ABSTRACT

This paper traces the introduction of Steiner programmes in publicly funded school settings in Victoria, Australia, through a recent history covering approximately 1990–2011. Three programmes are examined through interviews with Steiner educators focusing on some of the challenges of working with these alternative educational ideas in these settings. While the first two of these programmes proved successful, the third was discontinued amid some controversy in 2011. The educational change these programmes presented is framed in terms of their contribution to epistemological diversity within the public-education domain in Australia, as reflected in the educational values associated with these programmes, and the educational sensibilities through which these were mediated in terms of the Steiner educators interviewed. Biographical Sociology is drawn on to foreground the felt experience of the Steiner educators involved, and to highlight some of the ideological and philosophical tensions that were at play, and how they were managed. These tensions, it is argued, were at times exacerbated through the co-location of these programmes within existing mainstream schools in Australia, in contrast to the more common stand-alone, publicly funded Steiner schools established internationally. In exploring the spilling over of these tensions into polemical public debate in relation to the third programme, the move of Steiner education into publicly funded school settings internationally is taken into account, and questions of the successful mitigation of these tensions more generally examined, placing these local experiences into a wider context.

摘要

本文通过大约 1990 年至 2011 年的近期历史，追溯了施泰纳项目在澳大利亚维多利亚州公立学校环境中的引入情况。通过对斯坦纳教育工作者的采访对三个项目进行了审查，重点关注在这些环境中使用这些替代教育理念所面临的一些挑战。虽然前两个项目被证明是成功的，但第三个项目在 2011 年因一些争议而终止。这些项目所带来的教育变革是根据它们对澳大利亚公共教育领域认识论多样性的贡献来制定的，这反映在教育与这些计划相关的价值观，以及根据接受采访的斯坦纳教育工作者的教育敏感性来调节这些价值观。传记社会学被用来突出斯坦纳教育工作者所感受到的经验，并强调一些正在发挥作用的意识形态和哲学张力，以及如何管理它们。有人认为，与国际上建立的更常见的独立、公共资助的斯坦纳学校相比，这些项目在澳大利亚现有的主流学校内并置，有时会加剧这些紧张关系。在探讨这些紧张局势蔓延到与第三个计划有关的公共辩论时，考虑到施泰纳教育在国际上进入公立学校环境的情况，并更普遍地审查了成功缓解这些紧张局势的问题，将这些问题置于将当地经验融入到更广泛的背景中。