Research Bulletin

By Will Brinton

Download the article: The High Stakes of Standardized Testing

“She [Nature] is ever shaping new forms....
We live in her midst and know her not.
She is incessantly speaking to us, but betrays not her secret.
We constantly act upon her, and yet have no power over her.”

     J.v. Goethe, from T.H. Huxley in Nature, Nov. 4, 1869.

“...there has rarely been a concept more abstract and devoid
of qualities than ‘environment’.”

     Wolfgang Sachs, in A Development Dictionary, Zed Books 1994

Introduction
For many of us who work in the environmental field, it is increasingly problematic to imagine a way of knowing nature that can be different from modern science’s mode of data capture and information accumulation. It has become virtually a truism in the modern environmental field that “..if you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”. Knowing nature seems to mean having more data about her. More than anything, our modern era of science has set into motion a discovery modus operandi, which holds that every stone in nature will be turned over analytically to gain, we are told, a complete understanding of “the mechanisms of natural processes.” In a sense, we have not come very far since Rene Descartes (1596-1650) first formulated the view of the universe as a gigantic clock-mechanism.

By Edward Miller

Download the article: Ecology-Coming Into Being Versus Eco-Data

I recently participated in a study, conducted by the National Research Council, of the appropriate uses of standardized tests for making decisions about individual students. Its findings may be of interest to readers who are concerned about the ways in which the technology of testing has become one of the most powerful influences in our education system.

The study committee was charged by Congress with examining the use of test scores for so-called high-stakes purposes, defined as making decisions about tracking, promotion, and graduation. Such uses are proliferating all over the country, and are widely considered an effective tool for whipping the public schools into shape. For example, students in Chicago must now get at least a certain score on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills to be promoted to the next grade. Starting next year, high school students in New York will have to pass the state Regents exam (formerly optional) to get a diploma. The committee found that, while testing can and often does yield valuable information about students’ achievement, the nature and limitations of that information are widely misunderstood. Test results, the study concluded, are often used improperly. In the case of high-stakes tests, the effects on individual students’ lives may be disastrous.

By Kim Payne, Arthur Zajonc and Martha Hadley

Download the article: A Waldorf Approach to Attention Related Disorders

A Creative Way to Understand and Help Children with Difficult Behavior

A WALDORF STUDY INTO ATTENTION RELATED DISORDERS
“What is that Waldorf Schools are doing that seems so effective in helping children with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder⁽¹⁾(ADHD)?” Many involved in Waldorf education have heard questions like this from Health professionals eager to refer families. Why is it that as the problem of ADHD or what can be called Attention Related Disorders (ARD) increases so to does Waldorf Education’s reputation for being able to reach and teach children with challenging behavior?

A research project exploring the issue of ARD/ADHD in Waldorf Education now underway. The research team is Kim Payne, Arthur Zajonc and Martha Hadley. The project is being sponsored by the Anthroposophical Society of North America in partnership with the Alliance for Childhood, The Waldorf Education Research Institute, and The Hawthorn Foundation.

By Colleen Cordes

Download the article: Update: Forming An Alliance for Childhood

The Soul that rises with us, our life’s Star,
Hath had elsewhere its setting,
And cometh from afar:
Not in entire forgetfulness,
and not in utter nakedness,
But trailing clouds of glory do we come
From God who is our home.

William Wordsworth
From "Ode, Intimations of Immortality
from Recollections of Early Childhood"

As the millennium approaches, is the very notion of childhood obsolete?

Who, after all, really has the time in our fast-paced culture to let children be children?

By Douglas Gerwin

Download the article: Update: Waldorf High School Research Project

A New Initiative for Waldorf High Schools
In this decade the number of Waldorf high schools in North America has doubled-from 10 in 1990 to 22 as of this year. A further dozen Waldorf elementary schools are working on starting their own high schools in the next years.

This dramatic growth in the number of high schools highlights the need not only for finding and preparing Waldorf high school teachers but also points to a further question: how are our high schools faring? A group of seven Waldorf teachers with experience in teaching adolescents and administering at the high school level have banded together to initiate research into this question and a host of issues flowing from it.

By Michael D'Aleo and Stephen Edelglass

Download the article: Book Review: Sensible Physics Teaching

Reviewed by Douglas Sloan and Susan Howard

The publication of Sensible Physics Teaching by Michael D’Aleo and Stephen Edelglass is an important milestone for English speaking Waldorf class teachers. For the first time an elementary school curriculum in physics is available to them that is developed fully out of a Goethean-phenomenological approach while being presented in an accessible, dear and practical manner. The cover description is accurate:

“This book guides middle school teachers through a sense-based science pedagogy with a carefully developed sequence of experiments, described in detail and easy to follow. The emphasis is on the students’ experience: By observing this intriguing sequence of phenomena and deriving scientific concepts from them, students build an authentic relationship to and interest in-the world.”

By Frank R. Wilson, M.D.

Download the article: The Real Meaning of Hands-on Education

Editorial Introduction
Last year, Dr. Frank R. Wilson, a leading neurologist in this country and medical director of the Peter F. Ostwald Health Program for Performing Artists at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, published a remarkable book, entitled The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture (New York: Pantheon Books, 1998). It is a special privilege for the Waldorf Research Bulletin to carry the following article by Dr. Wilson which presents some of the central arguments of his book.

Dr. Wilson is not a Waldorf educator, and, in fact, comes to his subject from a different perspective than that of Waldorf education. Waldorf teachers and parents will, nevertheless, find a striking convergence between the research and insights Dr. Wilson presents and the similar emphasis in Waldorf education on the intimate connection between the human hand and its activity and the development of creative thinking and language capacities. More than that, they will also find themselves carried further in their understanding of this all-important relationship by an author who joins his scientific, neurological expertise with a deep humanistic concern and wisdom.

By Dorit Winter

Download the article: America's Gold Rush: Can It Be Redeemed?

Based on talks given June 25 and 26, 1999 in Toronto, Canada at the annual teachers’ conference of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Dear Colleagues,

I live in an apartment overlooking San Francisco Bay and am most fortunate in having what the real estate agents refer to as a “Killer View.” In other words, it is an endlessly revivifying panorama.

Angel Island, beautiful in its symmetry, green and unspoilt, sits in the Bay half-way toward the opposite shore where Berkeley is just visible over the island’s shoulder. Further to the south you can see Alcatraz Island, derelict and barren, and the Bay Bridge, and Oakland on the other side of the Bay. Ferries, cargo ships and sailboats criss-cross the waters. In the distance, toward the east, the summit of Mt. Diablo peeks up over the low horizon of the East Bay hills. To the north, behind a ridge, Mt. Tamalpais rises up between the Bay and the Pacific. For the Ohlone Indians, who lived in this paradise of abundant game and fertile lands, Mt. Tam formed the gentle pole and Mt. Diablo the fierce pole of a great sacred circle. Now as then, fog, mist, wind, water and sunlight continually merge and remerge in an endless kaleidoscope of elemental beauty. And at the gate, the Golden Gate to this great bay, the elements swirl most intensely.

By Johan S. Aim, Jackie Swartz, Gunnar Lilja, Annika Scheynius and Goran Pershagen

Download the article: Atopy in Children of Families with an Anthroposophic Lifestyle

Editorial Introduction
The following Swedish research study comparing the rate of bronchial asthma, allergies, dermatitis and other atopic diseases among Waldorf school pupils and pupils in public schools originally appeared in the May 1, 1999, edition of the British medical journal, The Lancet. We reprint it here with permission of The Lancet.

The findings indicate that Waldorf/Steiner school pupils were “at a significantly lower risk of atopy” than children attending public schools. The researchers investigated a variety of factors in the lives of the Steiner school pupils which might have contributed to this lower rate of atopy—breastfeeding, lack of immunization, avoidance of antibiotics and medications which reduce fevers, consumption of bio-dynamic and organic foods, and other physical aspects of the children’s lives. The researchers called these “anthroposophic lifestyle characteristics” and quantified them as “Steiner units,” which they found “generally difficult to interpret.”

By Joan Almon

Download the article: Update: The Alliance for Childhood...

The spring issue of the Research Bulletin reported on the founding of the Alliance for Childhood, and we would now like to share an update of our activities. When the Alliance was founded last February, Colleen Cordes, one of the founding partners, promised to write an article about the Alliance for this Bulletin and then further promised to get the article into the hands of every member of the U.S. Congress! When the article appeared in the Bulletin we were suddenly faced with the question of how to fulfill that promise. Mailing costs alone were beyond our means.

It became clear that something higher was at work when the next day we received a call from a volunteer who wanted to help the Alliance in some way. At the time he was a courier for a law firm in Washington. When told about the mailing to Congress, his immediate response was, “I'll take two days off from work and deliver them all by hand.” And so it happened on Michaelmas and the day after with the help of added volunteers.

The cover letter to Congress pointed out the problems facing children today and requested hearings in areas such as the impact of media and computers in the lives of children. During the year we will follow up with a number of men and women in Congress whose committees deal with such matters.

By Bob Anderson

Download the article: Update: LEAP Project

The goal of the Waldorf LEAP is to develop learning expectations and a model assessment system for Waldorf schools, one that is fully aligned with the curriculum, teaching methods, developmental model of learning, and goals of Waldorf education, and that can provide Waldorf teachers and parents with a rich, qualitative picture of their students' progress towards achieving those goals.

The Project will be carried out by a collaborative of professional researchers and Waldorf educators, working throughout the nation with experienced individual teachers, teacher teams, and schools to reach a consensus vision of learning expectations for Waldorf students and to provide assistance to teachers in the assessment of student progress. Initial efforts will proceed in the areas of language arts, mathematics, and remedial education.

By Cindy Bajema

Download the article: Update: San Francisco Conference...

Polarities and Constitutional Types
A conference for teachers, therapists and physicians

This year's alumni conference of the San Francisco Waldorf Teacher Training of Rudolf Steiner College explored the theme of the four polarities or constitutional types which Rudolf Steiner characterized in various lectures.⁽¹⁾ Not just for alumni, the conference brought together about 40 people, including teachers, doctors, and therapists. The conference was organized and moderated by Dorit Winter, Director of the SF Teacher Training, and took place at the San Francisco Waldorf School on October 9 and 10, 1999.

By Susan Howard

Download the article: Update: The Work of the Waldorf Education Research Institute

In the January 1999 Research Bulletin, we reported on the work of the Waldorf Education Research Institute in its first three years. We expressed the need for financial support in order to achieve the following aims:

• Development of an active Advisory Board to identify and set priorities for research needs of the Waldorf movement
• Funding for the position of Director to coordinate and direct the various activities of the Institute
• Identifying and reviewing existing research within the Waldorf movement and relevant current research from the wider educational community
• Translating existing research from German into English
• Identifying and supporting worthy individual and group research projects.

By Roberto Trostli

Download the article: Balance in Teaching, Balance in Working, Balance in Living

Based on a talk given March 12 in Spring Valley, NY, at the Healthy Waldorf Schools Conference, sponsored by the Eastern Region of the Association of Waldorf Schools of North America

Balance in teaching, balance in working, and balance in living-what could possibly qualify me to speak about this subject? I am certainly not a paragon of balance-quite the contrary! Yet those who suffer from an affliction are sometimes especially qualified to speak about it because they have first-hand experience of something others have only observed.

During the past years, as I have reflected on my teaching, my work, and my life, I have struggled to develop a vocabulary to describe my experiences more accurately. My life as a teacher swung between the extremes of selfishness and self-sacrifice. Is there a balance between these two? Is there a middle realm where we are at the same time self-less-in other words, less our everyday lower self-and self-more-more our eternal Self.

Download the article: Adult Education in the Light of Anthroposophy

The following article also appeared in Paideia, the educational research journal published by the Steiner Schools Fellowship in England. It is currently being worked with as study material by the teacher training institutes in the AWSNA Teacher Education Committee as they explore questions of Waldorf teacher training and adult education in North America.

Since the 1960s many anthroposophical adult education institutions have arisen throughout the world. Often they arose out of the need to train Waldorf teachers, but today they represent a primary avenue by which newcomers first meet and take up anthroposophy. Given all the destiny-changing influence these institutions have facilitated, we might ponder where the anthroposophical movement would be without them. Nonetheless, for all that can be credited to these adult education institutions, their activity does raise questions and concerns.

Download the article: Setting Priorities for Research

On March 26th, members of the WER1 Advisory Board and a few guests met to review the work of the Research Institute and to consider impulses for the Institute's future work.

Present were Henry Barnes, John Brousseau, Stephen Edelglass, Douglas Gerwin, Antje Ghaznavi, Craig Holdredge, Michael Howard, Susan Howard, Diana Hughes, Douglas Sloan, Chris Schaefer, Eugene Schwartz, Patti Smith, Betty Staley, Roberto Trostli, and Jane Wulsin.

Download the article: Update: Attention-Related Disorders (ARD) Study

Research Team
Kim Payne and Bonnie River

Research Advisors
Richard Fried, MD
Martha Hadley
Steven Johnson, MD
Alicia Landman-Reiner, MD
Arthur Zajonc

Advisory Team
Michaela Glöckler, MD
Charles Hopkins
Talu Robertson
Dee Coulter

New Developments: Spring 2000
Interviews
The interview phase of the project is now complete. Doctors, speech therapists, art therapists spatial dynamic/movement therapists, neurologists, eurythmists (both curative and educational), class teachers, subject teachers, and remedial teachers have offered a rich and fascinating insight into the way they see ARD and how they work with it. The interviews ranged from 2-5 hours each with either audio tape or detailed notes being the record-taking method. The information that has been gathered gives a solid foundation for future research steps.

Download the article: Update: Learning Expectations...

Last January thanks to a joint grant from WERI and the Midwest Gifting Group, the Waldorf Learning Expectations and Assessment Project took its own leap off the drawing board into a living process. Project Coordinators Freda Easton and Roberto Trostli on the East Coast and Betty Staley, Karen Anderson and Bob Anderson on the West Coast began working with a small group of volunteer Waldorf teachers to develop the first drafts of Waldorf student learning expectations. Teachers from the Hawthorne Valley School in New York and from a duster of Northern California schools in the Sacramento and Bay areas began by crafting expectations for student learning in four areas of the language arts: speaking, listening, writing, and reading-in kindergarten through third grade. The key questions guiding the work were “What are some of the most important things Waldorf students are expected to learn or be able to do in each area and at each grade level? And what do teachers look for to tell if their students have learned those things?”

Download the article: Update: Cultural Renewal for the New Millennium

An Invitational Research Consultation on the theme of educational tasks for the new millennium was held last April at Teachers College, Columbia University, New York City. The Consultation was sponsored by the Center for the Study of the Spiritual Foundations of Education at Teachers College, with the cooperation of the Waldorf Education Research Institute at Sunbridge College, and the Alliance for Childhood, a partnership of medical personnel, parents, social workers, and other advocates for children.

By Langdon Winner

Download the article: Confronting the Culture of Disrespect

This article is a talk given to the symposium on “Cultural Renewal for the New Millennium: Major Challenges and Educational Tasks,” held at Teachers College, Columbia University, April, 2000 by the Center for the Study of the Spiritual Foundations of Education at Teachers College. The Center is funded by the Fetzer Institute.

Two features of contemporary American life may seem entirely unconnected, but upon closer inspection they stand out as dimensions of the same unsettling pattern. One is an all-too-familiar disposition in human relationships, an attitude about how to treat people that strongly affects our children and undermines even the best-planned attempts to educate them. Although it manifests itself in what seem to be scattered, annoying incidents in the lives of kids, this attitude has recently achieved attention as a malady of national concern. A second feature finds expression in a strategy of technological change characteristic of our dynamic “new economy.” Celebrated as a wonderful recipe for prosperity, this strategy is rooted in a general orientation to the world that, in its broader dimensions, projects a dubious path for social development.

Download the article: Where Is the Waldorf School Movement Going?

Transcript by the author of a lecture in the series “Quo Vadis Europa?” held in the Christian Community in Bochum, originally published in “Das Goetheanum,” March, 26, 2000, translated by Jan-Kees Saltet

The British historian Niall Ferguson (1999) reinterprets the outbreak and course of the First World War by considering not only what happened, but also what could have happened. He looks for the latent possibilities in certain situations. This way of working with “counterfactual scenarios” allows a new evaluation of events, and at the same time, it stimulates us clearly to imagine hidden possibilities which, in our present-day situation, could be taken up—or not. In light of this, it is interesting to ask ourselves what could have happened in Germany after the collapse of 1945 if the new government would not only have allowed the free development of the economy, but also of the cultural and spiritual life, including education. In retrospect, “free enterprise” and the “German economic miracle” seem sensible and fitting responses to a desolate situation. Where would we be today, however, if a similar thing had taken place in our schools and universities? We would now have confident and enterprising teachers who would work with the same energy as the many middle-class entrepreneurs who brought about the economic miracle. In cooperation with free parent organizations, these teachers would initiate and maintain a colorful and dynamic education miracle. We would be in the vanguard of progress.

By Lowell Monk and Valdemar Setzer

Download the article: Computers in Education: Why, When, How

Excerpts from Challenging the Applications: An Alternative View on Why, When, and How Computers Should be Used in Education, where more details and a comprehensive bibliography may be found.

Introduction
Since the 1970s, computers have been inserted into schools with much fanfare and great expense. Almost all of the attention to computers has revolved around the question of how to put them to use as tools for education—with the superficial response being: every way possible. Subsequent assessments have focused primarily on their effectiveness as an aid to learning and on how well students are prepared for their use beyond school. Through all of this, almost no attention has been paid to the more fundamental issue of the effects that the very use of computers has on young people. A determination of the proper role of computers in education must begin with an understanding of the computer's effects on the user. This basic concern will serve as the point of departure, eventually broadening to a critique of current uses and recommendations for governing the use of computers in education.

By Jennifer Schieffer and R.T. Busse

Download the article: Low SES Minority Fourth-Graders' Achievement

Students from low socioeconomic environments often have a difficult time in school. Socioeconomic status (SES) consistently is found to be positively correlated with achievement (Boocock, 1972; Matuszek & Haskin, 1978; Shakiba-Nejad & Yellin, 1981), and is one of the most important predictors of academic achievement in public school (Boocock, 1972). Children from low SES urban communities face some of the worst learning conditions in the nation (Esposito, 1999) and many children entering school from the inner-city are increasingly viewed as “broken” and socially troubled (McDermott & Varenne, 1995).

From an ecological perspective, there are several factors related to lower achievement among children from lower socioeconomic environments. Lower SES parent figures have fewer resources to meet the physical, emotional, and educational needs of their children, as well as their own needs. A positive home learning environment, however, can be a powerful influence on achievement. Parent modeling, motivating children to be learners, and parent contact with school are important process variables that have been found to increase the achievement of children of all SES levels (Christenson, 1995).

By Dorit Winter

Download the article: Balancing the Four Polarities

Case Studies of Waldorf Children and Anthroposophical Therapies
A project sponsored by the Waldorf Education Research Institute

Introduction
In his educational lectures, Rudolf Steiner described four polarities as ways to view and understand the developing child. In Balance in Teaching, he described children whose egos are incarnated either too loosely or too deeply; in Education for Adolescence, he spoke about cosmic and earthly children and about children who are either rich or poor in imagination and memory, and in Faculty Meetings, he described large- and small-headed children.

Each of these polarities is a way of considering and assessing one member of the fourfold human being. The overly loose or deep incarnation of the ego clearly relates to the ego organization. The polarity of richness or poverty of imagination or memory primarily concerns the astral organization. The cosmic-earthly polarity refers to the predominance of the Individuality's pre-earthly being vs. telluric influences (including heredity) in the formation of the etheric body. The polarity of large- vs. small-headedness has to do with mineral, lifeless substances, i.e., that which returns to dust at the end of ones earthly life.the physical body.

By Michael Howard

Download the article: The Role of Art in Human Development

“Our nation is not ‘at risk’ because the schools are failing; schools are failing because our nation, and our culture have entered a period of serious decline.”
Ron Miller, Introduction of What Are Our Schools For?

Is education “at risk?”
Is Waldorf education “at risk?”
Is education at risk because our culture is at risk?
Is the culture of Waldorf education equally at risk?

The growth of Waldorf education and the corresponding increase in the number of children benefiting from it are a clear indication that Waldorf educators have a leading role to play in meeting the growing need for alternative approaches in education. At the same time, however, growing numbers of Waldorf educators are painfully aware of an ironic twist in this positive development: Could short-term growth pose a long-term threat to Waldorf education?