Foundation Studies
These studies aim to provide a grounding in the general principles and capacities you will need in a career as a Steiner Waldorf Teacher. The background ideas of philosophy and anthroposophy are introduced which are fundamental to Waldorf Education. Practice in the arts is also cultivated and is seen as developing fundamental capacities and skills from which the Steiner Waldorf teacher is able to work. The whole of Stage One is also conceived as a Foundation Programme, enabling new students to orientate, explore and make a personal relationship to the theory, practice and culture of Steiner Waldorf Education. As a student, you would spend three years studying modules on:
Philosophy & Anthroposophy
These modules are to provide a continuous study of Human nature and its development across the three stages of the Programme. The focus of the study in this respect will be the teacher's own self-knowledge and development. At significant points comparisons will be made across a spectrum of views about human nature and ideas about evolution. Ideas derived from anthroposophy will also be related to contemporary social issues, particularly in the course of Stage Three.
Arts as Practice
The aim of these modules is to enable you to acquire fundamental abilities essential for work as a teacher in a Steiner Waldorf School. They are seen not just as a means of self-development and as ways of expressing subject matter, but also as constitutive of the process of learning. For this reason Steiner Waldorf Education cultivates the idea of the Teacher as an Artist. There will be a counterpart to these modules in the Subject Studies and Principles & Practice programmes where the direct relevance to artistic work to education will be explored. In Level 3, work with the arts will be continued but linked into other modules.
