NEW Level 4 Diploma in Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Studies

We are pleased to announce that the Level 4 Diploma in Steiner Waldorf Early Childhood Studies (Early Years Educator) (VRQ) has just been accredited by Ofqual. Crossfields Institute have been developing this qualification over the last 18 months with the London Steiner Kindergarten Training Company Ltd (particular thanks to Lynne Oldfield) as lead development partner, who provided subject expertise and content in the development of this qualification. It is accredited through our collaboration with CACHE  (Council for Awards in Care, Health and Education) the specialist awarding organisation for child care.

The aim of this qualification is to provide the learner with the expertise, skills and professional approach needed to be a Steiner Waldorf Kindergarten Teacher and Early Years Educator (EYE), and includes classroom based and placement hours.  Learners completing this qualification may proceed directly to work in a Steiner Waldorf Early Years setting as a group leader.  The qualification is also relevant to those engaged in holistic work with children such as child minders, therapists and others working with children under seven years old both in Steiner Waldorf and mainstream settings.

The Steiner Waldorf EYE qualification now on the Ofqual register represents the first ever Steiner based qualification to be accredited in this way. To view the qualification, please go to: https://register.ofqual.gov.uk/Qualification/Details/601_5130_4. Accreditation was sought in response to the findings of the Nutbrown Review of early education and childcare qualifications (2012). For further information please go to: https://crossfieldsinstitute.com/steiner-early-years/

Researching permaculture

Permaculture is great at spreading via grassroots sharing. It is an inspiration for 21st century communication. Innovations like https://permaculture-research.blogspot [website no longer exists] help in mobilising practitioners to build up evidence. It would be great to see permaculture breaking through more often into academic journals and influencing government policy. The MSc Researching Holistic Approaches to Agroecology from Crossfields Institute (pending final approval with the University of Coventry) has been designed to support holistic approaches to food production. Those interested in permaculture, organics, and biodynamics can explore the holistic thinking that underpins what they do and shape research projects that are academically rigorous but true to their roots. For more information see www.crossfieldsinstitute.com

John Bazalgette on Context Conditions Consciousness

I came across a phrase recently, attributed to Marxism, but of wider significance than that philosophy.  “Context conditions consciousness.”  

My encounter with it also appeared around the same time that discussions were rife about corruption, malpractice and professional weakness in relation to the world of finance, banking, child abuse, police misbehaviour and much more in our society.  In that discussion someone on BBC Radio 4 said “The problem is not that there are a few rotten apples in the barrel:  the barrel itself is rotten.” 

While this could be about the whole of society, which would burden us all to wanting to leave this planet, it does challenge us to look at how we understand the organisational structures in which we all take roles.  That faces us with the way our moment to moment micro-decisions and micro-actions are the co-creative process that shapes the barrels in which we find ourselves meeting and affecting others.  So, the cleansing of our own barrel is in our hands.

John Bazalgette is a Senior Organisational Analyst and Director of the Grubb Institute.

Metamorphosis and a Goethean Approach to the Social Sphere at Emerson College

The Proteus Initiative will be running three workshops on Metamorphosis and a Goethean Approach to the Social Sphere at Emerson College during late February and early March 2015.

Social Transformation through Insight:

A short series of inspirational workshops for those who work within the field of social development – from thought-leaders and educators, through to social activists and community outreach workers.

Are our current forms of intervention too technical, too distant, too separate, compared with the truly challenging task of reading what is really going on through a more participatory and observational approach?

Can we really be in a situation and at the same time, really observe what is happening?  How can we build capacities to be both active and reflective? The challenge is to enable an observational approach that can shift the stuck places of social change.

Sue Davidoff (The Learning School: A Psycho-Social Approach and The Courage to Lead) and Allan Kaplan (The Development Practitioners’ Handbook, Artists of the Invisible) of The Proteus Initiative, are both social development practitioners, working out of a Goethean understanding of process, movement and metamorphosis.

Their trainings bring this enlightened approach to all aspects of social change – consulting, facilitating, writing, teaching.  Striving to bring together a sensibility for, understanding of, and practice towards the relationship between ecological wholeness and social coherence and healing. Enabling people to stretch their processes of inner and outer development to greater edges and depths, providing a foundation for socially responsive and life-supporting practices.

“Gael Surgenor from New Zealand, who studied with Allan and Sue ….reported on a campaign she had led concerned with family violence. She described how Goethean practices contributed to the way the campaign developed and to its success……Their campaign of Family Violence Intervention won the supreme award for excellence in 2010 from the nonprofit Institute of public Administration in New Zealand.“

To find out more about the series of Metamorphosis and Social Change courses at Emerson College, please click this link: https://emerson.org.uk/metamorphosis-and-social-change [page no longer exists]

If you would like further information or to book a place on one of these short courses, please contact registrar@emerson.org.uk.

Ethical Leadership Research contribution

In the context of the Crossfields Institute research into leadership and social innovation, this link from a conference at the International Monetary Fund is an interesting study in where contemporary leaders in the international finance sector are at with regards to the question of ethical leadership and the acknowledged need for a change in paradigm: https://www.imf.org/external/mmedia/view.aspx?vid=3835505509001