Learning By Doing
The MicroSociety program combines the best thinking in experiential education with proven concepts in the social sciences. Drawing from the classical research base of Dewey, Montessori, Froebel, Illich, and Piaget, the MicroSociety program has a firm foundation in educational research.

In his seminal work,  The MicroSociety School: A Real World In Miniature (1974), founder George H. Richmond, ED. D., M.PA., argued that education reform requires a theory of experience that integrates the fundamental contexts, structures, and forces of actual existence, distributing these in sufficient doses of reality so that students learn how to shape themselves and their world. As an example, he pointed to the introduction of internal currency, markets, property and organizations into the classroom.  This provides children with the preparation to function in adult society, realities which children need to understand.  The research base includes a variety of disciplines and perspectives:

Building Success, Combating Learned Helplessness and Persistent Failure
(Dweck & Elliot, 1983; Finch, Hodaka & Sanders, 1989; and Parsons, Adler & Kaczala, 1982) These theorists identified a phenomenon they called learned helplessness, a condition in which children with low expectations of success construct a chain of events that affect their self evaluations and future expectations of success, which, in turn, moderate their achievement motivation and performance in learning situations. A MicroSociety program strategy breaks this chain of failure, especially with at-risk children, by making opportunities for success more plentiful and introducing a greater variety of achievement options into the school house. As in the larger society, academic measures compete with measures of creativity, wealth, character, authority, power, responsibility, knowledge, competence, conviviality, and social status as reference points for achieving success. Children who have never succeeded at anything and who consequently have a poor self-concept or low self-esteem have opportunities to reinvent themselves and “become achievers.”

Intervening Early
Other research regarding patterns of persistent failure initiated in elementary schools has galvanized educators and policy makers behind the idea of intervening earlier in the lives of children (e.g. Slavin, Karweit, & Madden,1989). The MicroSociety program begins in kindergarten.

Students as Teachers and Peer Instruction
Another innovative strategy common to MicroSociety programs represents a shift in the teaching and learning paradigm. The research of Lev Vygotsky provides a valuable underpinning for this shift. A Vygotskian environment goes beyond arranging activities to promote children’s self-initiated discovery, instead maximizing assisted discovery (Tharp and Gilmore, 1998). Teachers arrange cooperative learning experiences, grouping together classmates whose abilities are moderately discrepant from one another so that peers can help teach one another (Forman & McPhail, 1989). Teachers are expected to become more of “a guide on the side” than a “sage on the stage” and prepare students for these roles, thus relinquishing some of their previous responsibilities to students.

Other Research
The MicroSociety program draws on additional educational research and literature that includes a variety of disciplines and perspectives: Cognition and Representation Constructivism (Vygotsky, 1978; Wittrock, 1974); Achievement Motivation, (Dweck & Elliot, 1983; Fyans et al.,1983); Parsons, Adler & Kaczala, 1982); Prior Knowledge (Palincsar & Brown,1984; Langer, 1984; Eisner, 1985; Bereiter, 1990); Motivation (Weiner, 1985; Stipek, 1981); Assisted Discovery (Tharp & Gilmore, 1988); Thematic Instruction, Integrated Instruction (Resnick & Klopner,1989); Early Intervention (Slavin, Karweit, & Madden, 1989); Cooperative Learning (Forman & McPhail, 1989); and Emotional Intelligence (Goleman, 1995).