In sorting through these diverse approaches, I have found it useful to place them
into several broad categories, and, using these categories, I created a conceptual map that
I have presented in workshops and courses. This map enables us to compare apples to
oranges, so to speak. It can help answer numerous basic questions: What makes a
Waldorf school different from a progressive school? In what ways does “unschooling”
work well for some children but not as well for others? How much adult authority is
appropriate or necessary to allow children to achieve specific learning goals? With this
map, we can take the twenty or thirty different educational orientations and group them
into six basic clusters: the transmission model, freedom-based learning, social
constructivism, critical pedagogy, spiritual developmentalism, and integral or
holistic education. A particular school or learning situation might contain elements from
two or more of these groups, making it difficult for us to classify perfectly, but the map still helps us understand the issues and variables that we need to consider when we
compare and evaluate educational approaches.