school, they would work with timelines and charts in order to develop abstract reasoning abilities. Nowadays, Montessori´s ideas can be seen applied at Kindergarten when children are allowed to choose self-correcting materials to play and games that involve the psychosocial and academic functioning. For instance, doing the ironing, cooking, shopping, etc.
As a teacher to be, I would like to try the use of timelines, charts and connective narratives in order to enhance imagination and ability of abstraction in the learners. Last but not least, I would like to be a Montessori teacher in the sense of being a facilitator of learning rather than the source of all information.

http://www.montessori-namta.org/NAMTA/geninfo/devcont1.html

Learning through real experiences

John Dewey`s contribution to education was very important. I myself experienced at least one of the activities related to his significant ideas when I was at school. Let me tell you all about it:
When I was 8 years old, we were told to carry out an experiment observing the germination and growing of seeds, keeping a record as regards the way in which seeds germinate showing a chain of changes that resulted into the development of the plant. In accordance with Dewey, this encouraged "learning by doing" through experimenting within a natural process, keeping in mind that, as the American educator himself said, experiences do not happen just because, we relate them with previous ones and this allows us to experiment.

As a teacher to be, I would like to live up to Dewey`s call to encourage students to develop creative and artistic abilities to help them reach their full potential. I think that learning through experimenting is likely to have lasting effects upon students`life.

" To "Learn from experience" is to make a backward and forward connection between what we do to things and what we enjoy or suffer from things in consequence. Under such conditions, doing becomes a trying, an experiment with the world to find out what it is like, the undergoing becomes instruction-discovery of the conection of things"
JOHN DEWEY www.infed.org/thinkers/et-dewey.htm

VICTOR MERCANTE (1870–1934)

This Argentinean educator was born in Buenos Aires in 1870. According to him, Education had to be based on observation and experimentation in order to prepare children for life. He wanted to achieve a practical and utilitarian education that helped students to manage life.
What I found interesting about him is his preoccupation in developing an effective pedagogic method for the whole population. Isn’t it great that someone started being interested in how to teach so many years ago?
He also developed some laws about education which would be the principles used by teachers. The ones that I found more interesting are:
Universality Law: he thought that everyone had the need and the aptitude to learn, in short, that education should be for everyone.
Autonomy Law: he said that the teacher should help students develop autonomous thinking.
Integrity Law: education should try to foster the integrity of the student, not only psychologically speaking but also related to the integrity of the knowledge.
Finally, I would like to point out his interest in universal education, his taking into account the affective life of students and also his contribution to the renewal in pedagogy of the 20s and 30s.

If you want to know more about this educator visit the following page:

http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:pR0XFUKVYIgJ:www.ibe.unesco.org/fileadmin/user_upload/archive/publications/ThinkersPdf/mercantes.PDF+victor+mercante&hl=es&ct=clnk&cd=3&gl=ar