Developmentally Appropriate Learning Supports in Crisis Contexts: Essence of Learning in a Pristina, Kosovo Classroom

• In Event: Harnessing Waldorf for Arts-based Trauma Pedagogy Across Borders: Opportunities & Challenges

Abstract

1.Purpose
Building on the 2014 study, Early Childhood Education and Upbringing in Various Crisis Zones (Rutishauser Ramm, 2014), and two studies co-sponsored by Save the Children, the UN refugee agency UNHCR, and Pearson, “Promising Practices in Refugee Education: Essence of Learning: An approach to Foster and Sustain Children’s Ability to Learn in Times of Crisis (Rutishauser et al, 2017) and Essence of Learning-Learning Support in Crisis Contexts, a Practical Approach to Education in Emergencies (Rutishauser, 2018) , this research probes learnings from Essence of Learning [EoL], a Waldorf-inspired adaptive emergency pedagogical practice, as launched in one preschool initiative in Pristina, Kosova, just under twenty years ago. The Pristina school was built and expanded with the aid of Caritas Switzerland under the direction of Essence of Learning founder Beatrice Rutishauser Ramm. EoL’s key means is developmentally appropriate play using two signature EoL strategies: rediscovering and fostering their curiosity in the world and skill building by using materials from their immediate surroundings as “learning helpers” to seed children’s imagination. This retrospective study focuses on results and lessons learned from getting students impacted by toxic stress back into an engaged developmentally appropriate learning process without activating further stress, guided by EoL’s key goals to restore the child’s sense of coherence and zest for life.

2.Theoretical Framework
The study draws from the frameworks designed by Rutishauser (2014), Rutishauser et al (2017 & 2018) and Rutishauser (2018), Tyack & Cuban (1995), Labaree (2020), Mehta et al (2020) and Eisner (2002).

3. Methods
The approach is a mixed method (Creswell and Plano Clark, 2017) and employs an organizational case study format (see Yin, 2003).

4. Data Sources
Data sources include student drawings, participant observation, caregiver and teacher interviews.

5. Results
While full data analysis is still underway, preliminary findings confirm the 2014 & 2018 studies’ conclusion that engaging with real world objects as “learning helpers” and “reality stories” for play increases opportunity for children in toxic stress to engage and enjoy and perform on tested academic metrics, and that the impact of these reality stories and toys reaches beyond the classroom to engagement in student homes.

6. Scholarly significance of the study
The study advances the research on how to integrate imaginative play into education, and strengthens Eisner’s key premise (2002) of the arts as key pathway to learning , tested here in contexts of deep crisis. Further, the research invites further study of how a context of crisis can challenge the deeply embedded “grammar of schooling” (Tyack & Cuban, 1995 & Labaree, 2020 & Mehta & Datnow (2020) to affect what we see as school, and, to speak with Scott (1995), to change the shape of the "cultural-cognitive" and “normative” pillars on which school rests, so opening new space for, to speak with Eisner (2002) and founder of Waldorf education Rudolf Steiner “education as an art” (Steine,1909,Oberman 2008 & 2013 & 1997).

Authors

• Beatrice Rutishauser, ReGeneration

• shepha Vainstein, ReGeneration