The Wonder Approach
Children of the last twenty years have grown up in an increasingly frenzied and demanding environment, so that on one hand education has been rendered more complicated and on the other, the essentials have been lost to view. In order to ensure their future success, we feel that we must fill our children’s schedules with endless activities that cause leisure, spontaneous activity, and the experience of nature, beauty and silence, to fade out of their lives. Childhood has often become a veritable race toward adulthood, which distances children more and more from the natural laws of childhood.
A constant stream of loud and flashy stimuli disturbs the only true and sustainable learning that exists in them: that of calmly and quietly discovering the world for themselves and at their own pace, with a sense of wonder that goes beyond mere curiosity for the unknown or interest in novelty.
According to the Wonder Approach, learning is a wondrous journey guided by a deep reflection on what the natural laws of childhood require: respect for children’s innocence, their pace and rhythms, their sense of mystery, and their thirst for beauty.
Catherine L’Ecuyer is Canadian, now living in Barcelona with her four children. She holds a law degree, has an MBA, an Official European Master of Research and a Doctorate in Education and Psychology. The Swiss journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience published her article “The Wonder Approach to Learning,” which converted her thesis into a new hypothesis/theory of learning. She received the 2015 Pajarita Award from the Spanish Association of Toy Manufacturers for “promoting a culture of play in the media,” was invited to speak to the Education Commission of the Congress of Deputies of Spain and to the Second Summit on Education organized by the European Commission. She has served as a consultant to the Spanish government regarding the use of digital technology by minors, to the governments of Mexico and of the state of Puebla in Mexico concerning preschool reform and has participated in a report for the Cerlac (Unesco) on the use of digital media in childhood. She has recently been named Honorary Member of the Spanish branch of the Association Montessori Internationale.
Author of many publications, she is the bestseller author of The Wonder Approach and It Looks Better in 3D published in eight languages and available in more than 40 countries (over 150K books printed for both). Her areas of interest and research are: The Montessori Education, the importance of wonder and beauty in education, evidence-based education, the attachment theory, education theory, etc. She currently collaborates with the Mind-Brain Group of the University of Navarra and is a columnist for El País, El Mundo in Spanish and The Huffington Post in France.
source: https://catherinelecuyer-eng.com/biography/
Resources:
– L’Ecuyer, C. (2014). The Wonder Approach to learning. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 8, 764. Link. (Q1 JCR) https://catherinelecuyer-eng.com/acedemicpublications/
– L’Ecuyer, C., Murillo, J.I. (2020). El enfoque teleológico de la educación Montessori y sus implicaciones / /Montessori’s teleological approach to education and its implications. Revista Española de Pedagogia, 78 (277), 499-517. (Q3 SJR) revistadepedagogia.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/REP277_ENG-ESP_L’ECUYER-2.pdf
Other academic resources can be found here: https://catherinelecuyer-eng.com/acedemicpublications/
Other non-academic resources can be found here: https://catherinelecuyer-eng.com/books/
