Summary
In recent years, China has seen a major expansion of alternative education, one aspect of which is the phenomenon known as "Steiner Fever," referring to the rapid growth of Steiner (Waldorf) education in the country. Steiner education — offering early childhood, elementary, and secondary schooling — seeks to promote the development of a child’s natural curiosity and capacities while stimulating intellectual awareness in order to develop the "whole child" (Oberman, 2007). Despite its expansion, there is a general lack of scholarship on alternative education in China, and Steiner education in particular remains little understood.
This study is guided by the overarching question: What is at stake in the feverish manner in which Steiner education has been embraced in China? In alignment with the research aims and questions, the study explores "Steiner Fever" through an investigation of the choices, perceptions, and experiences of parents and teachers engaging with Steiner education in China. I adopted a transdisciplinary, dialectical approach, with a conceptual framework inspired by the notion of "Tao," in which events are viewed not in isolation but as embedded within a meaningful whole.
The research employs a two-sited ethnographic design. I conducted four months of fieldwork at two Steiner schools in China in 2017. Data was generated through interviews with parents and teachers as well as participant observations. Thematic analysis was used to interpret the data. I examined the push and pull factors influencing parents’ and teachers’ choices, the complexities and dilemmas within their experiences of Steiner education, and their understandings of the relationship between Steiner educational principles and traditional Chinese values. Drawing on my conceptual framework, I discuss the findings on both the micro level — parents’ and teachers’ decision-making and lived experiences—and the macro level, including the broader educational context, societal values, the dysfunction of mainstream schooling, and the spiritual crisis in China’s increasingly materialism-oriented society. Steiner’s emphasis on the organic unfolding of an individual’s spirit appears resonant with Taoist and Confucian thought. I argue that Steiner education may offer Chinese people a pathway to reconnect with aspects of their own traditional ways of being, which have become disembedded through the modernization process.
This project represents an important contribution to the understanding of parental school choice in China. It enriches the under-researched field of alternative and holistic education in the Chinese context and holds significant implications for Chinese education’s rediscovery and renewed engagement with its own philosophical traditions.
Keywords: Steiner Waldorf education, Steiner Fever, alternative education in China, parental school choice