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.

Holistic education is concerned with connections in human experience - connections between mind and body, between linear thinking and intuitive ways of knowing, between individual and community, and between the personal self and the transpersonal self. First published in 1988, The Holistic Curriculum examines the philosophical, psychological, and social foundations of holistic education, outlining its history and discussing practical applications in the classroom. This revised and expanded second edition concisely describes how holistic thinking integrates spiritual and scientific perspectives, drawing on romantic, humanistic, and other radical alternatives to the atomistic worldview of the modern age. The role of the teacher, the issue of accountability, and strategies for implementing the Holistic Curriculum are also discussed.

In Holistic Learning and Spirituality in Education, scholars from around the globe address the theory, practice, and poetics of holistic education. Some of the topics explored include educating the soul; partnership education; nourishing adolescents' spirituality; education and the modern assault on being human; the Eros of teaching; personal creativity as soul work; pedagogies of compassion; and meditation, masculinity, and meaningful life.

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.

The need to reform secondary-level education to prepare young people for new economic realities has emerged. In an age of constant career changing, cognitive flexibility is a top-priority skill to develop in today’s students. This shift requires methodological innovation that enhances children’s natural abilities as well as updated, focused teacher education in order to prepare them adequately. Educational Reform and International Baccalaureate in the Asia-Pacific is a collection of innovative research that examines the development and implementation of IB curricula. Highlighting a wide range of topics including critical thinking, student evaluation, and teacher training, this book is ideally designed for educators, curriculum developers, instructional designers, administrative officials, policymakers, researchers, academicians, and students.

Forward by Nel Noddings 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.

The book comes out of the ecumenical movement and is one outcome of the Holistic Education Study Process of the World Council of Churches. It contributes to a dialogue between education philosophy and religious education, spiritual education and the search for peace and justice, reconciliation and healing as a yearning of all human beings.

This book illuminates what must always be at the heart of powerful schooling and authentic learning. Its focus is on free learning, with an emphasis on early East Asian thought as a vehicle through which learning may emerge. The volume describes learning as helping the learner become more conscious, more aware. As such the authors explain how quality learning encompasses all learning that is chosen by the learner. It is non-judgmental and their idea is that if learning is done by choice then direct harm will be mitigated because quality, willed learning is not just about the individual, but includes others — it is community focused as well as self-determined. In the first part of the volume the authors look specifically at how quality willed learning can inform the state and how it can protect the rights of children. The second part looks at what quality willed learning can mean to leaders. In the last part the authors look at what it can mean for teachers and finally what it can mean for the learners themselves.