Kelli Nigh – författare

Providing a comprehensive overview of holistic education’s history, conceptions, practices, and research, this Handbook presents an up-to-date, global picture of the field. Organized in five sections, the Handbook lays out the field’s theoretical and historical foundations; offers examples of holistic education in practice with regard to schools, programs, and pedagogies at all levels; presents research methods used in holistic education; outlines the growing effort among holistic educators to connect holistic teaching and learning with research practice; and examines present trends and future areas of interest in program development, inquiry, and research. This volume is a must-have resource for researchers and practitioners and serves as an essential foundational text for courses in the field.

Providing a comprehensive overview of holistic education’s history, conceptions, practices, and research, this Handbook presents an up-to-date, global picture of the field. Organized in five sections, the Handbook lays out the field’s theoretical and historical foundations; offers examples of holistic education in practice with regard to schools, programs, and pedagogies at all levels; presents research methods used in holistic education; outlines the growing effort among holistic educators to connect holistic teaching and learning with research practice; and examines present trends and future areas of interest in program development, inquiry, and research. This volume is a must-have resource for researchers and practitioners and serves as an essential foundational text for courses in the field.

This book includes papers written by teachers and how they engage holistic education in their classrooms. The papers come from a course taught by Jack Miller at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at the University of Toronto entitled The Holistic Curriculum. This is a rich and diverse collection of papers showing how holistic education can be brought into public education despite the pressures of testing and other accountability measures. Although most of the teachers teach in public schools there are also examples from teachers working in private and post secondary settings. This book can inspire other teachers who are looking for ways to teach the whole person in a more connected manner.

There are very few texts in the field of holistic education that include the voices and practices of teachers, particularly those working in public schools. Many of the examples of holistic education in practice come from Waldorf, Montessori, Reggio Emilia and alternative schools. A unique feature of this book is the many different voices of teachers describing their work in the classroom; they talk about their successes, the challenges and even a few failures.

There is love on these pages, love for nature, the cosmos, the body’s deep knowing and students. Learning in Nature focuses on the lives of 6 drama students who gathered weekly at a community arts center during their childhood and adolescence. Before each play rehearsal the students explored contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, breathing and visualization. After these warm-up sessions the rehearsals were dynamic and highly creative. So, what might happen if these students went out into nature and experimented with the same practices? What would happen, over a year long period, if they stopped the noise of life and just listened, deeply, just looked and inhaled, phenomenologically? Returning the experience of learning to nature, the book tells the story of this group, it tells of their lives and their growing understanding of consciousness, and does so through the complex and rich perspectives of holistic teaching and learning.

Learning often begins with an experience in the body. Our body can tighten or feel expansive depending on different learning contexts. This experience of learning in the body is crucial to holistic education. This book explores embodied learning from several perspectives.

This first section explores how psychology can inform us about embodied learning; for example, the work of Carl Jung and Wilhelm Reich devoted much of their thinking to how energy manifests itself in the body. Meditation and movement are also examined as ways of embodied learning; for example, Dalcroze, a form of movement education, is presented within the context of whole person education. The book also presents schools where embodied learning is nurtured. Waldorf education is discussed as well as a public school in Toronto where the body is central to holistic education. The book also presents visions of embodied learning. John Miller presents a holistic vision of teacher education and Tobin Hart, who has written extensively in this field, writes about the embodied mind.

Embodied learning is an emerging area of inquiry in holistic education and this book presents a variety of perspectives and practices that should be helpful to both scholars and practitioners.