Using participatory observations accompanied by video and audio recordings, this article investigates how negotiations about play scripts evolve during play in two Waldorf kindergartens. In ...particular, this study aims to examine how child-initiated play can contribute to the development of basic democratic skills in early childhood. The concept of resistance proposed by Gert Biesta has been a theoretical starting point for analysis. Hence, this article investigates how and what kinds of resistance are offered through play negotiations with unprocessed, open-ended play materials typical of Waldorf kindergartens. The analysis reveals that resistance is offered by the play materials, previous play scripts, and play partners. In addition, open-ended play materials seemed to add more complexity to negotiations than industrially processed toys. Consequently, the risk of failure in such negotiations becomes more intrusive.
Many of the elements of the Waldorf approach featured 100 years ago, with the opening of the first Waldorf early childhood groups, are now supported by current evidence and research into child ...development. Waldorf practitioners are developing stronger and better-informed practice based on the founding principles, contemporary resources and an ever-deepening understanding of young children today. In this paper I intend to explore five of the significant themes which have received additional impetus in recent years. 1. In the Waldorf approach a foundation of social and emotional development is prioritised as a support for later cognitive development. 2. A key features of the Waldorf early childhood environment is that it is a sensorily-friendly and unhurried microcosm of everyday life. 3. Waldorf practitioners and teachers have been actively promoting for the past century the importance of building up children’s connections with nature. 4. As a result of increased academicization and the pressures of 21st century life, child-initiated, free, creative play is under threat and needs protection and support. 5. One aspect of the Waldorf approach viewed as key is that the inner development of the practitioner or teacher is just, if not more, important than their outer work. Following this review of some essential aspects of the Waldorf approach in the light of recent development, the paper concludes by looking into the future and pinpointing three aspects at the forefront of developments and research among Waldorf early childhood practitioners today.
Within the education academic arena, there is almost no established research on the alternative Waldorf (or Steiner) education movement in the US or UK. This primary research investigates Rudolf ...Steiner’s philosophy of early childhood Waldorf education, and its child-centered and inclusive core. Ten kindergarten teachers in the US and UK educating children ages three through seven were interviewed on their values and practices, and on intrinsic notions of inclusion, which are scrutinized according to Lani Florian's inclusive pedagogy. Contrasting interpretation among practitioners on educating diverse learners emerge. US and UK Waldorf education appear situationally different, and yet the underlying educational ethos fundamentally remains the same. An anthroposophical understanding of the human being, and ‘the will’ of the kindergarten child who learns through imitation and play, underlies this far-sighted, holistic basis. Recommendation is for Waldorf early childhood studies to enhance transnational networks among themselves, and to make connections with broader academic educational clusters, in particular those on inclusion.
This paper draws upon Rudolf Steiner's understanding of child development to show how the Waldorf kindergarten (for children up to age 6) creates a space in which, through play and natural day-to-day ...activities, the necessary foundations are laid for future (more cognitive) learning. In this holistic ontology, the children's kindergarten experiences, on the somatic level, percolate through the life of their feelings for seven or eight years and are then ready to 'bubble up' in the form of thoughts in seventh grade. The archetypal movements and rhythms that underlying activities like sweeping, stirring, kneading and washing - gestures which have formed the bodies and wills of human beings for countless generations - are rapidly disappearing in the lives of modern children. The Waldorf kindergarten fosters an atmosphere akin to that of the 'home and hearth', where the child who plays creatively in those formative first seven years of life will have the potential for a far more 'inner' and living grasp of (for example) the laws of physics than a child who was little more than a passive observer in that period of life.
