The International Forum for Teacher Education was founded by the Pedgogical Section to cultivate dialogue among teacher educators from around the world. That such dialogue is essential for the future of Rudolf Steiner’s pedagogical impulse is evident. He saw from the beginning that the development of a future-bearing educational movement rested on the question of teacher education and development. As teacher educators, we face similar challenges. Open dialogue can help us discover new, context-specific ways to meet them.

In his talks to teachers and parents, Rudolf Steiner spoke explicitly about the emergent nature of an anthroposophical pedagogy. It was not a model to be applied and replicated. Teachers would learn to perceive in each child what needed to be done. To do this, they would need to acquire the capacity to intuit the child’s or young person’s being in the act of becoming. This shift would only be possible through a paradigmatic shift in our understanding of human nature and the development of a thinking mobile and flexible enough to grasp it in its living flow. For Rudolf Steiner one of the primary tasks of teacher education was to cultivate the practice of dynamic rather than schematic thinking.

The world has changed radically since the beginning of the Waldorf School. Prospective teachers today face a completely different challenge in education than their predecessors did. How do we, as teacher educators, help them awaken within themselves the creativity and forces of will they need to craft education around the needs of the children and young people they meet today?