Much has been written on this subject in many essays and books over the last hundred years.² In Steiner's last pedagogical course, in Torquay in August 1924, he described the meetings as follows: «This is the real purpose of the Teachers' Meetings, to study the human being, so that a real knowledge of the human being continually flows through the school...» The essential thing is that in the Teachers' Meetings there is study, steady, continual study.³

It's Thursday afternoon. Although I find the above quote useful – I have often noticed how the concepts of anthroposophical anthropology (or developmental psychology) have helped me to focus my gaze when observing the children and deepen my understanding – I am now getting tired after the tension of a full day of teaching. Finally, my presence and creativity are no longer demanded 150 percent as they have been all day. And so, my attention drifts away while a colleague gives a lecture on anthropology. Others are correcting exercise books, checking their text messages and still others haven't even turned up.

How do we do the study work in such a way that we learn something, that habits of thought are dissolved, that we are unsettled by questions, awakened by surprises, that we come into new thinking movements by listening and reflecting? How do we remain learners? An important task for teachers! Here are some examples of collegial study work from my experience: In the Waldorf school where I started my career at the end of the 1980s, it was still customary to choose one of Steiner's pedagogical courses as the topic for the study and research for an entire school year. What helped to keep the vast majority of my 35 colleagues motivated was...

... that each week a different person made the introduction and was completely free in terms of methodology: a 20 minute summary of an entire lecture, an artistic exercise on a motif, a list of questions of passages completely incomprehensible to the lecturer, own thoughts and variations on a single sentence followed by small group work, reading a paragraph followed by working on a question in small groups... there were as many different forms as there were people, we not only became acquainted with aspects of anthroposophical anthropology but also with the particular colleague who made the introduction.

... that in another school year it was decided to proceed somewhat more quickly and systematically: 10 colleagues had to undertake to summarize a presentation in 15 minutes and prepare questions for the subsequent small group work, which lasted two to three sessions.

... that care was always taken to have a balance between moments in plenary and small groups. A hygienic working method for schools with more than 30 teachers.

I encountered a different problem in the team meetings in the kindergarten: the faculty was so small (4 to 8 people) that we thought that the friendly, informal atmosphere meant that we didn’t need a facilitator nor an agenda. This also affected the study work, which only regained quality when we realized that form and preparation are just as important for inspiration as sincere interest.

This enabled us to try out other forms of study work, which we were enthusiastic about:

• Choose a point of disagreement among colleagues as subject of the study.

Example from the kindergarten: which colours do we want to make available in which form from which age? The representatives of each of the different views undertook to lead two units of study work and compiled quotes and references to articles and books that could serve as arguments for their position. After an introduction, they gave enough time for questions and discussion. Rarely have we come to the pedagogical conference so well prepared, the energy previously spent on arguing turned into interest in pedagogical and anthropological research questions.

• Choose a recent publication as theme for the study.

Prerequisite: a colleague must have read the book or article and be able to summarize it in the conference, possibly also having provided a few quotations beforehand. After the presentation, we tried to make a free comparison with Waldorf education. What is similar? What is different? Where are there fundamental differences? What is a useful addition? Since different points of view often arise in this discussion, this was then again the occasion for a deeper study of Steiner: If you think that this or that is an essential feature of Waldorf education, why don't you find us passages in which Steiner talks about it?

• Taking the special interest of a colleague as a starting point.

The colleague, who was an enthusiastic movement artist and sportsman, had an equally pronounced interest in Steiner's descriptions of the body senses. As we entrusted him with the preparation of the study work for a longer time, his interest then spread to the whole team.

There are certainly as many examples of successful study work as there are Waldorf institutions. We cordially invite you, dear colleagues, to report on your experiences. Which forms of study work have you found particularly successful? We would be delighted to share your experiences and suggestions in future issues of this newsletter. So that we can all increasingly cultivate the attitude of Waldorf teachers described by Steiner: «As a Waldorf teacher, one has to be conscious of the necessity for continually widening and deepening one's knowledge, rather than feeling satisfied with one's achievements and, indeed, considering oneself very clever...»⁴

Philipp Reubke

English translation: Martyn Rawson