Brussels, 26 May 2023

Experts in Steiner Waldorf curriculum gather in Belgium

On the 14th and 15th of October 2022, almost 50 participants from our member countries came together at the Ghent Waldorf School to discuss elements of Steiner Waldorf curricula and share good practices.

Based on the work of ECSWE’s curriculum working group

In 2021, a cur­ricu­lum work­ing group was formed with the objec­tive of focus­ing on Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ric­u­la. The group’s aim was to facil­i­tate a wider dis­cus­sion on this top­ic in the form of a col­lo­qui­um bring­ing togeth­er cur­ricu­lum experts from across Europe. The group thus met reg­u­lar­ly through­out 2022, both online and in per­son, with 11 active mem­bers from Aus­tria, Bel­gium, Croa­t­ia, Den­mark, France, Ger­many, and the UK. In prepa­ra­tion for their cur­ricu­lum col­lo­qui­um, the group pre­pared a ques­tion­naire for all ECSWE mem­bers. This ques­tion­naire was designed to iden­ti­fy the lev­el of devel­op­ment and recog­ni­tion of the Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ricu­lum in our dif­fer­ent mem­ber countries.

The curriculum colloquium provided space for sharing

The cul­mi­na­tion of the work­ing group’s efforts was the cur­ricu­lum col­lo­qui­um of 14–15 Octo­ber 2022. The par­tic­i­pants lis­tened to the thought-pro­vok­ing lec­ture of Mar­tyn Raw­son, our cur­ricu­lum spe­cial­ist and co-author of the 2021 paper Wal­dorf Edu­ca­tion for the Future: A frame­work for cur­ricu­lum prac­tice. Dur­ing the col­lo­qui­um, the oth­er author, Kath Brans­by, pre­sent­ed an online space that enables teach­ers to co-cre­ate the UK Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ricu­lum. Addi­tion­al­ly, exam­ples of the Nor­we­gian, Flem­ish, and Ger­man Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ric­u­la were shared, along with the chal­lenges and suc­cess­es nation­al asso­ci­a­tions faced in achiev­ing nation­al recognition.

A rich program served as food for thought

After the pre­sen­ta­tions, par­tic­i­pants were invit­ed to dis­cuss both their chal­lenges in imple­ment­ing a Stein­er Wal­dorf cur­ricu­lum in their schools as well as the dif­fi­cul­ties in gain­ing and main­tain­ing recog­ni­tion of such cur­ric­u­la by their author­i­ties. Since these chal­lenges vary sig­nif­i­cant­ly between our mem­bers, the group dis­cus­sions pro­vid­ed addi­tion­al insights into our reg­u­lar work in sup­port­ing them. Based on these exchanges, our pres­i­dent Mar­gare­ta van Raem­don­ck eval­u­at­ed results form this col­lo­qui­um, with indi­ca­tions of our plans towards a Euro­pean Stein­er Wal­dorf frame­work curriculum.