Research Bulletin

By Susan Weber

Download the article: The Work of Emmi Pikler

Emmi Pikler (1902–1984) was a Hungarian physician who observed, studied, and practiced the art of being with infants and very young children. She was an astute phenomenological observer and meticulous researcher who brought her observations into a continuously evolving practice. Pikler spent the years from 1930 into the 1940s as a family pediatrician in Budapest. Her devotion to the very young child led her to support parents intimately. She made daily home visits for the first ten days after a baby’s birth, continuing with weekly visits over the early months. Her guidance in child rearing with these first 100 children gave her confidence that her insights were accurate.

In 1946 she was invited by the Hungarian government to create a residential nursery home for children in the first three years of life to care for the World War II orphans as well as children whose mothers had died in childbirth or from tuberculosis. The 70 children at the National Methodological Institute, or more familiarly “Loczy,” named after the street on which it was located, were cared for by caregivers trained by Dr. Pikler to carry forth the ideas she had developed out of her family pediatrics work. Over the next twenty years more than 700 children lived at Loczy, where their growth and development were documented meticulously by a team of not only their caregivers but also the doctors and other professionals on the staff.

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By Peter Guttenhöfer

Download the article: Aesthetic Knowledge as a Source for the Main Lesson

The main lesson of the Waldorf school is different from a double period. It is a unity of three parts, composed like a sonata.

The classical sonata form is comprised of three movements. The first movement, the “head movement,” presents the theme, lays it out, turns it around or mirrors it, submits it to many dismemberments and distortions (Verrückungen), and through the variations makes the listener once more aware of the drama of these transformations. The second movement brings a totally new atmosphere, in a slower tempo and a changed key, however, still totally related with the musical “substance” of the first movement. Here,
the task is less a working through of the theme and more a direct touching of the inner space of the soul. Finally, in the third movement, the restrained drive for movement is released. Quickly, the rhythmically
accentuated, thematically light-footed final movement plays itself out. Here, too, it arises from what was laid down in the first movement, but it still has something of its own. Just as something freshening,
the playful scherzo (joke) often slips into this movement; likewise no main lesson should come to an end
without the weight of its content at least once being lightened and relaxed by laughter.

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By Christian Rittelmeyer

A Sketch of an Anthropology of the Senses

Download the Article: The Human Body as a Resonance Organ

What happens in us when we look at a face such as the one in the first illustration? How does
it come about that we perceive in this face an expression of the soul? Several brain researchers inform us that when we observe a face with an expression suggestive of laughter or of anger, the very same brain cells are active in us which guide the actual mimicking gesture of the observed face. They are called “mirror neurons,” because the person doing the perceiving inwardly mirrors or simulates the observed face. This neuronal mirroring makes it possible for us to feel empathy with another human being. Therefore, it forms the basis of our empathic capacity.

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By Margaret Duberley

Download the article: The Inner Life and Work of the Teacher

What the adult does, feels, and thinks are all imitated by the child under seven years, so complete attention to the task in hand, with a care, love, and joy in the doing actually helps in the formation of the child’s physical body.

Again and again, the question came: “What is the difference between State education and Steiner education?” How often, as I have been working in Steiner education, usually in a conversation on a bus, or during a walk, or in a new group of people, or a new group of students, I had to try to find an essence, to create a nutshell picture, to make sense of something vast in just a few moments.

Now, through twenty-five years of struggling with this, and finding in these years that gateways have been opening in the souls of many, I have found personally that I can speak, at such times, as also with students and new teachers, of the truly holistic nature of Steiner education: that we are working with every aspect of the child, which can be termed body, soul, and spirit. So we try consciously to work with many levels, from the most physical to the most mysterious.
A conversation can often lead to the question of the inner work of the teacher. Sensing what is appropriate for each occasion is vitally important.

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By David Mitchell and Douglas Gerwin

Download the article: Report from the Co-Directors

A new round of electronic books and progress on the creation of a source book on sexuality curriculum top the agenda of current activity at the Research Institute for Waldorf Education.

Electronic Books:An enthusiastic donor has provided financial resources to post online a broad range of invaluable and yet sometimes inaccessible books on Waldorf education. This collection will be of special interest to researchers and other individuals seeking to print portions of books for study purposes. A new collection of these e-Books posted on the website of the Research Institute’s Online Waldorf Library (OWL) at www.waldorflibrary.org can be downloaded gratis anywhere in the world. They are also available on disks through the Institute. Plans are underway for at least twelve new disks, each with three or more books. We invite our readers to write to us at the Research Institute with further suggested titles of books and articles no longer in print.

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Teaching Sensible Science by Lylli Anthon

This past February marked the beginning of the fourth round of the "Teaching Sensible Science" course. For a week starting on February 18, the Chicago Waldorf School hosted the first of three one-week intensives to explore the richness of the Grades 6-8 Waldorf science curriculum. This course also strives to give teachers a living relationship to the sciences, as its task in this present age of consciousness is to help individuals connect to the world. 

The February session--the largest ever cycle of this course--was filled to the brim with 27 earnest participants, mostly from the Midwestern states, but also from schools as far away as San Francisco, New York, and three in Canada. The members of the group were class teachers ranging from Grade 3 to Grade 8, several with many years of experience. 

Michael D'Aleo, an engineer and high school science teacher at the Waldorf School of Saratoga Springs, along with the Research Institute, organized this course with the help of the Chicago Waldorf School and a grant secured by AWSNA from the Waldorf Educational Foundation.

The Age of Wonder by Richard Holmes, Reviewed by Dorit Winter
The Age of Wonder
Hardcover: 576 pages
Published by Pantheon
ISBN-13: 978-0375422225

Richard Holmes has written a book that can serve Waldorf teachers as a model for scintillating biography. From it we can learn how to integrate the life of the character into the context of his time  how to find the telling detail, how to stitch the research into a seamless whole, and perhaps most enviably, how to weave the lives of the characters into a fabric that gives rise to the signature pattern of an age. But then, Richard Holmes is a much-lauded biographer. He has taken biography and biographical research to a whole new level. For although his research is academically impeccable, what interests him as biographer is the possibility of making the life of the subject experiential for the reader. Holmes relies on word-picture and story, and he relishes the function of imagination in bringing his subjects to life. He would have made a terrific class teacher.

By Arthur Zajonc

Download the article: Attending to Interconnection, Living the Lesson

How does one see a painting whole? Or the human mind? Or an ecosystem? Or for that matter, the educational project itself? We are well schooled in "seeing them"" into parts-into brushstrokes, neurons, and molecules-or seeing the university apart into departments, disciplines, and specializations. What kind of attentiveness will enable us to see a true whole? What is the pedagogy for beholding interconnectedness as a primary reality and not a derived one? What are the implications of a deep experience of interconnection for knowing, teaching, learning, and life? What would be gained if, as the Dalai Lama says, we were to cultivate "a deep sense of caring for others, based on a profound sense of interconnection?" _¹ It is perhaps difficult to appreciate how extensive the changes would be if this integrative viewpoint were fully embraced in higher education. The conventional view that privileges a single reductive perspective is so pervasive that undoing its effects will be difficult, but if we were to succeed, then the fragmentation of our education and our lives would be healed. Simultaneous with our experience of self would be the powerful complementary experience of human interdependence, of what Desmond Tutu calls ubuntu "I exist because of you."

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By Michaela Glöckler

Download the article: The Founding Intentions: Spiritual Leadership, Current Work, and the Goals of the Medical Section

The tasks of the School of Spiritual Science are rooted in what Rudolf Steiner perceived as a "spiritual influx" into the rising tides of materialism during the last third of the nineteenth century: "A revelation of the spirit was opened up for mankind. Not from any arbitrary earthly consideration but in obedience to a call resounding from the spiritual world; not from any arbitrary earthly consideration but through a vision of the sublime pictures given out of the spiritual world as a modern revelation for the spiritual life of mankind—from this flowed the impulse for the anthroposophical movement. This anthroposophical movement is not an act of service to the earth. This anthroposophical movement in its totality and in all its details is a service to divine beings a service to God. We create the right mood for it when we see it in all its wholeness as a service to God. _¹

These words state clearly that the founding of the Goetheanum as an independent school for anthroposophy was an initiative that Rudolf Steiner intended to facilitate practical divine service in daily life. Not only those who practice the vocation of priest but every member of a profession can learn to feel responsible in his or her actions towards a real divine-spiritual world. Spirituality is not just a matter for religion but also for science art and for how people lead their daily lives.

With such an endeavor Steiner harkens back to the most ancient mystery traditions The word mysterium which can be translated as "secret " denotes the search for a spiritual path and a temple that remained secret until one had found what one sought or strove for Steiner and his colleagues conceived of the Goetheanum as a place to facilitate such seeking and finding in contemporary times so that each interested person could find an inner path of development fitting for his profession fruits of work and study within the specialist Sections of the School would address contemporary issues and foster further cultural development of individuals and support could be given to collegiate collaboration and community building.

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By Elan Leibner

Download the article: Outline of a Study Methodology

Introduction
Study is expected of faculty and college work in Waldorf schools. Most schools incorporate studies into various meetings, and it is generally understood that the study is meant to be a tool for ongoing professional development to deepen the faculty's understanding of anthroposophy, of the curriculum, and of children taken individually or as a class. When successful, the study portion of meetings is enlivening and satisfying.

All too often, however, the study can fall short of its promised potential. The reading of texts, in particular, feels like a slog through molasses. The hours following the end of school are not ideal for a first encounter with demanding texts, and the discussions, if they happen at all, may not reach far beyond a surface understanding of the material. An unintended consequence of a poor study may be an aversion to the material among the faculty, particularly those who have not previously experienced a fulfilling study during the course of their teacher preparation.

Over the past few years, I have had the good fortune to lead studies of basic pedagogical texts (such as Rudolf Steiner's Study of Man) and some other anthroposophical literature in various settings. From the successes and failures of these studies, a basic approach has emerged, which I offer here in the spirit of research into effective practices.

Download the article: Thinking and the Sense of Thinking: How We Perceive Thoughts

Concepts, thoughts can be perceived only where they actually occur, where they are brought forth; otherwise they are not present. And that is through current thinking by a human being.
- Dietrich Rapp_¹

How Does Reality Arise?
Reality is supposed to exist somewhere beyond the realm of human cognition. We are said to take cognizance of this reality through sense perception only. Our cognition is said merely to mirror this sense world. In modern times, the tendency has developed to view cognition in this way. How do human cognition and reality relate for Rudolf Steiner? Of what significance is this for us today?

In his foundational works, Rudolf Steiner intensively pursued the question of how reality arises in the process of cognition. Rather than devising erudite academic theories, he breached a willed pathway into thinking, from which he sensitively observed the activity of cognition, exploring the role of thinking in the process of cognition through introspective (soul) observation. He describes the process of acquiring concepts through intuitive thinking in his Philosophy of Freedom from increasingly comprehensive vantage points, only to concede one exception on the next to last page of the last chapter in which we "bring concepts over into our own spirit in a pure form," unmixed with conceptual content won through intuition.

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Download the article: Reading Research Supports the Waldorf Approach

About four years ago  I approached my to-be Ph.D. supervisors with an idea: Would they be willing to supervise a quantitative research project investigating whether the earlier-reading state school pupils maintained an advantage in reading over their Rudolf Steiner/Waldorf school peers? To my delight  both Dr. Elizabeth Schaughency and Associate Professor Elaine Reese agreed. The research initially began with three ages of children (in their first third and fifth years of school)  in three state  and in three Rudolf Steiner schools in the South Island  New Zealand. After months of working with children in both types of schools  I was frequently struck by the way in which the young five- and six-year-old state school children could work their way through texts  usually quite fluently  whereas the Rudolf Steiner school pupils showed very little interest in doing so. I often wondered how such an initial gap in reading could ever be closed. After the beginning phases of visiting schools and working with the children and teachers  we had collected enough data for reliable preliminary analyses (this particular study was conducted over two full school years thus the complete findings were some time away). At that early stage in the project it was still possible to observe that the reading achievement of the Rudolf Steiner school pupils on average  seemed to "take off" somewhere between grades III and V. I began to second-guess the patterns emerging from the results. Was the sample of Rudolf Steiner school pupils going to be large enough to trust the findings? Or was perhaps one of the classes in the study a "freak" class (e.g.  particularly intelligent)  skewing the data?

Download the article: Research into Resilience

Research into Resilience
Disturbing reports are circulating around the world, always in the murky twilight of so-called “facts.” According to the rumors, or indeed facts, that we are dealing with, a disproportionate number of war veterans are committing suicide on their return to the USA from their tour in Iraq. After the Vietnam War, accounts came in from various sides of soldiers who were able to reenter everyday civilian life only with great effort. People in Europe are also worried about the NATO soldiers’ ability to deal with trauma after they have been deployed on peace-keeping missions abroad.

The question is, how does an individual cope with traumatic or otherwise shattering events in his or her life? This question is just as valid for children as for adults.

Download the article: Why Love Matters: How Affection Shapes a Baby's

The case that I want to make is that babyhood is much more important to our lives than many people realize. A lot of the behavior that worries us in later childhood, such as aggression, hyperactivity, obesity, depression, and poor school performance, has already been shaped by children’s experiences in babyhood. For those of you who have not studied the scientific literature, this might seem a bit farfetched. I was rather amazed at just how significant babyhood is when I first undertook the research for my book Why Love Matters.

But over and over again, as people look into it, they discover that this really is the case. Just to take one recent example, the World Health Organisation recently published a report from their Commission on the social determinants of health which stated: “Research now shows that many challenges in adult society—mental health problems, obesity/ stunting, heart disease, criminality, competence in literacy and numeracy—have their roots in early childhood.” They went on to say: “Economists now assert on the basis of the available evidence that investment in early childhood is the most powerful investment a country can make, with returns over the life course many times the amount of the original investment.”

Download the article: Tending the Flame: The Link Between Education and Medicine in Early Childhood

People are social creatures; just try to remember we need human contact and warmth more than any thing.
- Colorado eighth-grader Kelly Ash, reflecting on the Columbine tragedy.

Education is to light a fire, not to fill a bucket.
-    Heraclitus

A social issue is essentially an educational issue and this in turn is essentially a medical issue, but only if medicine is fertilized with spiritual knowledge.
-    Rudolf Steiner

Fever is the purifying flame which renews the body.
-    Hippocrates

The Tragedy of Hospitalism
I once had a medical consultation with an eight-year-old Waldorf student who had been adopted by her American mother from a Romanian orphanage. The mother recounted to me the intensely moving story of their first encounter. She entered a room full of children and her eyes rested on a tiny waif in a crib who looked to be about eight months old, with no teeth and as yet unable to stand or talk. Their eyes met, the child laughed, and in that moment the mother knew that “this was my child.” Then to her shock she learned that the child was over two years old! “I just took her home and loved her,” she told me, “and all her teeth started coming in and she began standing, walking, and talking!”

What an amazing demonstration of the power of human caring, of human warmth, and of the human spirit itself, I thought at the time. I’ve since learned more fully that this was by no means an isolated example.

Download the article: Report from the Co-Directors

With the support of an enthusiastic donor, the Research Institute has posted online a broad range of invaluable yet sometimes inaccessible books on Waldorf education. This collection will be of special interest to researchers and other individuals seeking to gain access and download books for research and study. Through the generosity of the Waldorf Curriculum Fund we have, since November 2010, produced 23 additional electronic books. Together with the 30 e-Books already produced, this represents a significant treasure trove of research material available at our Online Waldorf Library (OWL), www.waldorflibrary.org. This web-based resource is accessible free of charge, and we encourage you to visit it frequently. Our online librarian's regular report of activities appears separately towards the end of this issue.

As Co-Directors we have continued to meet, correspond, and collaborate with the leadership of the Padagogische Forschungsstelle in Stuttgart and the Alanus University in Alfter, outside of Bonn, Germany, as well as research colleagues in Australia and New Zealand. Due to financial constraints we are unable to expand these efforts into a larger scale.

In collaboration with our colleagues at the Padagogische Forschungsstelle in Kassel, Germany, the Research Institute has produced a book Topics in Mathematics for the Waldorf High School: 11th Grade. The English-language edition of this book is available via AWSNA Publications at www. whywaldorfworks.org.

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Download the article: Letter from the Editor

The sense of thinking has long been one of the most puzzling aspects of Rudolf Steiner's teaching about the senses. Sensory input (or percept) is defined as that which we join with concepts, gained through thinking intuition, in order for full cognition to arise. How is it possible to perceive a thought before thinking? Detlef Hardorp explores this mystery, including a fascinating description of the one instance in which we gain concepts directly from other human beings without needing intuitions to facilitate the acquisition of these concepts. His extended essay offers a significant contribution to the study of the senses and will be of special interest to high school teachers working with the higher, cognitive senses.

A trio of articles explores issues related to health and well being. Philip Incao contemplates the role of warmth in allowing the human being's spiritual essence to take hold of healing processes. He describes a historical progression that has led to a significant decrease in "warm" (fever-inducing, acute, usually infectious) diseases and childhood mortality, but that, having swung the pendulum too far in the other direction, has led to the rise of "cold" (and chronic) conditions such as ADD and asthma. One is left with renewed appreciation for the crucial importance of warmth not only as a physical process but as a pedagogical and social principle as well.

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Articles in this issue include:

Introducing the Waldorf Research Institute of North America, by Douglas Sloan and Susan Howard

Encounters in Education - A Tribute to Ernst Boyer by Eugene Schwartz

Waldorf Education in an Inner City Public School System: A Report by Douglas Sloan and Susan Howard

The Urban Waldorf School of Milwaukee: A Summary Report by Ray McDermott

Articles in this issue include:

Racism and Waldorf Education by Ray McDermott and Ida Oberman

Reflections on the Evolution of Consciousness by Douglas Sloan

Standardized Testing by Eugene Schwartz

Articles in this issue include:

Violence and the Electronic Media by Joan Almon
Meetings with a Snake by Stephen Talbott
Impact of Computer Use on Neural and Cognitive Development by Donna Chirico
Book Review: The Wholeness of Nature by Henri Bortoft
Book Review: The Marriage of Sense and Thought, by Stephen Edelglass, et. al.
Book Review: Silicon Snake Oil by Clifford Stoll
Book Review: Life on the Screen by Sherry Turkle

Articles in this issue include:

Towards Wholeness in Knowing: Notes from the Invitational Research Consultation by Research Institute staff

A New Educational Paradigm by Michaela Glöckler, M.D

Organology and Physiology of Learning by Wolfgang Schad

The Middle Passage-Out of Diversity We Become Whole by Cindy Weinberg

New Health Problems of Children and Youth by the University of Bielefeld

Research into Changes in Brain Formation by Michael Kneissle

Rudolf Steiner's Efforts to Encourage Cultural Diversity by Detlef Hardorp

Articles in this issue include:

Schooling the Postmodern Child by David Elkind

Developing a Culture of Leadership Learning and Service in Waldorf Schools by Christopher Schaefer

The Third Space by Henry Barnes

What Conditions Are There for Taking Responsibility in an Independent Life of Culture? by Heinz Zimmermann

Update: Essentials of Waldorf Education Study by Patti Smith

Update: Racism in Waldorf Education by staff

Articles in this issue include:

Educating the Whole Person For the Whole Life by Gerald Karnow, M.D.

Understanding the Etheric Organization in the Human Being: New Insights Through Anthroposophical Research by Michaela Glöckler, M.D

Endangered Childhood by Joan Almon

Articles in this issue include:

ADHD-the Challenge of Our Time by Eugene Schwartz

Helping Children: Where Research and Social Action Meet by Joan Almon

Computers, Brains, and Children by Stephen Talbott

Movement and Sensory Disorders in Today's Children by Dr. Peter Stuck

Update: The Research Institute: The First Three Years by Susan Howard and Douglas Sloan

The Nature Institute by Craig Holdrege

Concerning Anthroposophical Research by an interview with Michaela Glöckler, M.D.

Can Waldorf Education Be Practiced in Public Schools by Patti Smith

Articles in this issue include:

Human Biography and its Genetic Instrument by Michaela Glöckler, M.D.

Challenges and Opportunities in Evolution Education by James Henderson

Genes and Life-The Need for Understanding by Craig Holdrege

The High Stakes of Standardized Testing by Edward Mille

Ecology-Coming Into Being Versus Eco-Data by Will Brinton

Update: ARD: A Waldorf Approach to Attention Related Disorders by Kim Payne, Arthur Zajonc, and Martha Hadley

Update: Forming An Alliance for Childhood by Colleen Cordes

Update: Waldorf High School Research Project by Douglas Gerwin

Book Review: Sensible Physics Teaching by Michael D'Aleo and Stephen Edelglass