Meeting the Child in Steiner Kindergartens

An Exploration of Beliefs, Values and Practices

Rod Parker-Rees

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136733253
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Education General

What can early years practitioners learn from Steiner kindergartens?

What is distinctive about Steiner kindergarten teachers' ways of getting to know children?

As demands for accountability in Early Years settings continue to grow, external pressure to assess children and to measure their progress can disrupt the development of informal and intimate relationships between teachers and children.

The contributors to this book, who include both experienced Steiner educators and early childhood experts from other backgrounds, have worked together to explore and understand what is distinctive about Steiner kindergarten practice. They present a variety of perspectives on the ways in which kindergarten teachers' practices, values and beliefs can help children to find and construct their own identities, through play and through engagement in the life of their community.

The authors explore key aspects of Steiner kindergarten practice, including caring for the physical environment, establishing rhythms and routines for children's activity, and providing times and spaces in which teachers and children can get to know each other. By meeting with children and teachers, through rich accounts of day to day life in kindergartens and through accounts of the values and principles which inform their practice, readers will be encouraged to question and reflect on their own approaches to observation and assessment.

Index

activity: artistic 72–5, creative 10, 60; cognitive 89; domestic craft 71–72; legitimate 120; living 7, 9, 66; magical 16; physical 11, 87–8; practical 69–70; purposeful 20, 24, 26–7, 57, 68–9, 100; self-directed 55, 96; soul 83

adult worthy of imitation 80

agenda 34, 99–100

Ailwood, Jo 3

aims and goals 1, 9, 10, 44, 48, 50, 56, 66, 81, 83, 88, 99

Aristotle 102

Armstrong, K. 122

artistic: activity 72–5; environment 73

assessment 2, 12, 44, 53, 60, 64, 66, 72, 118–20; continuous self-assessment 112' ‘folk-model’ of 4; logged 4; self-appraisal 111; value-laden 121; that seeks to value a child 120–6

Athey, Chris 3

attention 20; caring, loving 115, 116; to detail 42, 109; focusing 11, 20

behaviour worthy of imitation 85

being with children 1, 96

being worthy of imitation 103, 113–15

beliefs, teachers' 8, 101,

belonging 42–4, 69, 71, 97

Berger, John 107

book of the child 104

Bortoft, Henri 103, 110

Bryer, E. 76

bubble, kindergarten as 44–7

caring, loving attention 115, 116

Carr, Margaret 4

categorical mode 110

categorization and labelling 51–2, 108, 109

child: assessment that seeks to v...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Meeting the Child in Steiner Kindergartens
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Notes on contributors
• Notes on the kindergartens and the teachers
• Introduction: ways of knowing children
• Looking inside the kindergarten: the apple press
• Mixed age structure, the family model and the developing child
• How the Steiner kindergarten environment helps adults and children to get to know each other
• Imagination in Steiner Kindergartens: practices and potential purposes
• Doing is learning: the domestic arts and artistic activities
• Carolyn's voice
• The work of the teacher: key themes and absences
• Reading the book of the child: the Steiner teacher's inner work and its relationship to child observation
• ‘Hello, Billy the gnome!’ When life is not weighed or scored
• References
• Index