Blended Montessori – Creative Technologies approach for Successful Inclusion in Multicultural Schools 

Blended Montessori-Creative Technologies approach for successful inclusion in Multicultural Schools (MonTech) project fostered social inclusion and equity in multicultural schools across Europe through highly innovative and engaging activities based on a new approach that blends the Montessori method with cutting-edge Maker Education learning experiences. 

The main objective of MonTech was to foster the social inclusion of children with refugee, migrant or minority background in their school environment. The first specific objective was to support educators that are teaching in multicultural schools to effectively increase their educational performance by implementing activities inspired by a new approach (Montessori + Creative Technologies). The second specific objective was the measurable increase of the educational performance of these children.

In order to achieve these goals, MonTech proposed to recover, adapt and transfer a well known and successful learning method (Montessori), which was originally born to help the poorest children in the slums of Italy, but which today has become mainly associated with private schools for privileged children. The idea was twofold: 

(1) to return the method to its origins, by thinking of how to adapt its creative learning materials to the current multicultural school contexts; 

(2) to update the method through technological and digital tools, since over the years it has gradually fallen behind in these aspects. The idea is that these creative computing tools, added to Montessori, will help to promote learning through play, creative thinking, practical life, and will add non-linguistic elements. All these elements are very important in improving refugee/migrant education.

The project focused on integrating Montessori and Creative Technologies. This resulted in the development of a teacher’s guide, training of trainers from different countries and then the training of teachers. The process ended with the implementation of workshops for children in multicultural schools across Europe.

This successful project concluded in January 2024.

Project partners:

UNIVERSITAT DE GIRONA (Spain)

ACTION SYNERGY SA (Greece)

ELORIS (Greece)

COMPLEX CULTURAL ESPORTIU MONTESSORI PALAU S.A. (Spain)

KARSIYAKA ILCE MILLI EGITIM MUDURLUGU (Turkey)

CENTER FOR CREATIVE TRAINING (Bulgaria)

WATERPARK MONTESSORI INTERNATIONAL Ltd. (Ireland)

LICEUL TEHNOLOGIC CONSTANTIN IANCULESCU (Romania)

Project Website: https://montessoritech.eu/

Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor EACEA can be held responsible for them.