Pedagogical Protocol Transparency: How Hyderabad Montessori Schools Describe Their Core Montessori Practices Online

"Montessori" is neither trademarked nor regulated in India, so any preschool can adopt the name regardless of how closely its classrooms follow the model Maria Montessori described. Because families rarely get to observe a classroom before enrolling, a school's website often carries more weight in that decision than it probably should. This record presents a descriptive, single-pass content analysis of how 11 IMF (Indian Montessori Foundation) Flagship Montessori preschools in Hyderabad describe five practices widely regarded as essential to Montessori pedagogy — uninterrupted work cycles, child-led choice, mixed-age grouping, observation-based teaching, and the use of Montessori materials — on their public websites. Each practice was coded as explicit, implicit, or not found, using only each school's own website as the data source. The study does not rank schools or assess classroom practice; it maps which practices schools name outright, which are softened into generic language, and which are left unaddressed, and discusses what that disclosure gap means for parents reading a preschool website and for schools that may simply not be describing work they are, in fact, doing.