Brussel, 15 April 2024

Advancing Steiner Waldorf Curriculum Development in Europe

In 2023, we conducted a feasibility study for developing a common Steiner Waldorf curriculum framework in Europe. The study that showed the value of such a curriculum.

Advancing curriculum development in Europe with three actions

In our effort to kick­start a com­pre­hen­sive cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment process, dur­ing 2023 we took three con­crete actions: sum­maris­ing the out­comes from our cur­ricu­lum col­lo­qui­um in Octo­ber 2022, con­duct­ing a fea­si­bil­i­ty study for a Euro­pean Stein­er Wal­dorf frame­work cur­ricu­lum, and gath­er­ing ini­tial ideas for a sus­tain­abil­i­ty edu­ca­tion cur­ricu­lum tai­lored to Stein­er Wal­dorf schools. This work was co-fund­ed by the EU as part of our 2023 work plan and was based on our mem­bers’ needs indi­cat­ed dur­ing our 2021 struc­tured calls with our members.

Bringing our members’ individual efforts under one umbrella

The fea­si­bil­i­ty study was car­ried out by our ped­a­gog­i­cal advi­sor and a cur­ricu­lum expert Dr Mar­tyn Raw­son, then was edit­ed by our pres­i­dent Mar­gare­ta van Raem­don­ck, and all this with con­stant sup­port of our project coor­di­na­tor Már­ti Domokos. They delved into exist­ing edu­ca­tion pol­i­cy rec­om­men­da­tions on the one hand and exist­ing cur­ric­u­la for Stein­er Wal­dorf schools across Europe on the oth­er. At the moment some of our mem­bers, in coop­er­a­tion with their author­i­ties, adopt­ed their own nation­al Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ricu­lum frame­works, but have indi­cat­ed that they would ben­e­fit from align­ing it to a joint meta-lev­el Euro­pean cur­ricu­lum framework.

The study recommends developing a common curriculum framework

Final­ly, the study does rec­om­mend devel­op­ing a com­mon cur­ricu­lum frame­work, which would allow tai­lored align­ing with local and nation­al require­ments, while pre­serv­ing Stein­er Wal­dorf prin­ci­ples and ped­a­gog­i­cal auton­o­my. In an effort to sup­port our advo­ca­cy, the study also rec­om­mends map­ping such a cur­ricu­lum frame­work to the Euro­pean Union’s key com­pe­tences frame­work for life­long learn­ing of 2018. We will start putting these rec­om­men­da­tions into prac­tice with­in our 2024 EU-fund­ed work plan.