Abstract

The present research was conducted to investigate the effect of the Montessori educational approach on anxiety and self-efficacy in the interpersonal relationships of elementary students. The present study was of quasi-experimental research type with a control group and pretest-posttest design. The statistical population of this research was all third-grade male students who were studying in Mashhad in the academic year of 2019-2020, in one district; and then two schools (15 students from each school) were selected based on the random multi-stage cluster, as research statistical sample. Then one school was randomly selected as the control group and the other was selected as the experimental group. After determining the desired groups and performing the pre-test, the Montessori education was performed on the experimental group during 12 sessions of 45 minutes (two sessions per week) and the control group remained on the waiting list. After performing, the post-test was applied again on both groups. The tools included Children's Anxiety Questionnaire and Self-Efficacy Questionnaire. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics (mean and standard deviation) and inferential statistics (multivariate analysis of covariance) methods with the help of SPSS-24 software. The results showed that education by the Montessori method has had a significant effect on anxiety (and its components) and self-efficacy in the interpersonal relationships (and its components) of third-grade male elementary school students in Mashhad. Therefore, it can be said that this educational method is useful in better promotion of education and improving the learning level of students.