Experimental Schools and Educational Reform
The epicenter of the search for the reorganization of the content, forms, methods of school education and upbringing turned out to be experimental educational institutions (experimental schools). These institutions are designed to test, develop and substantiate new pedagogical ideas, taking into account the experience of the best teachers. There were several types of such institutions: schools that implement a new educational concept; basic schools with scientific and pedagogical centers; exemplary schools, where traditional methods of education and training are polished; and Experienced schools that carry out original pedagogical ideas. (Randolph et al., 2023)
The experience of experimental schools does not always become the property of an ordinary school. Experimental schools have a dual purpose – as centers for educational searches and as popularizers of new approaches to the teaching and educational process. (Dahlin et al., 2024)
The organization of experimental teaching and educational institutions is one of the important directions of state policy. So, in the USA, there is a federal Bureau of experimental schools. Organizers of pilot schools could count on state support at their own expense. A number of conditions: comparative mass (from 2 to 5 thousand students), the implementation of original ideas, retraining of teachers, public participation and parents of students. (Parents, 2024)
In France, the National Pedagogical Institute acts as the coordinator of the activities of experimental schools in public education, whose staff is in charge of the experiment.
The creation and operation of experimental schools are the subject of special attention from official authorities in Japan. All major reforms of the last few years in the sphere of education necessarily provided for testing in pilot schools. The Ministry of Education has established a system of experimental educational institutions. Any public school can apply for the authorization and financing of an experiment for up to three years; at the end of the term, the school must report on the results of the experiment. The Ministry of Education encourages various research projects based on schools. Only in the 1988-1989 academic year the status of experimental “schools of cooperation” was received by more than 40 junior secondary educational institutions. As experimental grounds, basic general education schools at state universities are often used. (The Guardian, 2026)
The organization of pilot schools in the early 1990s was recognized as one of the priorities of Russia’s school policy. Theoretical and practical problems of experimental teaching and educational institutions are dealt with by the Association of Innovative Schools and Centers, the Academy of Education, and the scientific institutions of the school department. Since the beginning of the 1990s, several contests of innovative teaching and educational institutions have been held, and a number of pilot schools have been established at the Academy of Education.
Theories of Developmental Learning
The organizers of the experimental schools relied on new concepts and ideas: developing training in the system of L.V. Zankov, V.V.- Davydov, D.B. Elkonin, the dialogue cultures BC Biblera et al.
The initial provisions of developmental learning are concepts of upbringing, learning, and development as a dialectically interrelated process. Training is interpreted as the leading force in the development of the child’s psyche. Education is considered as the basis for the development of the child. Progress in development is assessed as a condition for mastering knowledge. Learning activities are designed as a collaborative search and collaboration.
The teacher’s mentality with students, when schoolchildren do not receive ready-made solutions, but look for them, straining their mental and intellectual forces.
Among the didactic principles of L. Zankov’s experimental system, the decisive role is played by the principle of learning at a high level of difficulty, which is closely dependent on other principles leading role of theoretical knowledge, moving forward at a rapid pace in the study of educational material, the consciousness of learning, activities.
The starting point of the concept of developing training VV Davydov consists in the assertion that the basis of such training is its content, from which the methods are derived. Educational activity of schoolchildren is supposed to be built in accordance with the method of presentation of scientific knowledge, when students’ thinking resembles the thinking of a scientist resorting to meaningful abstraction, generalization, theorizing, etc.
BC Bibler believes that in the XX century there was a convergence of educational and educational values of different cultures. Such a meeting is reflected in the consciousness and life of every person on Earth. And such a meeting should take place in the process of school education and upbringing.
Enthusiasts of experimental work coordinate their efforts on an international scale. The European Federation of Experimental Schools, headquartered in Paris, has been established and is operating. In some countries, international meetings and seminars are held on the problems of updating the technologies of education and upbringing.
Non-Traditional Schools and the Hermitage Model
A number of experimental schools try to repeat and continue in the new conditions the experience of non-traditional educational institutions of the 1920s and 1930s. It is about the use of the heritage of A. Neil (England), O. Dekroli (Belgium), E. Parkhurst (USA), R. Steiner (Germany), S. Frenet (France), and others.
Followers of the “new school” A. Neil tries to revive the slogan of “absolute freedom of students” when students, for example, are allowed to skip classes. Several dozen schools, followers of A. Neil operates in the United States. Similar schools arose outside the US, for example, private schools under the leadership of Miuri Yamaguchi and Yu Endo in Japan.
Successfully worked in Brussels (Belgium), founded at the beginning of the century O. Decheli School “Hermitage.” This is a genuine pearl-national and world education. For more than eighty years, the Hermitage has confronted verbal and verbal traditions and strives to rely on evolving children’s interests, building a learning process that takes into account the child’s thinking.
The Hermitage is one of the four best-performing institutions in Brussels.
The school has branches of primary and secondary education. In the initial classes, the basis of education is the so-called centers of interest. “Centers of Interest” should group and organize the educational material in accordance with the interests and needs of the children. These are the children of primary school age who identified with the need for nutrition, protection from bad weather and hazards, solidarity, rest and self-improvement. The educational material should be drawn from the child’s environment – nature, school life, family, and society. In the 1991-1992 academic year, for example, several classes were engaged in the “center of interest” “Nutrition Requirements”. Schoolchildren collected and studied information about various foodstuffs, using these data in the classes on French language, mathematics, science, etc. One of the objects of a variety of study assignments and exercises was the cheese favorite in every family (making, storing, selling, describing, etc.).
In the “Hermitage,” students use educational literature from the home, school and municipal libraries. The materials and conclusions of the authors of the textbooks sometimes do not coincide or even contradict each other at all. Teacher N. Vandenbogar sees this as only a positive:
“The child is convinced that what has been said in the book is not a sacred word and that any fact should be treated critically without creating an idol.”
Any child can study in the Hermitage. There is no competition at admission. The only obstacle is the lack of places. Representatives of all ethnic groups living in Belgium study at the school. Tolerance in respect of any nationalities, beliefs, beliefs – a traditional line in the Hermitage. Teachers sincerely love their students, and they reciprocate with them. Teachers strive to create a humane climate and an atmosphere of active communication. Special purposes are also used for this purpose. For example, high school students are offered the subject “Factors of communication” in the lesson. In the context of the topic, the role of the press, literature, the theater, the cinema, and human contact. Such activities promote adolescents to the treasury of cultural aesthetic values.
The school journal Courier serves the development and encouragement of children’s creativity. Schoolchildren themselves produce materials, print, brochures journal issues. The authors are students of all ages. It encourages imagination, humor, and imagery. 13-year-old Noah writes: “Hello, I live on an apple tree. I have many brothers and sisters. I’m waiting for the hour I’m so afraid of. Pass spring, summer and. . . they’ll eat me up “(the story” Apple “). But the verses of her contemporary Sadrin:
“The noise ceases, darkness and silence on a white screen – a foreign country. Light, the hall talk – That’s the real-life beginning. ”
(“Kinoeans”)
The Hermitage is a true “pedagogical Mecca.” Teachers from Europe, Asia and America are constantly trained here.
The Dalton Plan and Project-Based Learning
In the modern school, the ideas of the experimental educational institutions of the USA of the 1920s-1930s are used: “Dalton-plan”, “method of projects”, etc.
The essence of the “Dalton Plan” E. Parkhurst consisted in the implementation of the curriculum, divided into contracts (contracts), which specified sections, reference literature, control questions, and materials for answering these questions. The order and rate of execution of contracts were a personal affair of students. Systematic control and verification of students’ performance was envisaged.
Some modern educational institutions turn to the method of E. Parkhurst. Thus, one of the private elementary schools in France (Eguebal, Creusot) practiced counter-regimes with schoolchildren. According to the agreements, the students undertook to perform a number of training tasks and exercises during the week. Contracts were made taking into account the strengths and desires of students. Externally attractive work on contracts has generated a number of problems. According to teachers, pupils who signed light contracts had difficulties in further education in the college and Lyceum.
Own version of the “Dalton-plan” was worked out in a number of schools in Japan. The pupils signed contracts with the school, for which they were obliged to fulfill the agreed study assignments at a certain time. Children themselves decide on what grade to sign the contract. If the “satisfactory” task was made up of seven questions, “good” -from twelve, “excellent” – from nineteen. The schoolboy had to make a decision. Having signed the contract for “excellent” but having fulfilled it on “well,” the student received “unsatisfactory” because any failure was equated with failure and inability to keep a word. Such an order differed from the original variant, according to which the evaluation was exhibited on the basis of the final result.
There are followers of the Dalton Plan in Russia. In the early ’90s, for example, according to this method, school number 7 in Tchaikovsky. Teachers and pupils of the school in the “Dalton-plan” attracted the opportunity to spend more time with their favorite subject, to communicate intensively, and to expand their independence and responsibility.
Close to the “Dalton Plan” is the “project method” by W. Kilpatrick, which was implemented, in particular, in the school of E. Collings. The students had to design what they had to do. Priority was given to the choice of activities through which knowledge was acquired. The curriculum was seen as a set of interrelated experiences. Materials for learning were taken from the daily life of students. The students themselves determined the content of the work, and the teacher helped to achieve the project. The projects were individual and group. The nomenclature of projects was supposed to take into account different aspects of children’s lives: play, excursions, crafts, etc. During the project, the student passed several stages: selection, planning, execution, and discussion.
The “Project Method” has found a new life in the modern school (“independent work” in secondary schools in France, the “school of dialogue of cultures” in Russia).
Waldorf Education
Among the experimental educational institutions of the past, whose experience is also trying to reproduce, it is necessary to mention the school opened in 1919 by R. Steiner in Waldorf-Astoria (Stuttgart, Germany). The main activity of the Waldorf School was the search for forms of emotional and aesthetic upbringing and education. The work of the school was built on a personal approach and individual requirements, based on the study of each student’s personality. The emphasis was on creating a single emotional-aesthetic basis for learning. Accordingly, the program of education. Waldorf School relied on the idea that the knowledge of the human essence is accessible only to the wise and initiated and that man – first of all, a spiritual creation. Hence the purpose of education was defined as the all-round development through intense spiritual activity. The school was to turn into an autonomous world – the center of spirituality. The foreground of moral education was the awakening of imagination and fantasy as an antidote to childish bitterness.
Learning began with studying biographies of great scientists and thinkers, then proceeded to the ideas that they left to humanity. When mastering the teaching material, it was suggested to go in a spiral – from the person’s closest circle to the knowledge of astronomy and the cosmos. History, therefore, was first recognized through tales, legends and myths, then passed on to biblical legends and antiquity, and the newest history was mastered in the final class. The age of the heyday of ancient Greece, for example, studied schoolchildren 11-12 years. Since the proponents of this theory believed that it was at this age that children were receptive to justice and capable of democratic thinking, so it would be appropriate to devote schoolchildren to the first experiments of the republican system.
The Waldorf school was built on self-government: there was a council, which included teachers, pupils, parents, and friends of the school. The school abandoned traditional assessments and sought to take into account the individual results of each student. A variety of practical activities for pupils was organized, and close cooperation with parents was established.
The experience of the Waldorf School is currently used in a number of European countries. In the late 80-is in the world, there were up to 350 educational institutions created according to the model of the Waldorf School.
Modern Waldorf schools are markedly different from ordinary educational institutions. In these institutions, there are all branches of general education. Although they teach the same subjects as in other general education institutions (the exception is the subject called eurythmy, exercises where speech, music and movement are synthesized), teaching and teaching look different. The aim of the training is to help students to perceive the world of knowledge in its entirety. The head of the class, leading the main subjects for eight years, certainly should be a very erudite teacher. Uncommon organization of training; no one is left in the second year, and, as a rule, nobody is excluded. Instead of traditional assessments, brief reviews about successes and results. When learning to avoid textbooks, preferring lecture classes. In the middle and upper classes, a system of cyclical study of disciplines is used – two hours a day for three weeks in each half-year. The system has advantages and disadvantages. On the one hand, four-month gaps between the same cycles threaten a strong and systematic education. On the other hand, intensive immersion in the cycle of objects cannot but benefit.
In the middle of the day, classes are concentrated mainly on the subjects of the artistic cycle. They are built in the form of a variety of exercises – music, languages, eurythmy. Two foreign languages are studied in the first class. The school day ends with crafts.
The education program is focused on seven-year rhythmic cycles of human development – up to 7 years, from 7 to 14 years, and from 14 years to 21 years. The rhythms of the year and one day are also taken into account. Perceptions of annual rhythms should be helped by school holidays ~ harvest. Christmas, holiday lanterns and others.
There are no directors in Walldorf schools. Annually the board is elected, which is in charge of the budget. Every day, the conference on leadership decides. It includes teachers and parents. Parents are usually the founders of the school.
There are no strict penalties in Waldorf schools. Here, avoiding moralizing, relying primarily on a positive moral and psychological environment of universal affection.
In Russia, the prospects for Waldorf pedagogy are mixed. According to the head of the Moscow Waldorf Education Center, A. Pinsky, the Russian mentality is a fertile field for the application of R. Steiner’s pedagogical ideas. At the same time, he believes that pedagogical anthroposophism is, in many ways alternative to the methods of intellectual development popular in the Russian school.
Russian Waldorf education enthusiasts attracted her appeal to the individual human top, non-encyclopedic education, and emphasis on the development of artistic and aesthetic taste. They tried to move to the Russian soil ideas R. Steiner (Kargopo-lsky orphanage childhood home in the Komi Republic, Azarovsky orphanage in Kaluga, Yaroslavl Waldorf School, etc.).
The Freinet Educational Method
Popular in the global school experiment C. Freinet. In 1935, he founded Piuli (France) elementary boarding school, where he worked until his death. In this and other educational institutions, Frene developed “techniques,” which included the original forms of education and training.
Considering the prevailing inefficient learning process, C. Freinet initially tried to partially improve it. Soon, however, he came to the conclusion that it is necessary to build all the different training. Elements of non-traditional learning accumulated gradually. Ultimately, “Frene equipment” was made up of a number of different functions of the elements: typography school, school co-op, “free text,” cards, chips, a working library and so on.
In the school of Frenet, life proceeded in the framework of self-management – a school cooperative. At the head of the school cooperative were the council – Frenet, and several students. The Council controlled the educational, economic, and cultural life of the school; he settled conflicts and defined measures of encouragement and punishment. Decisions of the council were made by voting, but the teacher retained the right of veto. The council was re-elected every year so that students alternately became leaders and executors. At the end of each week, there was a meeting of the cooperative, at which the headings of the school newspaper were discussed: “I criticize,” “I want,” “I did.”
The centerpiece of the “Frene technique” was free texts: mini-compositions that reflected personal impressions and experiences. The students selected the best work, processed it, printed it, and then used it as a training aid. Participants in this work were divided into typesetters and printers, duty officers, artists, and so on. There was constant correspondence with the children of other schools. On the basis of school correspondence, “Frene technique” arose. The teacher suggested that the children write a free text. And the more original the content of such a composition, the more chances were that it would be printed or sent to another school. This activity was encouraged. So, the correspondence of pupils of Piuli boarding school with French Polynesian schoolchildren turned into a kind of long-term business game. Schoolchildren of Polynesia, for example, wanted to buy a French piano, while the children of Piuli wanted a Polynesian scooter. Young correspondents estimated the possible cost of acquisition, transportation of goods, etc.
Followers of Frenet (“modern school”) have become one of the largest educational trends in the world (more than 10,000 schoolteachers are only in France). There are analogs of the “Frene technique”. For example, in a number of experiments in American elementary schools, students individually investigated the materials they chose, then printed the results of their work with the help of a computer.
In the framework of the “technique of Frenet”, the teacher was supposed not only to observe the movement in the development of the pupil’s personality, but also to constantly provoke him to search for new lines of development. According to Frenet, a teacher who, thanks to his keen attention to each student, has the appropriate learning methods, can provide him with development and success. The teacher had to organize teaching and educational work in such a way as to discover and cultivate the individual inclinations of the children. The teacher was taught to avoid punishment, and to reject rankings and evaluations of students. Recommended methods of self-assessment.
In the mid-1980s, a group of Japanese teachers used the “Frene technique” as a reference when developing a teaching methodology. One of the first to turn to the “technique of Frenet” was Shinsuke Kuhar. He began to regularly publish free texts for his students. This was facilitated by the equipment of the school – computers, duplicators, etc. (not much time had been required for the production of printed products).
An approximate scenario of teaching and upbringing using the Frenet technique was developed in Japan. The school does not need much money. Primary cells, units, can emerge in any school. The activity of such a cell begins, for example, with the organization of a school co-operative: a collective body of students and teachers. The cooperative is controlled by a council of several students and a teacher. Children can do anything they please. The Council controls educational, economic, and cultural life, settles conflicts, and determines incentives and penalties. At its meetings, the topic is discussed: “I criticize,” “I welcome,” “I would like,” etc.
Experimental Education in El Salvador
Elements of non-traditional education are practiced in experimental elementary schools in El Salvador. Teachers of experimental schools are trying to get in touch with the living space of children, learning means “learning” and “learning”. Responding to social and economic conditions, the school works to prevent children from entering into conflict with the law, to focus on creating a spirit of mutual support and respect.
To achieve the objectives of the experiment, there are school “banks,” “parliaments,” student cooperatives (“banks” offer small loans to students so that they can engage in labor and commercial activities, the “parliament” develops the norms of behavior for children and adults, and cooperatives provide school children with cheap food) .
One of the experimental schools, which works according to this program, is in the village of San Andreas.
Teachers seek the identification and development of individual abilities and interests, the formation of socially valuable personal characteristics and motives in schoolchildren.
Because of the chronic lack of training materials, printed reference materials are widely used – cards, school newspapers, and other school activities. Children often prepare these materials themselves. Study groups of 3-5 students are organized. Five students are assigned to the weakest student. Before the classes, teachers and pupils plan the whole curriculum. Children’s self-government is actively used. The students themselves monitor the order and cleanliness, prepare school breakfasts.
The Immersion Method in Ulan-Ude
The pilot school No. 37 in Ulan-Ude carried out an experiment according to the “immersion” method in the academic subject. The essence of “immersion” consisted of long (up to 2 hours daily for a week, up to 5 hours daily during the day) occupations in one or more disciplines. The training was conducted in such a way as to bring the teaching material closer together, to prevent student fatigue, and to develop the activity and independence of the students. For this purpose, a variety of tasks were offered, collective learning activities were organized, forms and places of employment were changed, etc. During the school day, 9-11 lessons alternated in a game form and independent work. Lessons were allocated up to 40 minutes. The rest of the study time is spent on conducting business games, solving practical problems. The results of work on the “immersion” method were in general positive. The strength of mastering the teaching material and the development of the creative abilities of schoolchildren became higher.
References
Randolph et al.. (2023). Montessori Education’s Impact on Academic and Nonacademic Outcomes: A Systematic Review. Campbell Systematic Reviews / PMC. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10406168/
Dahlin et al.. (2024). Exploring Alternative Education: Waldorf Charters, Non-Waldorf Charters and Local Public Schools. Frontiers in Education. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/education/articles/10.3389/feduc.2024.1323535/full
Parents. (2024). An Overview of Waldorf Schools. Parents. https://www.parents.com/waldorf-schools-8671603
The Guardian. (2026). Montessori Learning Is Being Shut Down at Leah’s School. The Guardian. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/03/montessori-learning-is-being-shut-down-at-leahs-school-is-a-push-towards-explicit-instruction-to-blame
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