Using a constructionist reading of Steiner’s epistemology in Waldorf pedagogy

Abstract

In this paper I establish an epistemology for illuminative practitioner research that is based on a constructionist reading of Steiner’s theory of knowledge. The paper starts by exploring what kind of epistemology practitioner research needs if it is understood as action based on practical reason or pedagogical wisdom, what Aristotle called phronesis. The tradition of action research has moved from more positivistic origins to hermeneutic, phenomenological, post-structuralist, post-colonial and feminist positions, often outside the academy. Practitioner research has professional, personal and political dimensions and therefore needs a theory of knowledge that provides an ethical perspective, generates local knowledge, develops ability and can engage with issues of emancipation. I then develop a constructionist reading of Steiner’s theory of knowledge, which is understood as a productive, iterative process of learning and development that expands the horizon of knowing into ever wider contexts. Everyday acts of knowing bring perceptions together with concepts that have their source in a pre-linguistic realm of reality and these are then expressed in language, which is culturally embedded. These aspects of the knowledge process show affinities to forms of social constructionism as developed by thinkers such Ernst Cassirer, John Searle and Kenneth Gergen. Such an approach has implications for the development of Waldorf pedagogy by practitioners in very different cultural settings, in that they no longer have to seek ‘equivalents’ to standard, Eurocentric versions of curriculum, but can based curriculum on locally generated knowledge, whilst relating to general Waldorf principles.