Research Bulletin

Teaching Sensible Science, A Letter from a Participant by Calisa O’Keefe

Report from the Online Waldorf Library by Marianne Alsop

Honest, Complete Assessment and Social Renewal: A Revolution by Patrice Maynard

We underestimate the revolutionary possibilities of Waldorf education. Constructive revolution was inherent in the ideas Rudolf Steiner gave the first Waldorf school teachers and asked the parents of those first classes to support. There are many revolutionary ideas inherent in the way Waldorf educators teach, but four are highlighted here:
1. To view a human being as an unfolding mystery.
2. To view human beings as unfolding in clear developmental stages.
3. To practice what we may call “practical altruism.”
4. To teach concepts imaginatively, aiming at rich, pictorial insight.

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Crises in the Kindergarten Why Children Need to Play in School by Joan Almon

Kindergarten has changed radically in the last two decades in ways of which few Americans are aware. Children now spend far more time being taught and tested on literacy and math skills than they do learning through play and exploration, exercising their bodies, and using their imaginations. Many kindergartens use highly prescriptive curricula geared to new state standards and linked to standardized tests. In an increasing number of kindergartens, teachers must follow scripts from which they may not deviate. These practices, which are not well-grounded in research, violate long-established principles of child development and good teaching. It is increasingly clear that they compromise both children’s health and their long-term prospects for success in school.

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Henry Barnes and Waldorf Education A Personal Tribute by Douglas Sloan

It was my good fortune to meet Henry Barnes just at the time when I had joined the Anthroposophical Society. I discovered Rudolf Steiner relatively late in my life; I joined the Society in 1978, the same year I met Henry. The occasion for this first meeting was initiated by Eckehard Piening, another of the many accomplished teachers with Henry at the Rudolf Steiner School in New York City. 1978 marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Steiner School, the first Waldorf school in North America. At the time I was an associate professor of history at Teachers College, the graduate school of education of Columbia University.

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By Michael D'Aleo

Download the article: Of Seeds and Continents: Reliability, Predictability, and Scientific Knowing

“I am not interested in what you think will work or what should work theoretically; build me a working model!”

This statement was repeated many times in the engineering career I had in the electronics industry prior to my teaching career. The owner and CEO of the company for which I worked had a Ph.D. in physics from Purdue University and had also served in the Navy. He had built the company from nothing, and the key to his success was that every product the company sold would work the first time, would be easy to use, and would be reliable for a long time. He knew all the reasons why something should work, but he was interested in spending time only with the designs brought to him for approval that were actually working models. A successful businessman and scientist, he wanted to see them, feel them, interact with the equipment; he respected the evidence of his senses.

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by Renate Long Breipohl

Download the article: Teachers’ Self Development as a Mirror of Children’s Incarnation, Part 1

In a lecture on self-education in the light of anthroposophy, Rudolf Steiner differentiates between self-education in the realm of thinking and self-education in the realm of will. In educating our thinking, we strive to develop clarity with regard to ideas and ideals, the ability to discriminate between what is essential and what is not. Essentials can be of help in finding the big picture or strengthening such a picture within us. To identify these essentials is to find signposts in the vast spiritual landscape of ideation. In educating our will the situation is different. We place ourselves in the middle of life and are
as open as possible to whatever comes. We try not to retreat from what surrounds us, but to accept what meets us as the challenges of life.

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By Arthur Zajonc

Download the article: Love and Knowledge: Recovering the Heart of Learning through Contemplation

“Preventing conflicts is the work of politics; establishing peace is the work of education.”
– Maria Montessori

If I were to ask: What should be at the center of our teaching and our students’ learning, what would you respond? Of the many tasks that we as educators take up, what, in your view, is the most important task of all? What is our greatest hope for the young people we teach? In his letters to the young poet Franz Kappus, Rainer Maria Rilke answered unequivocally:

To take love seriously and to bear and to learn it like a task, this is what [young] people need. …For one human being to love another, that is perhaps the most difficult of all our tasks, the ultimate, the last test and proof, the work for which all other work is but a preparation. For this reason young people, who are beginners in everything, cannot yet know love, they have to learn it. With their whole being, with all their forces, gathered close about their lonely, timid, upwardbeating heart, they must learn to love.

Need I say it? The curricula offered by our institutions of higher education have largely neglected this central, if profoundly difficult task of learning to love, which is also the task of learning to live in true peace and harmony with others and with nature.

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By Stephen Sagarin

Download the article: What Makes Waldorf, Waldorf?

What is essential to the practices and understandings of Waldorf schools and Waldorf school teachers? If Rudolf Steiner’s work on teaching and learning is not to be seen partially, inaccurately, or superficially, how can it be seen?

In writing previously that “there is no such thing as Waldorf education” (“No Such Thing,” Research Bulletin, Vol. VIII, no. 1), I was alluding to Donald Winnicott’s famous statement that there is “no such thing as a baby,”1 which has been followed through decades by other healthy attempts to overcome the fragmenting, objectifying tendencies of our modern minds. Winnicott was at pains to show, in England after World War II, that a child alone—without a mother, at least (or, to use more contemporary language, a caregiver)—cannot survive. His research into the necessary, life giving, and life-sustaining relationship of child and parent added significantly to what we know about children and childhood. Clearly, he was
not actually denying the existence of children in any but a rhetorical sense. In fact, he devoted much of his life and career to them.

I stand by my statements about Waldorf education and the context in which we necessarily understand it. To try to see Waldorf education as a thing-in-itself is necessarily to see it partially and inaccurately. To believe in things as entities separate from context and the rest of creation is to participate in exactly the fragmenting, objectifying consciousness against which Waldorf teachers wish to stand. Further, to identify Waldorf education by its trappings, practices, or functions is to see it only superficially. (See “Playing ‘Steiner Says,’ ” Research Bulletin, Vol. XII, no. 2.) So, can we see Waldorf education whole, and, if so, how?

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By Christian Rittelmeyer

Download the article: Advantages and Disadvantages of Brain Research for Education

Brain research has brought us some useful insights and a deeper understanding of teaching and learning. Some research results, however, only confirm what we already know or believe we know about education. These results are important because they provide a necessary background for educational policy and because they deepen our knowledge. Other research opens new and sometimes surprising insights into the organic basis of human development.

One of the most important insights is discovery of the environment-dependent plasticity of the human brain. Brain structure may change continually, particularly during childhood, but also in adults, dependent on experience and the spiritual activity of the individual._¹ To some degree, human beings continue to develop new brain structures as they stimulate some areas and neglect others, depending on their activities and interests. This development relates not only to the renewal of synaptic connections between brain cells and those areas that are particularly stimulated (e.g., through skilled occupation), but, as new research suggests, to experiences that encourage a regeneration of cells, at least in some areas of the brain (this is called neurogenesis, and occurs, for example, when olfactory neurons react to a new scent).

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By Arthur Auer

Download the article: Sleeping on It: The Most Important Activity of a School Day

Sleep is such a regular and familiar activity that we can easily overlook its powerful presence and influence. When we examine it, however, sleep strikes us as mysterious. Picture us changing into special nightclothes. It is dark outside and we lie down on specially padded platforms. Many of us face heavenward with eyelids shut. In horizontal positions such as this, we spend roughly a third of every day—more when we are young or old, perhaps less in between— unconscious. Our breathing is altered and we pass through rhythmic periods of rapid eye movement. The realm of sleep sits like an enormous, mostly unnoticed elephant in the room of our lives. It has a huge impact on everything we do in our waking hours. In Waldorf schools, which have taken sleep into account since their inception, sleep is more than just resting for the next day; it is a matrix of all learning and teaching.

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By Stephen Sagarin

Download the article: From the Editor

Teaching is so much more complex than I thought it would be,” said a friend, a writer and journalist who had guest-taught a course at a local college. He has children in school, he is a Steiner school trustee, and he has many friends who are teachers. He knows the value of good teaching, but he had not fully appreciated the many, many executive decisions that a teacher makes each day, the organization, preparation, negotiation, and decision-making that go into teaching.

Given, then, the even more complex job of a Waldorf school teacher—continual meetings, coming to terms with anthroposophy and Waldorf education, facing a different curriculum year after year—it may be easy to get lost in the details. We may feel we are dealing well with parents, faculty meetings, study, preparation, and our students. After the mononucleosis-inducing first year, we settle down, find a rhythm, and, possibly, begin to take our lives as teachers somewhat for granted. The pace of our work and its rewards may be enough to distract us from too much reflection. But the big questions—what is education, at root, and how and why do we do it?—don’t go away, and answers that may have satisfied us in our twenties may not satisfy us any longer. As more mature persons, we may seek more deeply for what it means to teach.

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By David Mitchell and Douglas Gerwin

Download the article: Report from the Co-Directors

Each year seems to be a bit busier than the last for the Research Institute, and the following
tally of our recent, ongoing, and projected work supports this hypothesis.

Wide Reading for Work on Alternative Assessment
We have joined the debate on educational assessment and testing by presenting papers and information to the transition team of President Barack Obama. Also, the AWSNA outreach office has sent our paper, “Assessment without High- Stakes Testing: Protecting Childhood and the Purpose of School” (Research Bulletin Vol. XIII no. 2, Autumn/Winter 2008), to members of the congressional sub-committee on education. The paper will also be printed in the Pacifica Journal from Australia, New Zealand, and Hawaii. It has been translated into German for Swiss and German periodicals, and has been posted on the web pages of the European Council of Waldorf Schools and the Freunde der Erziehunskunst. It is also slated to appear in the winter edition of Independent Education magazine. The National Association of Independent Schools (NAIS) has placed the paper on its website, and a Russian translation will appear in the Pedagogical Journal of Bashkortostan. David Mitchell will travel to Moscow in late spring to speak about this research.

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Download the article: Survey on Waldorf School Trustee Education

Over the past 15 years a heightened degree of interest has been devoted to Waldorf school organizational life, and deservedly so. This interest has prompted a widening circle of Waldorf schools to recognize the need for greater professionalism and a spiritual approach to administration. At the same time, many have expressed the idea that school boards of trustees have received insufficient attention. Questions of board function—including the delicate issue of what to do when boards don’t function well—are a lingering source of puzzlement and frustration. We hope that our research will contribute to a better understanding of Waldorf school boards and help to raise the level of discussion of questions of board function.

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Download the article: Does Our Educational System Contribute to Attentional and Learning Difficulties in Our Children?

I have great concerns about teaching preschool and kindergarten children to read and write. Developmentally and neurologically it doesn’t make sense. There is a developmental progression of sensory-motor skills that a young child needs to master in the first seven years of life. Despite what we think, learning is not “all from our head.” The movements of our body in utero, through infancy and childhood, and even in adulthood form the neural pathways in our mind that we later use to read, write, spell, do math, and think in an imaginative and creative way. I see countless numbers of children in my practice who have been diagnosed with “ADD” or “learning disabilities” who miraculously improve when they are taken out of an “academic” kindergarten or given an extra year in a developmental kindergarten that emphasizes movement and the integration of their sensory-motor systems.

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Download the article: How Do Teachers Learn with Teachers? Understanding Child Study as a Case for Professional Learning Communities

In the the wide world of educational research, the hopeful concept of teacher as learner has gained currency among a number of authors and provoked useful questions about the nature of professional
development for teachers._² Called by different names, collaborative professional development and professional learning community (PLC) both refer to a way in which teachers learn with teachers to become better teachers. These kinds of initiative recognize that collaboration is a demanding, uncomfortable, participatory process in which teachers may ultimately be required to take responsibility for each other’s learning._³ This image of what we expect from our teachers may look exactly like what we expect from our students. The rewards are potentially profound, although they are not easy to measure.

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Download the article: Educating Gifted Students in Waldorf Schools

Gifted children pose deep riddles for their teachers, including those who work in Waldorf schools. Perhaps it is time that we think differently or improve our understanding of the needs of these children. Investigations reveal that on average two per cent of a class may consist of pupils we may call gifted._¹ There are more than 200,000 students in Waldorf schools worldwide,_² so we may expect to find about
4,000 gifted students in Waldorf schools. Also, according to Michaela Glöckler, “since highly gifted pupils are rarely ‘easy’ ones, but tend to be more unique, also perhaps appearing to be socially ‘difficult,’ our first task must be to take a clear look at the phenomenon of giftedness itself.”_³

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Download the article: Combined Grades in Waldorf Schools: Creating Classrooms Teachers Can Feel Good About

In Waldorf schools, combining grades is a concession, not a design choice. Low or decreased enrollment
is often the cause for combining grades. Lower birthrates, limited population, geography, economy, and attrition can lead to decreased enrollment. Regardless of the causes, however, a school may continue a given class for many reasons, including responsibility for and loyalty to students and parents.

This study, a look at combined grades classrooms in Waldorf schools, necessarily takes into account that Rudolf Steiner’s indications for teaching were made regarding an educational system of age-based grade levels and that most Waldorf schools are designed on this principle. Thus, most of the educational literature available on the topic is not based in the literature of Waldorf education. I used educational literature, interviews with teachers, questionnaires, and classroom observation to gain an improved understanding of combined grade classrooms both in general and specifically with regard to using Steiner’s educational ideas in circumstances that differ from those in which the first Waldorf schools took root.

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Download the article: Rudolf Steiner’s Research Methods for Teachers

Several things that distinguish Waldorf education are unusual in education today. The first is the awareness that a human being is only fully understood if we take the unseen, spiritual aspect of a child’s nature into account. Another is the explicit assumption that a teacher is required to research the curriculum, teaching methods, and factors that influence the learning and development of children. Further, Waldorf education is based on an epistemology and ontology that acknowledge no formal limits on knowledge of spiritual aspects of life. It is of paramount interest, therefore, that the methods by which this knowledge is generated be well-known and accessible to teachers.

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Download the article: Social Emotional Intelligence: The Basis for a New Vision of Education in the United States

Classes were in session and the halls almost empty. A teacher first noticed the little boy— small but chunky, maybe a second grader—then two other boys, a bit older, walking near him. One of the two called out: “Hey, Fatty! You stink up the soccer field! You suck at soccer!” The object of the taunt took a deep breath and squared his shoulders, then turned to face his attackers. “You’re right,” he said. “I’m not good at soccer. And you are really good—one of the best in the school. But you know what? I’m really good at art. I can draw almost anything.” The air seemed to go out of the boy who had hurled the insult, and he said: “You’re not so bad. Want me to show you some moves after school?” Then the pair walked off in another direction, the little guy still standing near the teacher. “Gimme five!” she said to him, acknowledging how he had handled the situation. This teacher also found the second grader’s teacher and let her know what he had done.

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Download the article: What Can Rudolf Steiner's Words to the First Waldorf Teachers Tell Us Today

The first years of the Stuttgart Waldorf School can be seen as prototypical of the development of Waldorf  schools and Waldorf teachers in general. We can benefit today from the events that took place in the six years between 1919 and 1925, while the first school was led by Rudolf Steiner. Examining Steiner's work in the school can give direction to the development of teachers and schools in the 21st century.

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Download the article: Report from the Co-Directors

Download the article: From the Editor

More Online! by David Blair

Readers may be interested to look at three articles that are to be found in their entirety on the website of the Research Bulletin (http://www.waldorflibrary.org/ResearchBulletin. htm). The first is Saralea Chazan’s study of the
Children’s Developmental Play Instrument (CDPI), reviewed in this issue by Renate Long-Breipohl. Though not prepared by or for Waldorf teachers, the study does reflect a growing scholarly interest in childhood play and its role in learning. Perhaps after reading Dr. Breipohl’s review, one might be inclined to follow the above link to examine the actual study more closely.

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Is Technology Producing a Decline in Critical Thinking? David Blair’s review of an article by Patricia Greenfield

As technology has played a bigger role in our lives, our skills in critical thinking and analysis have declined, while our visual skills have improved, according to research by Patricia Greenfield, UCLA distinguished professor of psychology and director of the Children's Digital Media Center, Los Angeles. Learners have changed as a result of their exposure to technology, says Greenfield, who has analyzed more than 50 studies on learning and technology, including research on multi-tasking and the use of computers, the Internet, and video games. Her research was published in the journal Science Daily. “Reading for pleasure, which has declined among young people in recent decades, enhances thinking and engages the imagination in a way that visual media such as video games and television do not,” Greenfield said.

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Review of Saralea E. Chazan, Observing Play Activity:
The Children’s Developmental Play Instrument (CDPI) with Reliability Studies by Renate Long-Breipohl

According to the abstract, “The Children’s Developmental Play Instrument is a multidimensional tool intended for use in observing the play activity of mainstream children.” It was developed by S.E. Chazan, who adapted the “Children’s Play Therapy Instrument” (CDPI) for observations of ‘mainstream’ children, whereas the CDPI is used to evaluate play activity of children with clinical diagnoses. The origin of the CDPI is clearly recognizable by the quality of the range of indicators, beyond the focus of educational research, which focuses mostly on developmental and social aspects of play. The CDPI observational tool is designed to examine not only developmental, cognitive, and emotional aspects of play, but also play styles and the function of play in the adaptation to challenges which a child may face in her own life. In the words of Saralea Chazan: “An emphasis on the function of play activity and the provision of a multidimensional, inclusive, structural framework mark the CDPI as a new contribution to child indicator research.”

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Download the article: A Timeline for the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

The Association of Waldorf Schools of North America (AWSNA) is a nonprofit, tax-exempt membership organization. The primary purpose of AWSNA is to aid each member and affiliated school to improve the quality of the education
that it offers. The Association seeks to support and encourage the development of schools whose teachers are committed to strive out of Rudolf Steiner’s philosophy of education. This philosophy seeks to address the full and harmonious development of the child’s spiritual, emotional, and physical capacities, so that he or she may act in life as a self disciplined and morally responsible human being. Since its inception, AWSNA has extended advice and encouragement to Waldorf schools in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. It collaborates regularly with schools in Europe and throughout the world.

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Download the article: Volunteerism, Communication, Social Interaction A Survey of Waldorf School Parents

Parents form an integral part of any Waldorf community. And yet very little research has been undertaken to determine their attitudes toward what the schools ask of them as parents, especially as volunteers in and outside the classroom.

As a first step towards describing the Waldorf school experience from the point of view of parents, a survey at around a dozen North American Waldorf schools was conducted to take the pulse of parents on a wide range of social issues relating to their participation in the life of their schools. The primary objective of this survey was to explore community member involvement in their schools through volunteerism, and how they felt about it, school communication, inclusivity, parents’ perceptions of social interactions, and transparency in schools.

A questionnaire of some 30 questions—some multiple-choice, some open-ended—was administered to a convenience sample of parents, many of whom had attended a workshop on parent relations led by Martin Novom. Multiple choice questions provided background information about respondents and incidence of common school activities (newsletter, parent handbook, and so forth). Open-ended questions yielded more indepth information and helped to answer some of the bigger Why? questions about the attitudes of parents to their Waldorf communities.

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Download the article: Seven Myths of Social Participation of Waldorf Graduates

Waldorf education continues to be relatively unknown. When first making contact with this pedagogy, people in general tend to find in it certain oddities that may elicit admiration or incredulity, as well as some doubts. Parents who decide to send their children to a Waldorf school know that they are taking a courageous step to be “different.” The decision is not easy, because Waldorf education presents many differences in comparison with other teaching methods. Among the most obvious ones:

Download the article: Knitting it All Together

Rudolf Steiner mentioned that handwork is gymnastics in miniature. Handwork teaches very refined, minute movements that take the material world and fashion it finely, merging form and function. Spacial Dynamics is about a larger gymnastic activity: choosing, creating, and crafting one’s own Gestalt. Spacial Dynamics draws on that most overlooked of all artistic raw materials: the very space around us. Simply put, in handwork we learn to take the world and make things to wear. In Spacial Dynamics we learn how to “wear our space” in the world. The patterns of movement woven in both disciplines entwine to become living works of art.

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