Didaktisk praxis i waldorfskolan : en didaktisk analys och bildningsteoretisk tolkning av fyra waldorflärares pedagogiska tänkande och förhållningssätt
Tjärnstig, Leif (2020-01-10)
Åbo Akademis förlag - Åbo Akademi University Press
10.01.2020
Julkaisu on tekijänoikeussäännösten alainen. Teosta voi lukea ja tulostaa henkilökohtaista käyttöä varten. Käyttö kaupallisiin tarkoituksiin on kielletty.
Julkaisun pysyvä osoite on
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-765-949-9
https://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-951-765-949-9
Tiivistelmä
In this thesis the aim is to empirically study, analyze and interpret how four Waldorf teachers’ pedagogical thinking, attitudes and didactical conduct comes to expression in their shared discussions about their teaching.
An overview of Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogical thinking, relevant for the aim of the study is elaborated. This overview also sums up the main directions that previous research on Waldorf education has taken. The summary shows that there is a lack of research that focuses on the didactical and teaching praxis in Waldorf schools and the study aims to contribute to that field. The results of the study describe and exemplify a didactical tradition developed within the Waldorf educational movement as a didactical practice of educational thinking, attitudes and conduct.
The area of research in the thesis is didactics: A teacher’s thinking, decisions and actions in pedagogic situations. The approach to didactics in the thesis is contextualized in three different areas of research and pedagogical tradition. First, the concept didactics is contrasted with the ways it is used in a Swedish pedagogical context by introducing a theory of Bildung. Second, ”teacher’s thinking” is another relevant field of research in didactics. In this field of research, the role and impact of the teachers personal and professional beliefs and pedagogic thinking is empirically researched and theorized. This thesis methodological orientation, Stimulated Recall Interviews (SRI) has mainly developed within this research area.
Finally, didactical research with a focus on the teacher’s multidimensional interactivities in the classroom and the ethical dilemmas that the teacher must handle is the third area of research that this study’s results relate to. The didactical concept in this thesis is thus contrasted with a more method-oriented didactical concept that has been established within the Swedish education system since the 1980s. The interpretation and understanding of the participating teachers’ shared discussion of their teaching is based on a didactical concept derived from the Bildung tradition and the didactical triangle as a central model.
Two research questions were articulated for the study:
1) What forms of pedagogical thinking and attitudes about the design of teaching for students’ learning and development are expressed in the conversations of the Waldorf teachers?
2) What forms of didactical conduct appears in the Waldorf teachers’ conversations about the considerations and ethical dilemmas that arise in the student-teacher relationship?
The empirical aspects of the study were created through the methodological idea of SRI. The SRI methodology is based on the teachers reflecting on their own conduct and interaction in the classroom from video recordings of their own teaching. It is the transcript from the teachers’ reflections and shared conversations about their own teaching that is analyzed and interpreted in this study.
A turn towards praxis defines the ontological stances of this thesis. The term praxis gives the study its character, design, methodology and the analytical understanding of the didactical knowledge expressed in the teachers’ conversations. Schatzki’s concept ”teleoaffective structures” reveals in the linguistic analysis the affectiveness expressed in the teacher’s reflections. From the praxis perspective used in this thesis, affectiveness is interwoven with the norms, values, goals and intentions that the teacher associates with certain didactical conduct. A practice architecture of ”doings, sayings and interactions” makes an overall framework for the thesis.
In the process of analyzing the empirical material was reduced, and six SRI sessions were selected. The analysis resulted in 35 themes, each expressing a specific character of teleoaffektiva structures within the teacher’s reflections. These 35 themes where then organized into four categories based on the dimensions of the didactical triangle. The second research question, which is considered first in the thesis, was answered by interpreting relations and tensions within and between the categories. The outcome shows how the teachers think about their conduct in ethically challenging situations in the pupil-teacher interaction. The teachers express the necessity of exposing and challenging the pupils as well as caring for and protecting the them.
The results also show how the teachers’ ambivalence towards decision making, to interactions and interventions, opened a space for didactical intuitions. The concept didactical intuition implies the ability to act and make decisions in challenging and ethically difficult situations, guided by shared professional knowledge as well as pedagogical ideals.
The didactical practice of the Waldorf teachers emerges through analysis and interpretation of the conversations as an expression of a teaching tradition that is based on and consists of individually and collectively accumulated knowledge and experience.
To answer the first research question, the themes and categories were interpreted further from the perspective of the didactical framework of Bildung discussed earlier. The outcome revealed an implicit model within the pedagogical thinking of the teachers for the learning of pupils. The model consisted of three steps. 1. the call for self-activity 2. meaningfulness 3. breakthrough and independence. Teachers’ educational thinking and acting were guided in the model by their situated observation skills and given an overall orientation based on an educational mission aimed at creating a free space for teachers and students. Through the interpretation, the didactical practices of the Waldorf teachers appear as a professional knowledge conveyed and practiced on the basis of certain metaphors, analogies, examples and stories.
These could also be related to certain elements of a Waldorf pedagogical tradition as presented in Rudolf Steiner’s educational texts.
An overview of Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogical thinking, relevant for the aim of the study is elaborated. This overview also sums up the main directions that previous research on Waldorf education has taken. The summary shows that there is a lack of research that focuses on the didactical and teaching praxis in Waldorf schools and the study aims to contribute to that field. The results of the study describe and exemplify a didactical tradition developed within the Waldorf educational movement as a didactical practice of educational thinking, attitudes and conduct.
The area of research in the thesis is didactics: A teacher’s thinking, decisions and actions in pedagogic situations. The approach to didactics in the thesis is contextualized in three different areas of research and pedagogical tradition. First, the concept didactics is contrasted with the ways it is used in a Swedish pedagogical context by introducing a theory of Bildung. Second, ”teacher’s thinking” is another relevant field of research in didactics. In this field of research, the role and impact of the teachers personal and professional beliefs and pedagogic thinking is empirically researched and theorized. This thesis methodological orientation, Stimulated Recall Interviews (SRI) has mainly developed within this research area.
Finally, didactical research with a focus on the teacher’s multidimensional interactivities in the classroom and the ethical dilemmas that the teacher must handle is the third area of research that this study’s results relate to. The didactical concept in this thesis is thus contrasted with a more method-oriented didactical concept that has been established within the Swedish education system since the 1980s. The interpretation and understanding of the participating teachers’ shared discussion of their teaching is based on a didactical concept derived from the Bildung tradition and the didactical triangle as a central model.
Two research questions were articulated for the study:
1) What forms of pedagogical thinking and attitudes about the design of teaching for students’ learning and development are expressed in the conversations of the Waldorf teachers?
2) What forms of didactical conduct appears in the Waldorf teachers’ conversations about the considerations and ethical dilemmas that arise in the student-teacher relationship?
The empirical aspects of the study were created through the methodological idea of SRI. The SRI methodology is based on the teachers reflecting on their own conduct and interaction in the classroom from video recordings of their own teaching. It is the transcript from the teachers’ reflections and shared conversations about their own teaching that is analyzed and interpreted in this study.
A turn towards praxis defines the ontological stances of this thesis. The term praxis gives the study its character, design, methodology and the analytical understanding of the didactical knowledge expressed in the teachers’ conversations. Schatzki’s concept ”teleoaffective structures” reveals in the linguistic analysis the affectiveness expressed in the teacher’s reflections. From the praxis perspective used in this thesis, affectiveness is interwoven with the norms, values, goals and intentions that the teacher associates with certain didactical conduct. A practice architecture of ”doings, sayings and interactions” makes an overall framework for the thesis.
In the process of analyzing the empirical material was reduced, and six SRI sessions were selected. The analysis resulted in 35 themes, each expressing a specific character of teleoaffektiva structures within the teacher’s reflections. These 35 themes where then organized into four categories based on the dimensions of the didactical triangle. The second research question, which is considered first in the thesis, was answered by interpreting relations and tensions within and between the categories. The outcome shows how the teachers think about their conduct in ethically challenging situations in the pupil-teacher interaction. The teachers express the necessity of exposing and challenging the pupils as well as caring for and protecting the them.
The results also show how the teachers’ ambivalence towards decision making, to interactions and interventions, opened a space for didactical intuitions. The concept didactical intuition implies the ability to act and make decisions in challenging and ethically difficult situations, guided by shared professional knowledge as well as pedagogical ideals.
The didactical practice of the Waldorf teachers emerges through analysis and interpretation of the conversations as an expression of a teaching tradition that is based on and consists of individually and collectively accumulated knowledge and experience.
To answer the first research question, the themes and categories were interpreted further from the perspective of the didactical framework of Bildung discussed earlier. The outcome revealed an implicit model within the pedagogical thinking of the teachers for the learning of pupils. The model consisted of three steps. 1. the call for self-activity 2. meaningfulness 3. breakthrough and independence. Teachers’ educational thinking and acting were guided in the model by their situated observation skills and given an overall orientation based on an educational mission aimed at creating a free space for teachers and students. Through the interpretation, the didactical practices of the Waldorf teachers appear as a professional knowledge conveyed and practiced on the basis of certain metaphors, analogies, examples and stories.
These could also be related to certain elements of a Waldorf pedagogical tradition as presented in Rudolf Steiner’s educational texts.
Kokoelmat
- 516 Kasvatustieteet [111]