| This research was designed to explore the issue of how Waldorf education affects the moral development of its students. In the context of widespread perception of moral decline among contemporary youth, there are major disagreements about the best ways to respond. Waldorf schools have an anecdotal reputation for promoting higher moral development, but there has been no research substantiating its effectiveness.; A quantitative survey of the development of moral reasoning, called the Defining Issues Test (DTI) (Rest, 1990), compared scores of seniors in three Waldorf schools with scores of seniors from a religiously affiliated high school, and from a non-Waldorf, nonsectarian private high school. A fourth separate group consisted of a small number of students who had received a Waldorf education and were now enrolled in the non-Waldorf, nonsectarian private school. A qualitative inquiry method called connoisseurship and criticism (Eisner, 1991) was employed to identify what practices in Waldorf schools might contribute to moral development.; Quantitative results indicated that students who received Waldorf education scored significantly higher than students from the religiously-affiliated setting and than norms for public high school students, in a range that would more commonly be associated with college graduates. Consistent with the existing database, there was no significant difference between male and female responses.; In the qualitative inquiry phase, field notes from a live-in experience and interviews with five teachers and ten students were analyzed and organized into five themes: An emphasis on the whole person, sensitivity to developmental appropriateness, the practice of storytelling, the integral place of the arts in the curriculum, and the preservation of a sense of wonder towards the natural world. Identification of these themes parallels findings by Armon (1997). These themes were also discussed in relationship to the ideas of Rudolf Steiner that underpin Waldorf pedagogy.; The conclusion discusses the transportability of Waldorf practices to other educational settings and gives recommendations for additional research, such as expanding the research sample, varying the definition of “Waldorf-educated,” including family characteristics as a variable, and testing for connections among morality, self-esteem, and spirituality. |
