An ethnographic study of ‘Steiner Fever’ in China: Why are Chinese parents turning away from mainstream education towards the holistic ‘way’ of Steiner education?
Creators: name: Sun, Yifan
Publisher: name: Apollo - University of Cambridge Repository
Year: 2020
Subjects: Steiner Education
Chinese education
Holistic Education
Alternative Education
Waldorf Education
Parental Choice of School
School Choice
Ethnography
Southern Epistemologies
Traditional Chinese Epistemologies
Taoist Epistemology
Spirituality
China
transdisciplinarity
Transdisciplinary

description: SUMMARY/ABSTRACT Yifan Sun, Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge Title: An ethnographic study of ‘Steiner Fever’ in China: Why are Chinese parents turning away from mainstream education towards the holistic ‘way’ of Steiner education? In recent years, China has seen a major expansion of alternative education, an aspect of which is the ‘Steiner Fever’, which refers to Steiner (Waldorf) education’s rapid growth in this country. Steiner education (providing early childhood, elementary and secondary education) as an alternative education model, aims to promote the development of a child’s natural curiosity and capacities while also stimulating intellectual awareness in order to develop the 'whole child' (Oberman, 2007). There is a general lack of scholarship on alternative education in China, in particular, Steiner education in China is little understood. I approached this study with an overarching question: What is at stake in the feverish manner in which Steiner education has been embraced in China? Guided by the research aims and my research questions, I attempted to explore ‘Steiner Fever’ by investigating choices, perceptions and experiences of parents and teachers in relation to Steiner education in China. I have taken a transdisciplinary, dialectical approach, with a conceptual framework inspired by the notion of ‘Tao’ in which events are never thought of as occurring in isolation but embedded in a meaningful whole. The research employed a two-sited ethnographic design, and I spent four months each at two Steiner schools in China in 2017. The data generation methods included interviews with parents and teachers and participant observations. Thematic analysis was used for data analysis. I have examined the push and pull factors related to parents’ and teachers’ choices, the complexity and dilemmas in their experience of Steiner education, as well as how they conceptualised the relationship between Steiner education principles and traditional Chinese values. Guided by my conceptual framework, I have discussed the findings at both the micro level, namely, parents’ and teachers’ decision-making and experiences related to Steiner education, and at the macro level, that is, educational context, society and values, including the dysfunction of mainstream education and the spiritual crisis in the wider materialism-oriented society in China. Steiner’s focus on the organic unfolding of an individual’s spirit appears to be in line with Taoist and Confucian thinking. I have argued that Steiner education offers a potential pathway for Chinese people to reconnect with aspects of their own traditional ways of being, which had become dis-embedded in the course of the modernisation process. This project is an important piece of research for the understanding of parental school choice in China. It contributes to the under-researched field of alternative education and holistic education in China. This study is also of vital significance to Chinese education and its rediscovery and embracing of its own philosophical tradition.
description: Chinese Scholarship Council