Steiner Education Academic Research (Australian Research up to October 2018. NZ included 2008 to November 2018)
2. APPENDIX A – Gidley Bibliog 15.12.18 3. APPENDIX B – Raw Project Data 14 Dec 2018
This page is created by the Pedagogical Section at the Goetheanum on behalf of the International Forum for Steiner/Waldorf Education. We are dedicated to supporting Steiner Waldorf Teachers worldwide by providing the best possible resources and articles.
Children and teenagers are the reason why there are nurseries, playgroups, kindergartens and schools in the world. The young generation is the true principal for all those who care for our children’s wellbeing. With this website we want to support all those who are connected to this task.
In the categories Foundation, Early Childhood, Teaching Practice, Self Development and School Management you will find collections of articles focusing on various aspects of preparation. How can a school lesson or a sequence of activities for the kindergarten be prepared? What is important for very young children? How may a parents’ evening be planned and what are the preconditions for cooperative school management?
This website focuses on the conditions needed to plan and implement learning opportunities in schools, kindergartens and wherever children and teenagers are being cared for. We also address questions connected to personal and professional self development.
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What’s Love got to do with Education?
By Dr. Jennifer M. Gidley
Dear friends working in Steiner schools,
I want to let you know about my new book: Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures. It is drawn from my Steiner-inspired PhD on evolution of consciousness and its implications for education. One of the main purposes of my book is to present Steiner philosophy and pedagogy in a way suited to the 21st century.
This short blog piece is extracted from the book.
In a world of high-stakes testing, league tables for primary schools as well as universities, funding cuts, teacher shortages, mass shootings in school campuses, and rising rates of depression and suicide among students who miss out on university entrance, how do we decide what should be the core values in education?
I believe the most important value that is largely missing from education today is what I call pedagogical love. In Chapter 8 of Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures, I explain why love should be at centre-stage in education. I introduce contemporary educational approaches that support a caring pedagogy, and some experiences and examples from my own and others’ practice, ending with some personal reflections on the theme.
Why do we want to educate with and for love? We live in a cynical global world with a dominant culture that does not value care and empathy. We live under the blanket of a dominant worldview that promotes values that are clearly damaging to human and environmental wellbeing. In many ways our world, with its dominance of economic values over practically all other concerns, is a world of callous values.
Canadian holistic educator, John Miller points to the subjugation of words like love in contemporary educational literature in the following quote from his 2000 book Education and the Soul: Towards a Spiritual Curriculum:
“The word ‘love’ is rarely mentioned in educational circles. The word seems out of place in a world of outcomes, accountability, and standardised tests.”
British educational researcher, Maggie MacLure speaks about the obsession with quantitative language in education in the UK: “objectives, outcomes, standards, high-stakes testing, competition, performance and accountability.” She argues that the resistance to the complexity and diversity of qualitative research that is found in the evidence-based agendas of the audit culture is linked to “deep-seated fears and anxieties about language and desire to control it.” In such a context, it is not hard to imagine that words like love are likely to create what MacLure calls ontological panic among the educational audit-police.
In spite of these challenges several educational theorists and practitioners emphasise the importance of love—and the role of the heart—in educational settings. If young people are to thrive in educational settings, new spaces need to be opened up for softer terms, such as love, nurture, respect, reverence, awe, wonder, wellbeing, vulnerability, care, tenderness, openness, trust.
Arthur Zajonc has developed an educational and contemplative process that he calls an “epistemology of love.” Mexican holistic education philosopher, Ramon Gallegos Nava, refers to holistic education as a “pedagogy of universal love.” Other important contributions to bringing pedagogical love into education include Nel Noddings extensive writings on “an ethics of care”, Parker Palmer’s “heart of a teacher” and Tobin Hart’s deep empathy.”
All of these theorists and more are introduced and discussed in Chapter 8 of Postformal Education: A Philosophy for Complex Futures (Springer, Netherlands) published August 2016.
http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783319290683
Both eBook and Hardback are available to purchase from September 2016.
See also my Amazon Author page: www.amazon.com/author/jennifergidley
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This paper argues that the historic mode of expression for Indigenous knowledge has been essentially visionary and mythic, often grounded in oral traditions of great antiquity. Essentially, communication of this knowledge has had a poetic ‘supernormal’ character, employing imagery that can be interpreted on many levels. The danger of superficially rendering ancient cultural forms of knowledge to fit with Western ‘scientific’ understanding is discussed, particularly the risk of divorcing such knowledge from the original, primal, imaginative source in which it is situated. Appreciation of this is necessary if Indigenous knowledge is to be effectively and sustainably embedded in education. The paper explores the educational significance of oral story-telling as a medium through which such knowledge can be articulated but also renewed and further developed, using the concept of Te Whāriki in New Zealand Schools as a model of culturally-inclusive, narrative-rich educational practice within the New Zealand national school system. A fruitful link is drawn between the oral traditions of holistic-wisdom knowledge of Indigenous people and the creative activity of oral story-telling in schools, encouraging an integrated approach to Indigenous knowledge in education that integrates intellect with emotional and practical intelligence.
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By disseminating and sharing such research we are more able to improve the practices in the early years settings, schools and teacher seminars. As educators whose responsibility is for a healthily integrated and nurturing education for all children, as well as their general well-being, we need a wide perspective of what is happening in all areas of our educational environment, as well as a clear and informed insight into the Waldorf classroom itself.
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