How does Waldorf Education stay up to date?

The pedagogical section of the Goetheanum in Switzerland has a working group set up to address this question: The Hager circle. A summary of their research and recommendations can be found in the document below.

Essential Characteristics of/ Guidelines for Waldorf Pedagogy: https://www.goetheanum-paedagogik.ch/en/publikationen/grundlagen/essential-characteristics-of-waldorf-pedagogy

I was delighted to find such a clear outline of the essential ‘ingredients’ of a Steiner Waldorf school. In particular the ‘primary methodological principles’ underpinning the education: Recognition of the human constitution in its threefoldness: Willing, feeling and thinking. This knowledge then informs how content is taught; as lived experience that is allowed to resonate in each child and reflected upon. Moreover, rhythm is recognised as the healthy mediator between the outside world brought to the child in form of teaching content that is then given time to be internalised (during the night) and brought back the next morning to build on for the next step of learning.

I want to highlight two further aspects touched on in the document: Firstly, the essentiality of the teacher’s relationship to the arts: ‘Artistic teaching is one of the most important educational tools and may be understood in four ways’. This speaks for the fact, that it is the freedom within artistic approaches to the word that allow truly new, life-confirming solutions to todaysworld challenges.

The second aspect highlighted in the document addresses the approach to science and scientific research:

‘The basis of science teaching, especially in the upper grades, takes a phenomenological approach. Apart from the teaching of science as such, a broader scientific attitude comes into play for teachers, extending to their whole approach to teaching and learning. Three aspects stand out:

1.  Science as a subject: teachers develop their subjects on the basis of the scientific knowledge of their time, including Goethean research methods. 

2. Teachers – within the scope of their possibilities – cultivate a scientific approach, in the sense of practising openness and objectivity; they «conduct research» and reflect on their own teaching.

3. The scientific attitude extends to all dimensions of the human being, and  finds expression in the spiritual scientific foundations of their teaching’

It requires some courage and self-study nowadays in order to include the spiritual underpinning of our universe to inform our approach to the world and how we want the children to learn about it. Thus, teaching ban become truly meaningful to our children.

Dr Hedda Joyce