Friedrich Froebel - Education

Elements of a Froebelian Education

The Principles include:

  • recognition of the uniqueness of each child's capacity and potential
  • a holistic view of each child's development
  • an ecological view of mankind in the natural world
  • a recognition of the integrity of childhood in its own right
  • a recognition of the child as part of the community

The Pedagogy involves:

  • knowledgeable and appropriately qualified teachers and nursery nurses
  • awareness that skilled and informed observation of children underpins effective teaching and learning
  • use of first hand experience, play, talk and reflection as media for learning
  • activities which have sense, purpose and meaning for the child, and involve joy, wonder, concentration and satisfaction
  • a holistic approach to learning which recognises children as active, feeling and thinking human beings, seeing patterns and making connections with their own lives
  • encouragement rather than punishment
  • individual and collaborative activity and play
  • development of children's independence and sense of mastery, building on what children are good at
  • development of all faculties and abilites of each child: imaginative, creative, linguistic, mathematical, musical, aesthetic, scientific, physical, social, moral, cultural, and spiritual
  • a recognition that parents and educators work in harmony and partnership

The Environment should:

  • be physically safe but intellectually challenging, promoting curiosity, enquiry, sensory stimulation and aesthetic awareness
  • combine indoors and outdoors, the cultural and the natural
  • provide free access to a rich range of materials that promote open-ended opportunities for play, representation and creativity
  • demonstrate the nursery to be an integral part of the community it serves, working in close partnership with parents and other skilled adults
  • be educative rather than merely amusing or occupying
  • promote interdependence as well as independence, community as well as individuality and responsibility as well as freedom

source: page 115 of The Froebel Educational Institute: the Origins and History of the College by Peter Weston 2002 University of Surrey Roehampton

site map - info@friedrichfroebel.com

Copyright © 2002 friedrichfroebel.com. All rights reserved.