The Waldorf Curriculum. A New Expression.

Written by Samantha de Leca, conference attendee, Waldorf teacher, mentor, and Development Support with Bláthú

The final workshop I attended was The Waldorf Curriculum: A New Expression with Martin Rawson, and for me it was a particularly exciting one. How the Waldorf curriculum is understood, articulated and carried into the present day are questions I have been living with in my own teaching for some time, so I came into the room with a great deal of personal interest.

The conference organisers had prepared us thoughtfully by sending a link beforehand to the Common Core Curriculum Framework that Martin and his European colleagues have been developing. It meant we could look through the framework in advance and arrive with some grounding, rather than meeting the ideas for the first time in the room. Martin had also given the keynote address at the conference, where he introduced this work in a truly inspiring way. His talk opened up important questions about what Waldorf education needs in this new age, and how we can stay true to the foundations of our pedagogy while expressing them in a language the wider educational world can understand.

Many Waldorf teachers will know Martin as one of the editors of The Tasks and Content of the Steiner-Waldorf Curriculum, often called the Yellow Book, which has been an important resource for teachers for many years.

I first met Martin in South Africa in 2017, at a curriculum planning workshop he was presenting there. It felt quite special to meet him again, many years later and this time in Ireland, and to see how his thinking and work on the curriculum have continued to grow.

More recently, Martin and I both spoke at the Belongings Conference at Harvard Divinity School. My own talk there, Between Ideals and Institutions: The Question of Integrity in Steiner-Informed Education, explored how this education can engage responsibly with contemporary frameworks without losing its essential orientation towards the development of the human being. So it was a real joy to hear Martin working with such a closely related question from the side of the curriculum.

What struck me as particularly significant about the new framework is that it seeks to offer a fresh expression of Waldorf pedagogy while also placing our practices within a broader educational landscape. Rather than simply listing what should be taught in each class, it invites us to look more deeply at what we are trying to develop in the child, why particular experiences are offered, and how these different elements relate to one another.

In the workshop itself, Martin worked from a large screen connected to his laptop and took us directly through the framework. He showed us how it is structured and spoke about both its micro and macro elements, so that we could see how individual areas of learning sit within the larger developmental picture.

He then opened the floor to questions, and this became a very important part of the experience Martin was extremely generous in meeting the questions that arose, and he gave us space to reflect on why we do what we do. The framework was not presented as something fixed, simply to be accepted. Instead, the conversation encouraged us to think, to question and to look at our own practice more consciously.

There were many questions in the room, as there should be when something new is being brought forward, yet I came away with a strong sense of excitement and possibility. I wa especially encouraged by the idea that the qualities and intentions of Waldorf education can be expressed through a framework able to enter more conventional educational discourse without losing what makes the pedagogy unique.

For me, there is real value in being able to say more clearly how and why the Waldorf curriculum seeks to meet the developmental needs of the child. A framework like this does not replace the living work of the teacher, but it can offer another language through which that work can be understood, examined and shared.

Martin also spoke about his recent publications on curriculum and some of the work still in development, including future projects looking more closely at particular areas of the curriculum. It left a sense that this is not a finished conversation, but an ongoing body of work that will continue to evolve.

Martin brings an enormous depth of experience as a Waldorf educator, and I felt very grateful to be able to engage with him so directly. There is something brave in asking a movement with such a long history to look again at how it expresses itself, without losing sight of what lies at its heart.

I left feeling inspired, and also with much to ponder. Perhaps that was the greatest gift of the session. It did not offer a simple answer to what Waldorf education should become, but opened new questions for each of us to carry as we continue to bring this education to the children and communities we serve.

The Waldorf Curriculum: A New Expression, with Martyn Rawson