The Pedagogical Section Council of North America (PSC for short) has worked for many years to decide for the Waldorf movement what the essential elements are that define a Waldorf school and Waldorf teaching. The PSC decided on seven principles and members of the Council then wrote on all seven, with many of these articles being published in the Research Bulletin to help to explain these and to deepen understanding of them in the Waldorf community.

The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education is a compiling and expanding of these original essays to form a compendium of insight for these important essentials.

The PSC represents experiences teachers who are recognized as spiritual leaders for Waldorf education in North America. They devote their three or four meetings a year to topics of investigation that will help in broadening and deepening the comprehension of teachers of their daily work with children in the classroom. The PSC can be viewed as a little brother or sister to the International Forum for Waldorf-Steiner Education, a global "College of Teachers" representing the recognized leadership for all 63 countries in which Waldorf schools are working.

The Seven Core Principles of Waldorf Education illuminates for us those spiritual and practical elements without which we might have a great school but not a Waldorf school. The imagination and practice meditatively, through the efforts of the teachers and their work with children, bring the cosmos into the daily life of a Waldorf school. The future lives in these practices - both the future of the children in the school and for the school itself.