Book Review: Handbook of Research on Waldorf Education — Jost Schieren, Ed. August 25 2023
Published by Routledge, the internationally acclaimed academic publisher, this book defines the exclusion of Waldorf Education for 100 years from circles on educational science, missing the opportunities for mutual stimulation and collaboration. The publication of Handbook of Research on Waldorf Education is timely as we face multifaceted problems with the current imagination behind educating children.
Child development experts, child psychologists, anthropologists, teachers, scientists, and philosophers have contributed to this book. The editor, Jost Schieren, found the finest professionals possible to describe the effective science applied in Waldorf educational approaches. Dr. Schieren describes the difference in worldview that has led to the exclusion of Waldorf educators from standard circles of educational science. As head of the Education Department at Alanus University in Alften, Germany, Jost Schieren is well-qualified to delineate the problems historically and illustrates possible ideas that could solve many of them.
This book, published with a high-level academic purview, is full of remarkable ideas about child development, the way students learn, and approaches to teaching largely unknown by mainstream educational experts.
Hopes in Waldorf education run high that this book will provide Waldorf teachers and Waldorf schools the means to identify for its communities the sound research that underscores the effectiveness of Waldorf education. Routledge Media Company carries with its endorsement through publishing, the strong possibility that the book will end up in every university library and every public library across North America and the world.
Through Waldorf Publications and the Research Institute for Waldorf Education, every AWSNA- recognized Waldorf school will receive a copy of this book through the Waldorf Publications Book Bank program. Rudolf Steiner predicted in 1919 that science would catch up with the principles of Waldorf education and Anthroposophy. Jost Schieren has demonstrated that the time has come!