Walking a desire track: Montessori pedagogy as resistance to normative pathways

Abstract

Following calls to ‘bewilder’ (Snaza 2013) the pioneers of early education, this article positions Montessori pedagogy as a ‘desire path’ that acts as resistance to normative policy-driven pathways in early childhood education and care. Desire paths are alternative tracks made aside from officially established walking routes. In this paper I think with the metaphor of pathways and desire paths positioning an educator’s choice to practice Montessori pedagogy as an approach which wanders outside of mainstream qualifications and education. To do this, I take fragments of a professional life story that chart the agentic nature of choosing Montessori pedagogy as a way to problematise how walking that desire line challenges, and defies normative pathways. I also propose a re-reading of Montessori’s pedagogy, not as pioneering but as nomadic, and suggest that social desire paths enable Montessori education to be viewed as multiple, situated, alternative tracks to prescribed pathways.