To compare the teaching methods of Margaret McMillan and Abigail Eliot, we first have to know a

bit about their history and context, this can be read in the pages one and two for McMillan and two
and three for Eliot, but I will do a brief resume
Margaret McMillan was, along with her sister, a Christian Socialist active in British politics and
was a supporter of improving health and education for the children of England’s working class.
They were involved the creation of health and dental clinics for those living in impoverished
sections of London, supported the 1906 Provision of School Meals Act, and created night camps
children in need in Deptford in 1908. She envisioned an educational environment where adults
learned to create safe, healthy, and enriching experiences for young children, so in March 1914,
they opened a nursery for the youngest children living in the Deptford, in which they´re main focus
was first, health and hygiene and second, education.
McMillan even invented the term nursery school in which the children would be nurtured via a
daily inspection, outdoor learning, play, and healthy, balanced nutrition. She even created her own
teaching materials, which she got from the garden, and with the idea that the children’s learning
process evolved from these materials through the teachers’ encouragement, something that we now
call higher-order thinking questions and sustained shared thinking. This was something new and
very creative, because in this time education was based on a rigid and rather inflexible, children had
to do what they were told when they were told, generally without taking into account their opinions,
or in consideration that every children has a somewhat different thinking process.
Abigail Eliot was a pioneer of the nursery education movement in the United States, which began
with the three fields of home economics, social work, and education.
She began her career as a social worker with the Children’s Mission in Boston, Massachusetts. She
was disappointed with the work done there and studied economics at Oxford University during
1919–20. She then returned to Boston, Mrs. Henry Greenleaf Pearson, of The Women’s Education
Association, invited her to study at the Rachel McMillan Nursery and Teacher Training Centre in
Deptford, London, a six-month trip that was a preparation for establishing the Ruggles Street
Nursery School in Boston.
After her journey to London, the experiences with McMillan prepared her for revamping the
Ruggles Street Nursery School and Training Center (RSN) in 1922. Just after Abigail entered the
nursery, the nurse in charge immediately walked out, leaving Eliot with 30 children of a wide age
range. The nursery was in good condition, but it was plain and boring, and also rather unequipped to
do the job. So Abigail renovated it and gathered an educational equipment similar to what was used
in McMillan´s nursery, for the children to use independently. She adapted McMillan´s nursery
system to the United States and its children necessities, because even if in its base it was the same
idea, Abigail needed adequate it to the place she was going to be implemented, Boston in this case.
Both women were fervent defenders that an enriching education for young children requires highly
trained teachers and a carefully organized learning environment, so they both spent their lives
designing and developing nursery education for children, and their methods were fairly similar, due
to Eliot studying with McMillan before creating her nursery in Boston. Therefore, in my opinion
Eliot got the main idea for her nursery from McMillan and she adopted it as her own before
adapting it and giving it her own input before implementing it. Their main difference being the
educational system in which they implemented their respective nursery school system, being the
English educational system, and the American educational system, because as I said before the
nursery system had to be adequated to the place it was going to be implemented