Henrik Holm: NORENSE funding 2020: 50000 NOK.
Last year (2019) Waldorf Education celebrated its 100th anniversary internationally. It became clear how widely this educational impulse is being realized and received. With this special issue, we are aiming to establish an academic discourse on how Waldorf Education and themes related to different elements of its pedagogical theory and practice can be experienced as a critical voice in social contexts today. RoSE invites researchers and scholars to submit papers on the critical potential of Waldorf Education in modern society and culture. The intention behind the special issue is to develop concrete perspectives and answers to the two great and deep questions: How can children and young human beings learn to say no? And how do they learn to think critically?
We especially welcome contributions which problematize and address one or more of the following topics dealing with critic as an immanent part of Waldorf Education itself:
- Development of critical skills as part of school and education
- To which themes in modern society should Waldorf Education develop critical views?
- The critical potential of Waldorf Education today
- Rudolf Steiner as a critical thinker in his time
- Waldorf Education as a critical movement
- Waldorf Education as a non-critical ideology?
- Self-critique as a part of educational development in Waldorf Education.
Theories on reflection, In a broader sense, we also invite authors with papers on critical topics and theories relevant for Waldorf Education. Understanding Waldorf Education as a dialogical Pedagogy, it is crucial for Waldorf Education to enter into educational discussions in order to receive new impulses and new questions. Which philosophers, sociologists and other theoretical thinkers should students, teachers and scholars working with Waldorf education take into consideration in order to develop critical views? The following topics are examples of what could be relevant:
- rationality and rational skills
- Theories on aesthetics and aesthetical education
- Theories on digitalization and digital media in educational contexts
- Theories on art and performance as critical practices
- Theories on nature as critical views on cultural developments
- Theories on education in political contexts
- Waldorf Education and Critical Theory.
It is important that the critical views in the papers are concrete and not general descriptions of general problems in modern society. We would also like to receive papers written with a self-reflective and self-critical awareness, through which the critical potential is shown and performed not only through the content, but through its form of thinking and argumentation.
The special issue was published in RoSE in 2021. Link.