"Alternative schools" or "alternative education" is a comprehensive name for schools that challenge "mainstream" schooling, offering escape routes from "traditional" education, and establishing "other" educational experiences among students (Hadar at al., 2018). The popular examples of alternative schools are: Waldorf education (Oberski 2011); Summerhill education (Stronach and Piper 2008); and Montessori education (Whitescarver and Cossentino 2008). 

Despite the growth in the number of these schools in the world, it is very difficult to find thick educational ethnographies that reveal the daily educational work that takes place within them. Against this background it is important to clarify a long series of questions such as: What is "alternative" in alternative education? What are the relationships between alternative education and non-alternative education (also called "traditional" education or "mainstream" education)? What characterizes educational pedagogy in alternative schools? What are alternative educational practices? What is an "alternative teacher"? What are the educational processes related to becoming an "alternative student"? What are the relationships between the alternative arena in the school and the students’ other life spheres (the family home, informal education in the afternoon)? In addition to these research questions, it would be interesting to clarify, through cross-cultural comparisons, how alternative schools operate based on similar educational philosophy in different countries and cultures. Is, and how is, the cultural import of alternative knowledge and education from one country mediated and translated into another?

In order to develop a complex discussion of these research issues, this symposium includes four ethnographic studies in different alternative schools in four different countries: the playful school in Israel; democratic schools in Poland and in Germany (Leipzig and Freiburg); and Waldorf education in the Philippines.

Each of these four ethnographies will reveal unique aspects of the routine of alternative schools. The ethnographies of the play school in Israel uncover the use of a unique alternative educational pedagogy that was invented against a specific local-cultural backdrop, and the need for the invention of new language and categories (e.g., "play school", "play teacher", "play students" and "play learning") for the establishment and operation of the alternative education and the regular movement between "alternative” and “non-alternative” arenas.

The ethnographies in two different cities in Germany reveal not only the practices for activating democratic education based on the familiar scenario of "alternative education," but also the need to consider the national-state scenario, which does not necessarily encourage similar cultural values and subjectivity. This tension between local and national is critical to a complex understanding of the educational activity in alternative schools.

The ethnographies in five democratic schools in Poland explore in particular the ways in which critical "democratic" concepts such as "equality" and "respect" are enacted in relationships between children and adults in the course of daily educational activities. These analyses are important in light of the recent intensive growth of Polish democratic schools, perceived as a radical, progressive alternative to mainstream schooling.

The ethnographies in Waldorf education in the Philippines reveal the routine of educational pedagogy that has been brought from one cultural context to a very different cultural context. Moreover, these ethnographies reveal the tension between the local and the global. This study explores how concepts critical to alternative education (such as "challenging authority," "democracy," "independent thinking"), and historical events that are "European", operate in a completely different cultural context in the Philippines.

These four ethnographic studies enable an in-depth analysis of the globalization of alternative education, the tension between the local and the global, and the identification of creative or hybrid cultural-educational inventions (what researchers also call "glocalism") of alternative schools in different cultural contexts.

Hadar, L., Hotam, Y., Kizel, A. (2018). No school is an island. Pedagogy, Culture and Society 26(1): 69-85. Oberski, I. (2011). Eudolf Steiner's philosophy of freedom as a basis for spiritual education. International Journal of Children's Spirituality 16(1):5-17. Stronach, I. and Piper, H. (2008). Can liberal education make a comeback? The case of "relational touch" at Summerhill school. American Educatioal Research Journal 45(1): 6-37. Whitescarver, K. and Cossentino, J. 2008. Montessori and the mainstream: A century of reform on the margins. Teacher College Record 110(12): 2571-2600.