The Effectiveness of Montessori Education Program in Pre-School Period: A Meta-Analysis Study

In this study, the findings of quantitative studies conducted in Turkey and abroad between 2002 and 2022, in which the effect of the Montessori Education Program (MEP) in the pre-school period was examined, were combined through meta-analysis.Master's theses, doctoral dissertations, and articles published nationally and internationally between 01.01.2002-15.05.2022 with pre-test and post-test control group mean scores, standard deviation values, and sample sizes were included.As a result of the searches made in the Council of Higher Education (CoHE) National Thesis Center, Web of Science (WOS), and Proquest databases, 40 studies and 22 sub-studies meeting the inclusion criteria were included in the study.The effect size values of the studies were calculated one by one.Microsoft Excel 2010 and Statistical Package for Social Sciences 27 (SPSS) programs were used for statistical calculations.The calculated data were analyzed using Comprehensive Meta-Analysis (CMA) software.Due to the heterogeneity of the data, the random effects model was used in the calculations.Based on the random effects model, study findings indicate that the overall effect size of MEP on pre-school education was 1.737, which is positive and strong.This indicates that the MEP applied to the experimental groups was significantly more effective than the other methods applied to the control groups.