Educational+philosophy+and+methodology

GENERAL OVERVIEW The teaching of all stages of learning is based on this understanding of the child. The pedagogical philosophy also defines the sequential stages of the curriculum and its relationship to the physical, intellectual and cognitive development of the child. It also defines the emphasis that the teaching method gives to rhythm and continuity and the integrating and contextualising the subject matter. Lessons are delivered artistically as means of fully engaging the imagination of pupils in the learning process, regardless of the subject, whether it be mechanics or the binary system; the life of Napoleon, or meteorology. To teach artistically, therefore, is about being professional and committed, just as much as it is about being imaginative, responsive and providing a moral presence. At all times the teacher expects to work with the curriculum, pedagogy, assessment activity and school organisation as interconnected in both a qualitative and practical sense. http://www.steinerwaldorf.org.uk/teaching.html Practicality of Spirit "Seek the truly practical material life, but seek it so that it does not numb you to the spirit which is active in it. Seek the spirit, but seek it not in passion for the supersensible, out of supersensible egoism, but seek it so that you wish to apply it selflessly in the practical life in the practical world. Turn to the ancient principle, matter is never without spirit and spirit is never without matter, in such a way that we say we will to do all material things in the light of the spirit and we will so to seek the light of the spirit, so that it evokes warmth for us in our practical activities." —Rudolf Steiner "What we have to learn will be concrete measures of educational practice. But we must be conscious of what we are doing, right down to the foundations. When we teach this subject or that, we must be fully aware that we are working either in the one direction to bring the Spirit-Soul more into the earthly Body, or in the other direction to bring the bodily nature into the Spirit-Soul. Do not let us underestimate the importance of what has now been said. For you can only become good teachers and educators if you pay attention not merely to what you do, but also to what you are. It is really for this reason that we have Spiritual Science with its anthroposophical outlook: to perceive the significance of the fact that man is effective in the world not only through what he does, but above all through what he is. Truly, my dear friends, it makes a very great difference whether one teacher of the school or another comes through the classroom door to any group of children. There is a big difference; and the difference is not merely that the one teacher is more skilful in his practice than the other. No, the main difference — the one that is really influential in teaching — lies in what the teacher bears within him, as his constant trend of thought, and carries with him into the classroom. A teacher who occupies himself with thoughts of the evolving human being will work very differently upon his pupils from a teacher who knows nothing of all these things, and never gives them a thought. Through what we make of ourselves we must come to this relationship, even in the face of difficulty and resistance. And we must above all become conscious of this first of educational tasks: that we must first make something of ourselves, so that a relationship in thought, an inner spiritual relationship, may hold sway between the teacher and the children. So that we enter the classroom with the conscious thought: this spiritual relationship is present — not only the words, not only all that I say to the children in the way of instruction and admonition, not only my skilfulness in teaching. These are externals which we must certainly cultivate, but we shall only cultivate them rightly if we establish the importance of the relation between the thoughts that fill us and the effects of our teaching on the children, in body and soul. Our whole conduct and bearing as we teach will not be complete unless we keep this thought in our minds: the human being was born. Thereby the possibility was given him to do what he could not do in the spiritual world. We have to teach and educate first of all so as to give the breathing its right harmony in relation to the spiritual world. The human being could not accomplish the rhythmical alternation between waking and sleeping in the same way in the spiritual world as in the physical world. By education, by teaching, we must regulate this rhythm in such a way that the bodily nature in the human being becomes properly membered with the Soul-Spirit. Needless to say, this is not something that we should have before us as an abstraction, and apply it as such directly to our teaching, but this thought about the human being must be our rule and guide." Rudolf Steiner
 * FROM THE STUDY OF MAN**

At the moment the topic that I am interested in is the Child Study, particularly methodology and specific experiences within the College - successes and breakthroughs etc. I have read a number of articles by Christof Wiechert, Head of the Paedagogical Section, Dornach. http://www.waldorflibrary.org/lectures/christof%20wiechert.pdf One I found in the Waldorf Library http://www.waldorflibrary.org/pg/home/home.asp and another published in the Kolisko Conference Publication: Education - Health for Life 2006.

EDUCATING THE ASTRAL BODY
Perhaps the essential question of Waldorf High School education is: How can this new “soul-body” (or astral body) be helped to emerge in adolescence as harmoniously as possible in relation to the physical and life bodies on the one hand, and serving as artfully as possible on the other hand the imminent emergence of the individuality, the “I AM”? How can the Waldorf high school curriculum respond to this question? One way is by striving to teach in the ninth grade in ways which help the newly born thinking faculties to be grounded as well as possible in the laws and realities of the physical world, in ways recapitulating the first seven years of development. Then in tenth grade the teachers try to help the soul-body’s thinking develop further, through teaching in ways which guide the student into understanding how things work, how poetry works, short stories, epics, mechanics, Euclidean geometry, physiology, etc., in a way becoming conscious of the world as the life body experiences it. Then in eleventh grade the thinking comes most purely into its own, no longer recapitulating earlier stages of development, but becoming able to think conceptually in its own right. And in twelfth grade the curriculum artfully imagines ahead, to something actually experienced at the end of adolescence, at the beginning of adulthood, the emergence of the I AM

**The High School Research Project**
http://www.waldorflibrary.org/Journal_Articles/RB5203.pdf Directed by Douglas Gerwin of High Mowing School and Betty Staley of Rudolf Steiner College, this project is exploring the needs of adolescents today and stimulating curriculum reform within Waldorf High schools. In its first phase, the project has hosted colloquia on phenomenological approaches to teaching chemistry and symptomatological approaches to the teaching of history in the high school. The Learning Expectations and Assessment Project (LEAP) The purpose of this program 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 detailed qualitative picture of their students' progress towards achieving those goals.