Images

Laura Keys Moreno Ed.D., is a 2025 graduate of the Ed.D. program in Educational and Professional Practice at Antioch University.

Dissertation Committee:

Gary Delanoeye, Ed.D., Committee Chair
Torin Finser, Ph.D., Committee Member
Linda Williams, Ph.D., Committee Member

Keywords

Waldorf, Waldorf teachers, wonder, three-fold, four-fold, Steiner, mixed methods

Document Type

Dissertation

Publication Date

2025

Abstract

This dissertation explores Waldorf teacher praxis as related to cultivating wonder. In this exploration, a variety of wonder researchers will form a picture of what is needed in public schools of today. This will be considered a mainstream perspective. This dissertation hopes to build a bridge to those mainstream researchers such as Egan, Schinkel, and Wolbert with the indications of Steiner and Waldorf education practices. Emotions researcher Keltner provides a framework of wonder experiences from his research on the emotion called awe. An overall framework grounded in Steiner’s work is utilized to form interview questions. In this mixed methods exploration, I survey Waldorf teachers from a variety of schools worldwide. Thirty teachers participated in an online questionnaire based on the Wonder-full Education Questionnaire (WEQ; Conijn et al., 2022) and the four-fold and three-fold understanding of the human being. Ten of those participants were interviewed via Zoom to gather qualitative documentation of practices. Finally, one small group discussion of three participants served as the third opportunity to gather qualitative data and provided participants the opportunity to engage in meaningful discussion about their practices and experiences. The quantitative data is presented in tables to provide data for future researchers. The qualitative information is correlated into the wonder categories from Keltner’s findings. Waldorf education, while viewing teachers as researchers, often neglects the final and critical part of research: sharing the results. In Chapter IV, readers can find a series of stories showing that Waldorf teachers using three-fold and four-fold processes naturally use wonder conditions in their teaching without focusing on the emotional state of wonder in their planning. In addition, wonder teaching strategies emerge when Waldorf teachers work within the Waldorf framework. Because there is a clear relationship between Waldorf pedagogy and methods with the teacher strategies that are said to produce wonder in the students and with the wonder states as appears throughout the Waldorf experience, I submit that Waldorf methods can be used by all teachers to teach their pedagogies in such a way that they too will naturally and easily produce wonder states without having to know what they are. By doing so teachers will find their own sense of wonder renewed. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

Comments

ORCID No. 0009-0004-6239-2676

Bio: Laura Keys Moreno, Ed.D. (she/her) is currently an educator serving the Waldorf community. She has been actively engaged with the homeschool community worldwide after her career in public and private traditional educational settings. Her mission is to make heart-centered, interdisciplinary education as accessible as possible using themes that prioritise beauty, wonder, and awe. Laura views teaching as an art, and herself as a teaching artist who weaves academics, artmaking, and storytelling into experiences that create wonder in herself and her students.

In addition to an Ed. D. from Antioch University, Laura holds a Waldorf Certification from Sunbridge Institute, a MAT from Texas Woman’s University, and a BA in Speech Communication from Texas A&M University. After working at the University of Chicago supporting their Neighborhood Schools Program, Laura returned to the classroom with a deeper appreciation of culturally responsive pedagogy as well as the transformative power of passionately engaged teachers. She serves as a board member on two non-profit boards, CORE and WaldorfMinds. In her free time she can be found engaging in deep conversations, digging in her garden, learning new languages, or experimenting in the kitchen. Laura looks forward to creating teacher training experiences for educators who want to incorporate more wonder strategies in their praxis.

Links:

Waldorf of Wonder (Website)

The Morning Lesson (Podcast)

Download

Share

COinS