Inspiring Antiracist Montessori Early Childhood Education Through Black Feminisms

• In Event: Toward Antiracist Practices and Possibilities in Early Childhood Contexts

Abstract

Objectives and Purposes

Montessori is a well-known approach to education, guided by Dr. Maria Montessori’s philosophy, in which a number of principles are nurtured, including a joy for discovery and lifelong learning. A typical Montessori classroom surrounds young children with hands-on materials in order to facilitate the learning of broad concepts in concrete or tactile ways. Through this approach, Montessori education attempts to create an educational environment where young children actualize respect for themselves and others, learn about how they are relational beings in the world, and access confidence in their abilities. Inspired by these and other aspects of Montessori’s philosophy, in this paper, we employ a critical, Black feminist lens (Collins, 2008; hooks, 1994; Lorde, 1984) to offer possibilities for anti-racist approaches to early childhood education.

Specifically, we situate this work as conceptual and autoethnographic, drawing upon Black feminist theories to unearth the potentials for anti-racist education through Montessori philosophies. To accomplish this, Author 1, who has taught for 11 years as a Montessori educator and has served 3 years in several leadership capacities, writes autoethnographically about our professional experiences as a Black Montessorian, reflecting upon and re-lensing them through a Black feminist theoretical lens.

Theoretical Framework

Black feminisms have been born from the lived experiences of Black women throughout herstory. Through Black activism, vitality, resistance, and joy, Black women thinkers (Collins, 2008) have expressed lived experiences of empowerment and oppression through oral herstories, literature, art, and music. From these and other re-memberings (Dillard, 2012), Black feminist scholars have theorized the complexities of matrices of domination, the importance of self-definition and collective resistance, and empowerment incited from the margins (Collins, 2008; hooks, 1984; Springer, 2005). Building a framework that draws from the contours of Black feminisms, theory is used to re-lens and reflect on how Montessori education is already uniquely situated to facilitate anti-racist education, and ways in which it can be reconceptualized to expand on its potentials.

Modes of Inquiry and Data

Data are produced from Author 1’s autoethnographic journaling and other aesthetic reflections through mediums such as poetry and art. These data are then analyzed and theorized with a Black feminist lens to unearth ways in which power operates in early childhood contexts (for instance, through anti-Black discourses), in addition to possibilities for anti-racist, pedagogical imaginaries.

Examples include how Black identities can be nurtured in early childhood classroom environments; developing pedagogical approaches that center Black children’s self-definitions (e.g., through an architecting of their own stories on their own terms); and through interpersonal relations, continually engaging and nourishing Black children’s sense of being, brilliance, and their significance in the classroom community and world.

Conclusions

To continue to center the brilliance of Black children, in addition to other children of the global majority, who have for too long been pathologized in early childhood education, elevating the lived experiences of Black educators and applying Black feminist theories in the flesh (Moraga & Anzaldúa, 1983) is essential. This creates new possibilities for anti-racist approaches to early childhood education that are unable to be accessed or imagined otherwise.

Authors

• Iana Phillips, University of North Texas

• Michelle Salazar Perez, University of North Texas