In 1989, 80 education representatives signed the "Chicago Statement", and a year later this agreement led to the publication of “Education 2000: A Holistic Perspective” (1990), which set out ten principles for holistic education, fundamentally at odds with the prevailing reductionist paradigm (GATE, 2000). Drawing on the work of Douglas Sloan, David Purcell, Ed Clark, Ron Miller, Phil Gang, Jack Miller and Parker Palmer, a vision of holistic education based on ecological awareness, spirituality, relationships, and values was developed. Holistic education is a transformative, postmodern, ecological, cosmic, and spiritual education that addresses global issues. UNESCO (2015, p. 10) states that "Education alone cannot hope to solve all development challenges, but a humanistic and holistic approach to education can and should contribute to achieving a new development model ". The UNESCO (2015) publication suggests that the holistic approach is still relevant even though more than 30 years have passed since the “Chicago Statement”.
In this study, holistic education is defined as education that focuses on the development of the whole child, with an emphasis on humanistic and posthumanistic educational ideas, interconnectedness, an ecological worldview, and respect for nature and the individual. Educating the whole child (Bhatta, 2009; Miller, 2010; Preston, 2012; Rudge, 2016) is defined as education that encompasses the intellectual, emotional, physical, social, aesthetic, and spiritual aspects of the individual learning process. According to Miller (2019), in the 1950s and 1960s, humanistic education was a direct precursor to holistic education. Rudge (2016) identifies eight philosophical principles of the holistic education movement: (1) spirituality; (2) reverence for life/nature; (3) interconnectedness; (4) the human wholeness; (5) individuality; (6) caring relationships; (7) freedom/autonomy; and (8) democracy. The first four of these encompass a spiritual/holistic orientation of education, while the other four embed humanistic ideas in a holistic educational paradigm. Posthumanist philosophy argues that man is not so unique from the rest of the living world, questions and criticizes man's centrality, and emphasizes man's development in relation to the organic world, where all life-forms are equally important, where man is only one of a number of species, and where the inorganic world is just as important as the organic (Duoblienė, 2018). Duoblienė (2018) argues that the process of posthumanist education is flexible, open, and sensitive, allowing for the perception of changing identities. Changing education promotes a focus on creativity, diversity, and responsibility in education rather than standards and expected achievements. An ecological worldview is an integral part of the holistic education paradigm because it highlights the interconnectedness of all living and non-living ecosystems on Earth (Nakagawa, 2000). As the world continues to face the challenges of climate change (COP26), the aim of the study is to identify gaps in empirical research on holistic education.
To achieve this goal, the following research question is posed: what are the gaps in empirical research on holistic education? To answer the research question, three objectives were set:
1. to select empirical articles on holistic education from the “Scopus” database;
2. to identify which areas of holistic education have been empirically researched;
3. identify gaps in empirical research on holistic education.
