Integral Education
Welcome to Integral Education. We have just launched a new web site. On the new site we have gathered together a wide spectrum of information and resources on integral education and more. We hope you will enjoy, this more unified experience...
About Integral Education
Integral Education holds a place for the best of educational theory, experience and practice from classrooms and learning spaces at all educational levels. Some of the main principles and educational approaches integral education draws upon include: holistic education, multiple intelligences, developmental models of growth and learning, the human potential movement, creative student-driven learning, learning over the entire span of a lifetime, experiential inquiry-based learning, ethical and community-based learning that values service, embodied teaching, participatory curriculum development, and constructivism. Examples of such progressive pedagogies are Steiner schools, Montessori education, unschooling/homeschooling, transformative education, and Reggio-Emilio schools.
The elegance and effectiveness of the integral model is that it is not bound to any one of these approaches, and can combine the best of each to more fully serve the student’s needs and learning style. For example, the imaginative, creative and aesthetic learning space offered in a Steiner school can be supplemented by the firmer guidance, attention given to systemic boundaries, and clearer directional/correctional approach offered in a Montessori school.
Beyond the adoption of any particular educational philosophy, however, integral education hinges on the degree that a teacher actually embodies and enacts the principles laid out and aspired to. The question is more, “Who is the teacher?” The ‘doing’ hinges ultimately on the ‘being’. How does s/he show up in and out of the classroom? What relational field does the teacher facilitate? Is a teacher able to bring authentic engagement into the learning space? Other qualities and criteria Integral Education encourages include: expertise in and passion for their area of teaching, helping students bridge from classroom to life-out-there by considering the practical applicability of their subject matter, educating the whole human being (body, mind, heart and soul), encouraging the emergence of greater levels of complexity; holding awareness of and appreciation for the interconnectedness of multiple subject areas and perspectives, as well as the meta-level of the learning/teaching dynamic, and a personal commitment to transformation and ongoing learning and inquiry.
Integral education is about being in the world, creating positive change that reaches from the personal to the planetary in scope and content. Integral learning programs promote the ability to hold multiple perspectives, which develops more efficient and fruitful problem solving, leadership, and community building. They evoke multiple intelligences – intuitive, contemplative, and interpersonal skills, as well as creative, artistic, intellectual and spiritual faculties. They can take place in the classroom as well as the great outdoors, in community and self, in the interweaving of mastery and mystery.
Next Step Integral :: Parenting :: Education :: Community :: Ecology :: Generation Next