clinical focus
Learning by doing
Camp was in Australia to give a number
of workshops for Dementia Australia and
joined Aged Care Insite to discuss his work.
ACI: For those who don’t know, can you
explain the Montessori method?
Applying the Montessori
method to dementia care.
Cameron Camp interviewed
by Conor Burke
T
he Montessori method of education
was developed by Italian physician,
anthropologist and pedagogue
Maria Montessori in the early 20th century.
The philosophy centres on a child’s
innate abilities. It is often described as a way
of ‘learning by doing’ and is used in over
22,000 schools worldwide.
Dr Cameron Camp, from the Center
for Applied Research in Dementia in Ohio,
USA, came in contact with the philosophy
via his wife, a Montessori teacher, and
his two children, who were taught the
Montessori way.
Slowly, Camp came to believe that the
principles his wife taught day to day could
be applied to his work with people with
dementia. This led to the development
of a program of activities that combines
rehabilitation principles and the educational
techniques of Montessori, using the
physical and cognitive abilities available to
individuals, in the hope that they can be
supported to live fulfilling lives.
24 agedcareinsite.com.au
CC: In its original form, it was an educational
system developed by [one of the first female
medical doctors] in Italy, Maria Montessori,
early in the 20th century, and is an approach
to learning that involves learning by doing.
It focuses on what capacities a person has
and uses those as the basis for enabling
them to learn and acquire new information
and skills.
My wife has been a Montessori teacher for
25 years, and I’ve had two children who’ve
gone through Montessori education, so I
have some background along those lines.
It seemed that this approach – learning by
doing, and focusing on a person’s abilities
rather than their weaknesses – made a lot of
sense in terms of how to work with persons
with dementia, and how to enable them to
learn as well.
Did you come up with the idea of using
Montessori with people with dementia,
or was it already being used?
Well, I was beginning to do work with
persons with dementia in the early 1980s
at the same time that my children started
at a Montessori school, and all of the
dots started connecting. It just continued
to build over time and became more and
more clear.
In a Montessori school, for example, to
teach the geography of Australia, children
would be given a wooden puzzle, and
the pieces of the puzzle would be in the
shape of the states of Australia, along with
the Northern Territory, and each of these
wooden pieces would be lifted up by a peg
on each piece.
Underneath, you have the outline of each
of the states, and the outline of Australia in
general. And so, the children would put the
puzzle pieces on each outline, and when
they can assemble the puzzle together with
facility, they’re given the puzzle pieces again
without the outline.
When they put that together, they begin
to get a better sense of the geography of
Australia, and they’ll never mistake NT as
being somewhere around Victoria. But
what’s also interesting is the location of the
pegs on each of those pieces is where the
state capital is located.
So, for Western Australia, it would be on
the far left side of the piece where Perth is,
and the children are not told anything about
this, but automatically, unconsciously and
effortlessly, they learn the location of all of
the state capitals.
This form of learning – l ocation learning –
is something that’s there early in life, and
it’s available far into the course of dementia
as well. We can use that form of learning to
address many issues involved with dementia.
If you were working with someone
with dementia, what kind of activities
would you do?
For example, say you have someone who
has dementia and diabetes, and they are
repetitively asking whether they’ve had
their insulin today. You would put together
a chart with tick marks – two for Monday,
two for Tuesday, and so on. You would keep
that chart, say, on their walker, and when