University of Plymouth announces an upcoming launch event of a project on Steiner education. It's a project report called Meeting the Child.
The Steiner Waldorf School Fellowship apparently approves of this little document, since they're alread advertising it.
Quote from university's press release:
The report, ‘Meeting the Child’, written by Mary Jane Drummond and Sally Jenkinson, draws on classroom observations and interviews with kindergarten teachers in Hereford, Cambridge and Bristol, and focuses on the Steiner approach to observation and assessment.
This report will "be presented to the Department for Children, Schools and Families’ Academies Division."
Professor Michael Totterdell, Executive Dean of the Faculty of Education, and Pro Vice-Chancellor at the University of Plymouth, said: “This is an important piece of research, the result of a joint investigation between Steiner and mainstream educators.
Mr Totterdell seems to be speaking against his better knowledge: neither Drummond nor Jenkinson are mainstream educators -- and after all, they wrote the report, they draw the conclusions. To which extent mainstream educators were involved at all, is unknown to me at this time.
Steiner education is now receiving public funding through the Academies Programme and this research demonstrates that other educators may have valuable lessons to learn from the Steiner kindergarten teachers’ distinctive approach to developing a full and detailed knowledge of each individual child.
Blah blah blah. I said on twitter that this looks to me like a typical propaganda move. Steiner education is recieving public funding, thus it must be a valid educational approach. This research, undertaken by authors already committed to the Steiner movement, show good things about Steiner education, naturally, thus other educators have things to learn from waldorf/Steiner. (This was the same conclusions drawn by anthropsophist Bo Dahlin in his research. Which, by the way, was deeply flawed.) Then the passage continues by boldy asserting that Steiner teachers approach means a full and detailed knowledge of each child. The assumption being that this is in some way unique for waldorf. Yes, it indeed is -- if you mean that Steiner teachers consider astral and etheric bodies and the higher "I" and posits the existance of a reincarnating individual soul. Detailed knowledge is, in fact, the institutionalized dissection of -- and thereupon passing judgment on -- unknowing and non-assenting children's souls and spiritual qualities. Should've written that in the press release, I believe. But I suppose it's easier to boast that others have things to learn from waldorf than it is to speak about anthroposophy's role in "developing a full and detailed knowledge of each individual child." Huh?
When the project was launched initially it was described like this in Steiner/waldorf newsletter:
The project will explore the importance of the ‘narrative form’ – each child’s unique life-journey - in enabling the teacher to reflect on the child's nature and learning. The focus on observing the whole child - physical; emotional; cognitive; social – in preference to emphasising externally-generated check-lists of pre-determined learning outcomes and targets is likely to provide one fertile line of enquiry.
Anyway -- who are Drummond and Jenkinson? They are authors previously published by anthroposophical publishers. They both worked with this brochure The Future of Childhood.
It is published on the initiative of the anthroposophical organisation Alliance for Childhood. Another author of the same brochure appears to be Christopher Clouder -- a representative of the waldorf school movement.
So what about the authors of this new Plymouth report?
Sally Jenkinson is described on Steiner Books' website; she
is a lecturer, mother and kindergarten teacher. She works for the Alliance for Childhood, having advised Waldorf kindergartens for many years. She is a respected contributor to British and European research conferences on early childhood. She is a tireless advocate of children's holistic developmental needs, particularly to the Department for Employment and Education during their consultation on early years education for the national curriculum.
Steiner Books also published her Free to Learn and The Genius of Play.
The latter book is accompanied by a review quote -- well actually it may be a quote from the introduction, written by her -- by Mary Jane Drummonds, by the way. In the above mentioned newsletter, Jenkinson is described as a "Steiner specialist". She should be, having worked for the Steiner School Fellowship, where part of her work was to be "watchful" about government requirements. She seems familiar enough with the literature of waldorf educators and anthroposophists. Besides, she's not just a kindergarten teacher, she's a "Steiner Waldorf Kindergarten teacher".
Mary Jane Drummond has also been involved in Alliance for Childhood, as well as the editor of The Future of Childhood. In the book Early Education Transformed, she wrote a chapter on waldorf education in kindergarten. The involvement in Alliance for Childhood may seem a bit odd, though, because in the chapter of the latter book mentioned, she writes "I am not a Steiner educator, nor will ever be."
[Sorry, a slightly muddled post, but mr Dog is getting annoyed with me. He says he doesn't give a damn about Jenkinson and Drummond and the SWSF. He would support an Alliance for Puppyhood, though.]
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