A comparison of temperament, character, and aggression dimensions in children under education of Waldorf, Montessori and traditional educational models

The present study was conducted to compare various dimensions of temperament, character and aggression in preschool children trained with Waldorf,Montessori,and traditional approaches of education. The statistical population included all preschools in Region 2 of Tehran, administered based on the aforementioned educational approaches. In the first stage, six preschools (two preschools for each approach) were selected. Then, the inventory of maternal care quality was administered among mothers to study mother-child relations and match children in this factor. Finally,only mothers who obtained the highest scores in this inventory were selected. In the second stage, the seven-factor preschool temperament and character inventory,developed by Constantino(2012),and the four-factor preschool children aggression inventory ,developed by Vahedi et al. (2008),were given to the instructors of those children with quality caring mothers.After the instructors completed the inventories and their opinions about these children were collected,data pertaining to 90 children (15 children from each preschool) was analyzed. The multivariate analysis of variance of data suggested higher level of verbal and physical aggression in children trained with traditional approach, as compared to two other approaches,the aggression scores of the children trained with Waldorf and Montessori approaches were not different. In addition,children trained with Waldorf approach obtained higher scores than other two groups in novelty seeking and persistence (as two dimensions of temperament),self-directedness,and cooperativeness (as two dimensions of character).The temperament and character scores of the children trained with Montessori and traditional approaches were not different.Findings suggested the importance of educational environment,secondary to family environment,in the formation of temperamental and behavioral characteristics.