Holistic education: An analysis of its pedagogical application

This dissertation is a theoretical and interpretative study, in which I analyze and evaluate the pedagogical application of the philosophical ideas advocated by the holistic education movement in four approaches to schooling.;Holistic education is an eclectic and inclusive movement, which emerged in the mid-1980s as a response to the then dominant worldview of mainstream education. It is an educational paradigm that integrates the idealistic ideas of humanistic education with spiritual philosophical ideas. It incorporates principles of spirituality, wholeness, and interconnectedness along with principles of freedom, autonomy, and democracy. Holistic education theorists assume an integration of what most progressive and democratic movements in education have proposed should be kept separate, namely, spirituality and humanistic ideals.;While these principles may be combined philosophically into an ideal of education, the question I ask in this study is as follows: could they be jointly applied in an approach to education? In this dissertation, therefore, I explore the pedagogical applicability of these principles and examine some of the tensions that arose for me as I compared how holistic education principles were applied in different approaches to schooling.;To carry out this study I selected four approaches to schooling that draw on holistic educational ideals in order to analyze the pedagogical application of the philosophical principles advocated by the leading theorists in the holistic education movement. For analytical purposes, I synthesized the principles of holistic education into eight broad principles (spirituality, reverence to life/nature, interconnectedness, human wholeness, individual uniqueness, caring relations, freedom/autonomy, and democracy). For each of the appointed principles, I identified pedagogical features across the selected school systems that I argue promote that particular principle and I examined the way and the extent by which they are applied. Finally, I compared the findings of all pedagogical features to determine the extent to which each principle is applied in each of the pedagogical approaches to schooling.;The findings of this study indicated that there are tensions in accommodating pedagogically the spiritual and humanistic principles of holistic education in one approach to education. I examine some of these tensions across the four selected approaches to schooling.