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This chapter argues that education was a key arena for spreading the influence of psychology. This is not a novel view, but it is argued that too much emphasis has been placed on the role of psychology in mental testing and child guidance as a tool of regulation, and too little on its significance for a more progressive pedagogy. It is argued that the latter reached well beyond the pioneering activities of figures like Montessori, the Russells, and A. S. Neill, and highlights the excitement about psychology among teachers exposed to the new ideas through teacher training. The role of psychological advice in childcare is considered, downplaying the influence of behaviourism and highlighting the ambivalence of psychologists towards popularization.

This chapter presents an essay on the concepts of order and liberty in the educational anthropology of Maria Montessori. It was she, more than any other person in the 20th century, who realized that the life of the child demanded an education that was ordered, creative and distinctively personal. For her hope to be realized, it is imperative that Western civilization cease viewing the human situation as hierarchical, whereby the child is required to become an adult as quickly as possible. This essay notes that Montessori shares the late-19th century awareness of the developmental nature of humankind in an evolutionary context with other philosophers including William James, Henri Bergson and John Dewey.

Actions can be either physical, virtual, or mental and act on either physical, virtual, or mental objects. For instance, Maria Montessori constructed educational materials that enabled students to learn by manipulation. The materials required physical actions on physical objects, such as combining beads to depict operations on numbers. Nintendo’s Wii video game supported physical actions on virtual objects. Gestures are actions that often apply to imaginary objects. Virtual actions involve manipulating computer consoles such as those used in robotic surgery to operate on physical objects. Virtual actions on virtual objects occur in many video games and instructional software. Virtual actions on mental objects occur in computer systems that use audio feedback to help the blind learn to navigate. Mental actions can be captured in brain–computer interfaces to control both physical robots and information on a computer screen. Mental actions on mental objects produce mental simulations. The increasing popularity of augmented reality will require more research on the pairing of physical, virtual, and mental actions and objects.

This chapter uses the lives of Caroline and Jane Kenney to offer new insights into the relationship between suffrage, feminism, and educational reform. While the links between the teaching profession, the women’s movement, and the suffrage campaign have long been recognized, teachers’ interests in suffrage are usually framed in terms of demands for equal pay, workplace rights, and professional status. This chapter instead explores the Kenney sisters’ interests in the purpose and meaning of education, especially for women, through their commitment to pedagogical reform and innovative education. It shows how their access to a network of reformers, gained through their suffrage work and connections, was one of their most important resources, allowing them to pursue their interests across national boundaries. Their careers suggest some of the possibilities open to feminist teachers who were committed to personal, professional, and political advancement, and who had the resources and opportunities to pursue their goals.

This essay explores the aesthetic and socio-political importance of play in Katherine Mansfield’s selected short stories. For Mansfield, children’s play is not synonymous with a complete withdrawal into a realm of abstract fantasies but a creative process that allows the subject to actively engage with the social, cultural, and natural world. Read in parallel with Maria Montessori’s educational theories, Mansfield’s stories question the pedagogical trend of ‘play learning’, suggesting that the importance of children’s play does not lie in cognitive learning outcomes but rather in its creative potential that hones the child’s aesthetic, social, and ecological sensibility.

This chapter provides a systematic overview of the case studies discussed in this book. It is divided into rough ‘types’, focusing, in turn, on: Care Farms; Forest Schools; Homeschooling; Democratic and Human-Scale Schooling; Steiner Schooling; Montessori Schooling. The chapter is a touchstone for the later, thematic chapters. Each section includes an outline of the following with regard to each type: history, development and key proponents (where appropriate); main pedagogical principles and practices; academic research concerning that approach; significant ‘moments’ where that approach appears in this book. Each section ends with a note on the distribution of each type of alternative education in the UK (and elsewhere, where appropriate) and a note on the kinds of examples visited in the course of the research for this book. There is relatively little academic research regarding some educational types (e.g. Care Farms) whilst there exist significant bodies of research on others (e.g. Homeschooling). The conclusion highlights some significant areas for further research on alternative learning spaces, making the case for more comparative, multi-site studies.

The final model considered is the leader as sower. Here Plato anticipates the concept of thought leadership. The core components of the model include originating ideas big enough to create a legacy, but still empowering others to adapt them as circumstances demand. In the first part, the key text is the Phaedrus, where Plato discusses the best way to create an intellectual legacy—not through writing books, but by nurturing living, critical dialogue among your students and followers. The chapter looks at the way Plato put this model into practice by creating an institution to perpetuate his ideas: the Academy, the ancestor of the modern university. The second part presents examples of ‘seminal’ leaders: Marie Curie, Maria Montessori, and Mohammed Yunus, founder of the microfinance organization, Grameen Bank.

Two days a week, Kevin leaves his office 45 minutes early to take charge of his 2-year-old daughter, Sophie, while her mother, a university professor, teaches a late class. One balmy spring afternoon, Kevin retrieved Sophie at her child-care center and drove the 15-minute route home. Invited to look in on Sophie’s play, I met the pair at the front door and nestled into a rocking chair from which to observe unobtrusively. After downing the last bite of her snack, Sophie grabbed Kevin’s hand and led him across the family room to a rug lined on two sides by shelves filled with books, stuffed animals, and other play props. Sophie moved a toy horse and cow inside a small, enclosed fence that she and Kevin had put together the day before. Then she turned the animals on their sides and moved them toward each other. “Why are horse and cow lying down?” Kevin asked. “’Cause they’re tired,” Sophie answered, pushing the two animals closer together. “Oh, yes,” Kevin affirmed. Then, building on Sophie’s theme, he placed a teddy bear on another part of the rug and offered, “I think Ted’s tired, too. I’m going to start a bed over here for some other animals.” Sophie turned toward the teddy bear, lifted his paw, and exclaimed, “She wants a lollipop to hold in her hand!” “A lollipop in her hand? We haven’t got any lollipops, have we?” answered Kevin. “Laura has!” declared Sophie, glancing at me. “Has Laura got a lollipop?” Kevin queried. “Yes! She’s got all of those, and a swing and a table, too!” Sophie remarked, referring to my chair, which rocked back and forth next to an end table. “Maybe this could be a make-believe lollipop,” suggested Kevin, placing a round piece on the end of a long TinkerToy stick and handing the structure to Sophie “That’s a lollipop,” agreed Sophie, placing it in the paw of the teddy bear. “Can she suck that while she’s going off to sleep?” asked Kevin. “Do you think that’s what she wants?” “It’s a pacifier,” explained Sophie, renaming the object.

Chapter 4 discusses Frank and Lillian Gilbreth’s understanding of media and the attempts at implementing their consulting model in the business world as a solution for tackling the crisis of corporate control. It describes the strong ties of their film-based motion studies to Montessori pedagogy and how their approach was used to train typewriter operators and employees in corporations. It outlines that for the Gilbreths media technology was more than a mere useful instrument for corporate consulting. They associated the new media of this period, and above all film, with utopian ideas about the efficacy of these new visual forms of representation. The chapter shows that in the corporate reality of a consulting project, these ideas could only be realized to a limited degree. Their approach was part of a whole series of other reform-oriented attempts that were introduced in what was at the time a corporate environment receptive to innovation.