One of the best books surveying the alternatives to mainstream, accountability-oriented education. Dr. Miller has a broad view and is not sectarian in any way.

For a broad look at why whole child education is important and how it fits into global developments and America’s ability to compete, see Yong Zhao, Catching Up or Leading the Way, particularly Chapter 7, “What Knowledge Is of Most Worth?”

Sir Ken Robinson and Lou Aronica have written a worthwhile study in Creative Schools. They may have been too optimistic in subtitling the book The Grassroots Revolution That’s Transforming Education.

Stoddard dares to propose we teach as if we could make a difference in areas like integrity, initiative, and imagination. Subjects like reading, writing, and math are taught, but as tools to help grow the qualities of human greatness.

Many practical suggestions for social and emotional development can be found in Teaching Children to Care, revised edition. Author Ruth Sidney Charney was co-founder of the Center for Responsive Schools.

The Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development (ASCD) convened a Commission on the Whole Child in 2006. It subsequently issued an important report and has resources at its whole child website.

David Sobel’s work with place-based education develops another path for engaging the whole child. His more recent Children and Nature, Place- and Community-Based Education in Schools with Gregory Smith explores the subject in greater depth.

Angeline Stoll Lillard’s Montessori: The Science Behind the Genius provides an excellent introduction to the Montessori approach.

Jonathan Kozol’s Letters to a Young Teacher contains a distillation of a lifetime’s work in education. It builds on the premise that the best teachers refuse to see their pupils as so many “pint-sized deficits or assets for America’s economy.”

Discussions of play-based learning can be found in the works of Vivian Gussin Paley, notably in  books such as The Boy Who Would be a Helicopter and a Child’s Work: The Importance of Fantasy Play.

A. C. Harwood, The Recovery of Man in Childhood, 2nd edition provides the best in-depth introduction to child development and education from a Waldorf point of view in one volume.

For anyone interested to see what happens when Waldorf methods are applied in public, usually charter, schools, here is a link to Dr. Mary Goral giving a talk to parents.

For an overview of the Reggio Emilio approach to education, Julianne P. Wurm’s book, Working in the Reggio Way: A Beginner’s Guide for American Teachers is an excellent resource. 

Ashiabi’s 2007 article, “Play in the Preschool Classroom: It’s Socioemotional Significance and the Teacher’s Role in Play” (Early Childhood Education Journal, Vol. 35, No.2) provides a detailed description of the benefits of play in early childhood education. 

An excellent exploration of democratic education is Sam Chaltain’s, American Schools: The Art of Creating a Democratic Learning Community (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010).

In The Finland Phenomenon Harvard, education professor Tony Wagner lays out clearly why Finland has the best public school system in the world.

In Schools That Change Communities, a film by Bob Gliner, we learn that in changing itself and at the same time its community, a school generates a dynamism that can supercharge learning.