What Waldorf Schools Can Teach Us About Eliot Eisner's Insights

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session 15
  In Roundtable Session: Imagining Eisnerian Possibilities

Abstract

Increased accountability and focus on raising academic standards, has reduced the arts in teaching. Yet, achievement has not improved. Waldorf schools remain committed to artistic education in both content and methods. This paper examines similarities and differences between the two philosophers through a qualitative look at three first-grade Waldorf classrooms. We found that although Eisner advocates for teaching the arts for art's sake, there are instances wherein the ideas of the two converged. Waldorf schools do not simply use art as a tool to achieve non-art goals, such as teaching to decode. They, like Eisner, believe that children need the arts to make vivid the fact that neither words nor numbers, in their literal forms, exhaust what we can know.

Authors

• Liane R. Brouillette, University of California - Irvine

• Kimberly M. Telfer-Radzat, University of California - Irvine