Part-time Course
Advanced Diploma of Rudolf Steiner Education (2nd Year)
Course Code: 13989 NSW
'The need for imagination, a sense of truth and a feeling of responsibility - these are the three forces which are at the very nerve of education.' Rudolf Steiner
The modules in this year are in three parts:
Professional Studies, Educational Studies and Teaching Methods.
The Professional Studies modules contribute to the development of the teacher as a maturing human being, aware of their own responsibility to society, the parent community, the school and the child.
The Educational Studies modules focus on the Steiner educational philosophy, overall curriculum and understanding child development.
Teaching Methods modules seek to build a bridge from the educational philosophy into the practical classroom situation.
Practical Teaching Rounds.
There are three lots of 3-week rounds in this year. We suggest that a variety of age groups and schools be incorporated to gain as full a picture as possible.
“ I wonder what you would say if you saw someone with a plate of fish in front of him, carefully cutting away the flesh and consuming the bones! You would certainly be afraid that the bones might choke him and that in any case he would not be able to digest them. On another level, exactly the same thing happens when we give the children dry, abstract ideas instead of living pictures, instead of living pictures, instead of something that engages the activity of the whole being. ” Rudolf Steiner.
Modules
Curriculum Development Module
Areas of study include:
Inner striving and meditative work of the teacher
States of consciousness.
The cultural epochs.
The development of intuition, inspiration and imagination.
‘Whenever we teach children, we must take care that what we teach shall not remain as it is, but shall grow with the children as they grow, changing in the course of their development. They will then still possess, when they are thirty or forty, what they have learned when they were eight. It will have grown with them, just as their limbs grow with them – or stop growing at the proper time. We have to bring to children things that are capable of life that will continue of life - we can also say, will be capable of dying away when the right time comes.’ Rudolf Steiner.
Steiner Pedagogy Module
The stages of child development and their relationship to the curriculum are covered both extensively and intensively. We look at:
The inherent faculty of each child.
The development of the child’s thinking, feeling and willing.
The link between the teacher and the child.
A study of:
Temperaments.
Teaching as an Art
The bridge between science, humanities and the arts.
The tenets of Truth, Beauty and Goodness, their importance and application in the education.
“Receive the children with love
Educate them with reverence
Let them go forth in freedom” R. Steiner.
Kindergarten education Module
“We grown ups are wont to smile at children in their play. We have either forgotten or failed to grasp the depths of Schiller’s words that humans are only fully human when they are playing. Yet think of children’s earnestness! Flushed with exertion they collect stones and wood to build themselves a little house, nothing to stop them getting what they need and their game of Hide-and-seek and Robbers leave them hot and breathless. Though this childish play has no conscious sense of purpose or duty to society, it is, none the less full of creative power.” Caroline van Heyedebrand
Steiner High School Module
We strive to educate in such a way that the intellect, which awakens at puberty, can find nourishment in the children’s own natures. If during their early years they have stored up an inner treasure of riches through imitation, through their feelings for authority and from the pictorial character of what has been taught, then at puberty these inner riches can be transmuted into intellectual content. Rudolf Steiner.
Computers and Technology Module
‘The most beautiful experience we can have is the mysterious. It is the most fundamental emotion which stands at the cradle of true art and true science. Whosoever does not know it and can no longer wonder, no longer marvel, is as good as dead, and his eyes are dimmed.’ Albert Einstein.
Main Lesson Theory Module
Normal human life alternates between wide awake consciousness and sleep. We know that one is necessary for the other and we could not really claim that either one is superior to the other….
‘In terms of the student’s education we try to adhere to the principle of balancing wakefulness and sleep. In presenting a topic to the children we therefore wake them up as we present new ideas and dimensions to them. By taking the approach of bringing the subject matter in an intense way the student becomes fully engaged with this topic. Ideally, we would then like this topic to go to rest, “go to sleep” in the child’s consciousness, just as on a day to day basis we like to present topics to the child in the day time and allow the child to absorb them in sleep at night. To best facilitate this we run our programme in blocks of what are called Main Lesson.’ Robert Martin
The structure of the main lesson: daily rhythms.
The three day rhythm in the main lesson.
The link between key points of development and the main lesson themes.
Curriculum practice and Teaching Techniques Modules
One aspect of this module looks at how we develop an understanding of the stages of childhood in regard to the most appropriate relationship between teacher and child related to behavioral management.
For example in class1 and 2 the child naturally imitates those adults who stand before them and as adults we strive towards moral qualities that might be worthy of imitation.
In Class 5 the teacher is aware of an enrichment in the feeling life of the child and a greater possibility of empathy with others.
Teaching through the Arts Modules
This includes Eurythmy, Music, Visual and Plastic Arts, Speech and Drama.
Our conception of the build of the human being, of the human’s inner configuration must be that of an artist. And the teacher must be in a position to experience children artistically, to see them as an artist would.
Eurythmy.
Discovering one’s inner soul space and expressing this through eurythmic gesture and movement.
Studying the relationship of eurythmical gestures to the use of gesture in the classroom.
In Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogy the cultivation of artistic capacities plays an important part.
‘If these forces are not developed, or not used, they must of necessity degenerate and lay a foundation for every possible kind of soul disturbance. Through artistic activity however, the latent powers are absorbed and transformed into positive qualities… the peculiar value of Eurythmy lies in the fact that the movements are not determined according to an outer anatomical and physiological standpoint, but entirely according to inner impulses of movement arising from more intimate experience of the forces actively at work in speech. Thus Eurythmy is better fitted than any other art to bring to life the soul in harmony with the body.’ Freidrick Husemann.M.D.
Music
The musical mood and scales (and intervals) and their effect on life is studied.
The use to harmonize class room dynamics and the connection to mathematics is discovered.
Singing is undertaken and a sense of building community in the class room is explored.
Visual and Plastic Arts
Areas undertaken are the effect of colour on moods in the class room, painting techniques and blackboard drawings. We also learn to discriminate between colours and their use in storytelling and lesson illustrations.
Special Needs in the Classroom Module
Education rests on the development of faculty. Today we area faced with more and more children who are not able to unfold the basic requirements in reading, writing and arithmetic.
English Language and Literature Module.
“Literature enlarges our being by admitting us to experiences not our own. They may be more beautiful, terrible, awe-inspiring, exhilarating, pathetic, comic, or merely piquant. Literature gives the entrée to them all. Those of us, who have been readers all our life, seldom, realize the enormous extension of our being which we owe to others.” C.S. Lewis
English Formalities Module
Handwriting, spelling, reading, creative writing and grammar.
….This educational principle demands that the child shall develop the appropriate relation to life at the appropriate age. But this can only be done satisfactorily when the child is not required at the very outset to do something which is foreign to its nature.”
Story telling Module
The deeper meaning of stories, myths and legends, their appropriateness to each stage of childhood, as well as the art of storytelling, are the focus of this module.
Students read and tell stories from memory and write their own stories for telling.
Mathematics Module
“A child is able to take in the elements of arithmetic at quite an early age, but particularly in arithmetic we observe how very easily an intellectual element can be given to the child too soon. ……..It is not usual to connect arithmetic and moral principles because there appears to be no logical connection between them. But it is apparent to one who looks at the matter not logically but livingly, that the child who has a right introduction to arithmetic will have quite a different feeling of moral responsibility in later life from the child who has not” Rudolf Steiner.
Geometry Module
In the Waldorf (Steiner) School the teacher should not be satisfied when the child can draw a circle – our children must learn to feel the circle, the triangle, the square.” Rudolf Steiner
Music Module
“The musical element ….. It is essentially an element of will, potent with life….” R. Steiner.
Some areas include the understanding of intervals and scales and the different mood they engender, the relationship of melody, rhythm and beat to thinking, feeling and willing. Singing and recorder playing is practiced.
Speech and Drama Module
Further skills are developed in the second year and importance of speech and drama as a powerful teaching and learning strategy in the Steiner curriculum is studied.
Visual and Plastic Arts Modules.
Painting. Inner feeling for the building of colour and colour harmony is explored.
Colour stories are experiences to develop an appreciation of colour.
Modelling and Drawing are also experienced.
Human Society and its Environment Modules.
……. Up to the twelfth year the child should be given pictures of single personalities and well-drawn graphic accounts of events that make History become alive. We look at stages of human cultures and by examining stories, art, songs and artefacts we help students experience the consciousness which lay behind the outer history and culture forms.
Science and Technology Module.
“The whole secret in the study of nature lies in learning how to use one’s eyes.” George Sand.
Craft, Woodwork and Design Modules.
“The art of education originating from the Waldorf Pedagogy also reckons with the modern striving towards improving the social life. Much that would otherwise remain remote from the one sex or other can be developed when boys and girls are educated together… During the handwork lessons in the Waldorf School, you will find girls and boys sitting together all engaged in knitting and crotchet or woodwork. “ Rudolf Steiner.
Physical Education Module.
“Just as love and joy should permeate the surroundings of the child in the earliest years of life, so through physical exercises the growing Etheric body should experience an inner feeling of its own growth, of its increasing strength. Gymnastic exercises, for instance, should be of such a nature that each movement, each step, gives rise to the feeling within the child: I feel growing strength within me.” This feeling must take possession of the child as a healthy sense of inner happiness and ease”. Rudolf Steiner
Health and Inner Development Module.
In Steiner Education the image of the healthy human being permeates all the main lessons through the Primary School. We see health as a harmonious balance between the four levels of human activity: physical, emotional, cognitive and spiritual. The healthy development of children is the theme underlying all aspects of this course. In this unit we particularly examine the importance of the teacher’s role in providing a model of healthy lifestyle and behavior to children.
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