ArticlePloS one2019
Beyond executive functions, creativity skills benefit academic outcomes: Insights from Montessori education.
Article in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed.
- Effects of Montessori Education on the Academic, Cognitive, and Social Development of Disadvantaged Preschoolers: A Randomized Controlled Study in the French Public-School System.Child development · 2021Trial
- Educating minds with generative AI.Communications psychology · 2026Review
- When little brain goes to school: Impact of pedagogy on cerebellar peduncles' development.Developmental cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Schooling Trajectories and the Development of Brain Dynamics: A Comparative Study of Montessori and Traditional Education.Advanced science (Weinheim, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany) · 2026Article
- Active inference goes to school: the importance of active learning in the age of large language models.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Differences in spatiotemporal brain network dynamics of Montessori and traditionally schooled students.NPJ science of learning · 2024Article
- Article
- Montessori education's impact on academic and nonacademic outcomes: A systematic review.Campbell systematic reviews · 2023Review
- LearningBrain sciences · 2023Article
- The Behavioral Effects of Montessori Pedagogy on Children's Psychological Development and School Learning.Children (Basel, Switzerland) · 2022Review
- Preschoolers' Attitudes, School Motivation, and Executive Functions in the Context of Various Types of Kindergarten.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Education shapes the structure of semantic memory and impacts creative thinking.NPJ science of learning · 2021Article
- Investigation of the associations between physical activity, self-regulation and educational outcomes in childhood.PloS one · 2021Article
- An Association Between Montessori Education in Childhood and Adult Wellbeing.Frontiers in psychology · 2021Article
- Multisensory Gains in Simple Detection Predict Global Cognition in Schoolchildren.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Exploring Children's Creative Self-Efficacy Affected by After-School Program and Parent-Child Relationships.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Article
- An fMRI study of error monitoring in Montessori and traditionally-schooled children.NPJ science of learning · 2020Article
Corrections and comments
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4 authors.
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Abstract
Studies have shown scholastic, creative, and social benefits of Montessori education, benefits that were hypothesized to result from better executive functioning on the part of those so educated. As these previous studies have not reported consistent outcomes supporting this idea, we therefore evaluated scholastic development in a cross-sectional study of kindergarten and elementary school-age students, with an emphasis on the three core executive measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory update, and selective attention (inhibition). Two hundred and one (201) children underwent a complete assessment: half of the participants were from Montessori settings, while the other half were controls from traditional schools. The results confirmed that Montessori participants outperformed peers from traditional schools both in academic outcomes and in creativity skills across age groups and in self-reported well-being at school at kindergarten age. No differences were found in global executive functions, except working memory. Moreover, a multiple mediations model revealed a significant impact of creative skills on academic outcomes influenced by the school experience. These results shed light on the possibly overestimated contribution of executive functions as the main contributor to scholastic success of Montessori students and call for further investigation. Here, we propose that Montessori school-age children benefit instead from a more balanced development stemming from self-directed creative execution.
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