This paper explores the educational significance of the critique of representationalism. As it includes the notion of non-representational knowledge, Rudolf Steiner’s epistemology is introduced and further linked to elements in Bergson and Deleuze. Humboldt’s idea of Menschenbildung as the central function of knowledge is brought in, since both Humboldt and Steiner emphasise knowledge as mediating the interplay between self and world, producing a deeper sense of reality. Such an education must respect the living nature of genuine concepts as well as the aesthetic aspects of learning. After a note on the educational abuse of language in discursive closures, some traits of Steiner’s practical pedagogy are presented as possible practical implications.

It would be futile, John Dewey argued in 1902, to think that we have to choose between child-centered, progressive education and traditional, subject-matter-oriented approaches. Calling for adaptivity, he stressed that we need the act of balancing the one with the other. The tendency in current educational policy to lean in favor of traditional, disciplinary modes of control appears to lose sight of this need. The aim of this paper is to reconnect to the task of maintaining a balance between educational freedom and structure, using a variety of theoretical resources such as complexity science, and the philosophies of Deleuze and Guattari, Schiller, and Nietzsche. Based on these resources, the authors also discuss Steiner Waldorf education as an example of how educational practice may approach, and integrate the significance of chaos in the form of a “virtual pedagogy”.

This paper is a philosophical reflection on the historical development of ideas about the nature of human beings and what this development may mean for the future of and in education. In terms of the causal layered analysis developed by Sohail Inayatullah, it is an investigation on the levels of worldviews and archetypes. Ideas of human nature describe a trajectory from supranature (theological and mystical) via nature (philosophical and mechanical) to subnature (digital). With the development of psychological science about a century ago, so called psycho-utopian visions of a better society arose, based on the transformation of the human mind. Such visions seem today to have been replaced by digital utopias, based on the development of superfast computers and the enhancement of brain capacity through neural implants. The latter is a prominent feature of so called transhumanism. The transhumanist ideas of Ray Kurzweil are briefly presented and contrasted with traditional religious and spiritual ideas. Of special interest in this context is Rudolf Steiner’s philosophical–spiritual understanding of human being and development, which underpins Steiner Waldorf education. There is an existential choice confronting us today: whether to see humans as essentially spiritual beings, or as highly complex bio-computers. This choice has obvious ramifications for education as well as for the future of human being in general.

In these days of both national and international comparative studies of so called learning outcomes it seems important to raise the question of appropriate methods and methodologies for the assessment and evaluation of educational processes. Present evaluation methods seem to focus more and more on curriculum-as-product at the expense of curriculum-as-process. However, it is in the latter that more holistic qualities like social, moral and spiritual aspects of development and learning are likely to emerge, since such qualities are embedded in everything that teachers and students are doing. And, as MacGilchrist, Myers, and Reed (2004) point out, it is important that we assess what we value, rather than value what we can easily measure

This paper recounts the success story of a school in the suburbs of Stockholm, which describes a trajectory of development from being threatened by abandon and closing by the municipal authorities in the late 80s to being rewarded and celebrated as one of the best schools in Sweden about 15 years later. The radical transformation of the schools climate and mode of action was to a large extent due to the creative initiatives of a new headmaster, whose strong will, sound educational ideas and charismatic leadership inspired his staff to work hard for the improvement of the school. The actions undertaken and described in the paper are related to what research on good school leadership has shown to be good practice, as well as to more general ideas in educational theory. The choice of the story format is pragmatically and aesthetically motivated: we are usually more impressed by a (good) story and more inspired to let ourselves be guided by it, than by mere theoretical principles or abstractions

In the wake of globalisation, multiculturalism and the marketisation of schools the education-for-citizenship-question in relation to state and independent schools seems increasingly relevant. This paper is based on a comparison of the civic and moral development of students in Swedish state and Steiner Waldorf schools. The aim of the study was to evaluate the possible differences between the two types of schools regarding their effects on the civic and moral development of students. The study employed both qualitative and quantitative analyses of data from two different surveys and a strategic sampling of schools. In the first survey, the student sample was a cohort of pupils from grade 9 and from the last grade of the upper secondary school (grade 12 in Steiner Waldorf schools). The qualitative analyses were based on a responsive evaluation approach; that is, students were confronted with problems to which there were no given or correct answers. The qualitative data were analysed inductively and thematically. In the second survey, grade 9 students from Steiner Waldorf and state schools were compared regarding democratic attitudes, values and opinions about their school and their teachers. These data were only quantitative. Results of the two surveys showed some significant differences between students from the two school systems. The most striking result of the comparisons concerned the differences between the younger and the older students in their attitudes to social and moral questions. In the state schools, the interest and engagement in social and moral questions were approximately the same in both age-groups, but in Steiner Waldorf schools the older students showed more interest and engagement in social and moral questions. The Steiner Waldorf students also showed more positive attitudes already in grade 9. This result raises the question whether the pedagogical approach of Steiner Waldorf schools has more positive effects on moral and civic development