The general didactics of Waldorf education and Klafki’s approaches in educational theory – Connections and divisions

Abstract

Abstract. In Waldorf education, teaching and learning processes, as well as curricular decisions, aspire to be in harmony with the students’ potential for development. To this end, the didactic model of main lesson block teaching with its phenomenological approach forms a general didactic framework. It is based on the use of “specific examples of high-density reality” (Wagenschein, 2008) with the potential to reveal the universal in the particular. General contexts, which students acquire at a reflexive distance and with an objectifying attitude, evolve from special, real-life experiences. It becomes apparent that the phenomenological teaching approach is not merely taken as a consequential complement to the epistemological position of Waldorf education itself but an approach that can also be specifically reflected in Klafki’s (1964) theory of categorical education: The material aspect of education, i.e. the phenomenological open-mindedness, has the potential to form a particularly strong, interlacing bond with the formal aspect of education, for it is the formal aspect that is perceived as the students’ evolving personalities in their transition or their cognitive achievement, moving from a real-life perspective to an objectifying one. Keywords: General didactics, Klafki, categorical education, didactics of Waldorf education, Steiner, Wagenschein, teaching science, curriculum research.