October 1, 2025 • 14 mins
Show Notes: Worldschooling Q&A – Episode 4
Episode Title: Episode 4: What educational philosophies align best with worldschooling?
Hosts: Astrid & Clint, creators of The Wandering Daughter
Episode Summary:
In this episode of Worldschooling Q&A, Astrid and Clint tackle the question: What educational philosophies align best with worldschooling?
They explore how worldschooling is a flexible and adaptive approach that can complement many learning styles—whether you lean toward experiential learning, holistic education, unschooling, or even structured curricula. With stories from their travels and reflections on their own hybrid approach, they share how families can create an educational journey that’s as unique as their children.
🎧 Ready to dive in?
👉 For full show notes, links to resources, and a breakdown of topics covered, visit:
https://thewanderingdaughter.com/episode-4-educational-philosophies/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
And that's how I seelike the holistic part of education being,
because it's like it'snot just the travel that you're
you're reading bookstogether, you're watching videos together.
You're like talking about,
how how those, things relate
to, you know, yourself and, and,
(00:21):
the place and the history of that place.
This is World. School in Q&A.
I'm Astrid, creatorof The Wandering Daughter.
As a traveling family,we spent four years traveling
full time to over 18countries and six continents.
Wherever we go, we try to learn
as much as we canabout the countries and cultures we visit.
(00:43):
While we didn't coined the termwe like to call this worldschooling.
Using the world as our classroom.
Each week, my husband Clint, and I willanswer one question about worldschooling
and share our experiencesof traveling the world with our kids.
Ready to get started?
Great. Let's dive in.
(01:08):
So today's question is
what educational philosophies align best
with worldschooling?
This is, a tough question, I think.
I'll let you start.
Since you've done a lot more of theresearch around, educational philosophies.
Well, I think,
(01:29):
in some ways,
any kind of,
educational philosophycan align with worldschooling
because it's so flexibleand adaptable. But,
I think one of the things that we loveabout worldschooling,
and if you're kind of the of this mindset,
is just the experiential nature of it.
(01:52):
You know, it'snot just reading about things in a book.
It's seeing it with your eyesand touching.
You know, sometimes it'slike touching things or or experiencing
it feeling like feeling thatwith all of your senses.
So if you're,
(02:13):
if you're more in line with that,
like educational philosophy of, like
learning is experiential based,then I think worldschooling,
lends itself to that.
Yeah.
I think one that I would say is,
kind of a holistic experience.
(02:34):
Immersive is another way of sayingit, really,
really learning from just being immersed
in a context. So,
whether that's, you know,you're picking up language
or picking up cultural differences,you're, you're learning
even math based skills,like from converting
(02:54):
currency or,
You're learning historynaturally just from being in an area
that has a lot of history.
Yeah.
That holistic kind of philosophyor educational,
mindset,is definitely part of worldschooling.
Yeah, I would expand on that.
(03:15):
And the idea of, like, holistic as, like,
you know, when you go somewhere,you're not just doing
the travel experience, but there's
background research that you door there's,
discussions that you engage
in as a familyas you're experiencing this thing.
(03:36):
So I would I would see an example.
What from our own travelsis we spent three months in Spain
in like the Andalucia regionin southern Spain.
And so while we were there, one ofthe things, one of the things I love about
southern Spain is just the influences
from other cultures,that you can find in there.
(03:58):
And so we kind of leaned into thatbecause we, we were seeing like
Roman ruins and we were seeinglike Arabic architecture.
And it made us more curious about like,
well, what's the historyof this part of the world?
And so we as a family,while we were there, like the kids
and I read a book about, oh, several booksabout like the Romans and, well,
(04:23):
even beforethe Romans, like the Phoenicians
and the Romans and the,
Arab Golden Age and and then as we were,
you know, spending time in Spainin that part of Spain, we were like,
oh, look,this, this building that we are seeing
(04:43):
is from that period in time or like these,
salt the, the ruins of the salt factorywas when the Phoenicians were here.
So they could make that connection.
And that's how I see, like,the holistic part of education
being because it's like, it'snot just the travel that you're
you're reading bookstogether, you're watching videos together.
(05:05):
You're like talking about,
how how those, things relate
to, you know, yourself and, and,
the place and the history of that place.
What about childhood education?
Because I think,
(05:26):
I think traditional travel,
what we think of travel, especially inlike Western countries, is that,
you know, go on vacation for two weeksand the parents plan it.
Yeah. The parents plan everything.
And they kind of
whether you go with the tour guyor the parents or your tour guide,
if the kids don't really get a lot ofsay in that, how is that different?
(05:48):
And world's going to you?
Yeah, I think at least for, for
us, we do try and,
make it more child led.
I think that actually makesthe worldschooling experience
so much betterbecause everyone in the family gets a say.
Everyone in the family is like investedin this,
(06:08):
this trip and experience. So,
one of the things we make, one of the wayswe make
worldschooling more childled is when we get to a new place.
I mean, you and I, we usually end up like
looking ahead of time, being like,oh, you can do this and you can do this,
you know, blah, blah, blah.
Like, but we'll have a family meetingand we'll list out all the things.
(06:32):
So it's like partially child led, I guess.
So it list out all of the things that,
that we could potentially do whilewe're there.
And as a family or, like, everybodykind of gets a chance to choose, like,
this is the one thing that we,we have to do that we want to do.
Yeah.
And then that sort of
(06:54):
informs how the trip will go.
Yeah.
And what's interesting is,
now that we're if we're in placesthat we're more familiar
with, like if we've gone back to placesMexico, for example, is a great example.
Yeah.
A great example of thiswhere we've been to Mexico several times.
So when we go to Mexiconow, we can ask the kids
what what is somethingthat you want to do,
(07:16):
while we're hereand they have enough context
to kind of understand what it is there,what there is to do.
Yeah.
And that in those environments.
So I think that becomesa little bit more child.
And of course, when we'rehere in the United States,
like visiting family and say, San Diegoor something.
Yeah, there's a lot more context.They understand.
So then it can be a lot more child then.
(07:38):
Yeah.
One of the things I wanted tomention was just unschooling.
The term unschooling gets connected a lot,I think, with worldschooling.
I think that's just because unschooling.
If you're not familiar, unschoolingis a philosophy of homeschooling.
And unschooling
is tied a lot with worldschooling,just because I think there's a lot
(07:59):
of families that are un schoolersin the world's going community.
For sure.
It can meanit can mean something significant to you
or can mean nothing to you.
It just kind of depends onif you've already
subscribed to the notion of unschooling.
Or if you if you don't,
some people don't like the ideaof unschooling as well.
(08:22):
How would you define unschooling?
Well, there'sI mean, it's a broad range, right.
And and I think looselyI would say that it's,
learning without like a
standard curriculum or a standard,
philosophy
(08:42):
is, is how I would say unschooling is.
Yeah.
And even at that,
I'm sure there's going to belots of listeners that disagree with.
No, you find it wrong.
Which is fine with that.
That's that's the great partabout like a term like that.
Yeah.
It's the only world is goingto is very similar.
It can be defined in all sorts of ways.
(09:03):
I think we took it.
I think we had, more of an unschooling,a slightly unschooling approach.
When we were traveling.
Would you say that or would you.
For some, for some things,I think we did have a curriculum
specifically for certain things like math.
Math and, and writing and, and stuff.Yeah.
So I think and we were alsomore structured about our day.
(09:26):
That's when it came to learning.
And so I think we probably itdepends on the day, the week, the context.
I think we wouldsometimes be a little bit more unschooling
and sometimes be a little bit more towardscurriculum led.
Yeah.
Or structured learning, I.
HeardI've heard the term eclectic unschooling.
Maybe that's sort of what we fit into.
(09:48):
But anyway, unschoolingis also probably don't
like to fit into different boxesto exactly.
It's it's a great I mean it'sa, it's a great fit for well, schooling
which is I think why there are so many unschoolers worldschooling
that that kind of leads me to like
how wouldyou overall define worldschooling?
(10:08):
Like what
what philosophy do you think
worldschooling kind of fits into?
And like I mentioned at the beginning
of this episode, like anything, you know,you can adapt worldschooling
to any kind of educational philosophyand, and mix and match to.
That's what I like about it is like you,we have tried different things.
(10:30):
As we were traveling, like we werein a worldschooling community in Mexico
and had the kidsdo Waldorf school for a while.
And then sometimes, like Clinton,I used to be in childcare.
So we do a lot more like child
lead type of, learning anyway,because that's
(10:51):
sort of how we were trained,when we were in childcare.
Yeah, I would say also
our kids or our backgroundscome from traditional school backgrounds.
And weare our kids are in a traditional school
right now, the traditional public schoolhere in the United States.
And so I think the one thing to understandabout worldschooling is very flexible.
(11:15):
Unschooling is very flexible,but the thing I would encourage families
who also come from traditional schoolbackgrounds is to be flexible.
If you have a chance to do a gap year,
you have a chance to do what's going,even if it's only for a month or two.
Yeah.
Like, take that opportunity to experiment,talk to other people.
(11:37):
Like,
if you're worried at all about, oh,my kid's going to fall behind
in the public school systemor the private school system.
Try to try to let go of that a little bit
and experiment and be flexiblewith your learning approach. And,
we have not
seen in all the families we've met,
(11:59):
we have not seen any kid who goes backinto the public school system be behind.
If anything, they are ahead.
Now, there may be a couple subjectsthat maybe they need to either
catch up onor that they need to brush up on.
But we've seen kidsgo back to the public school system,
even kidswho have been out of public school system
(12:20):
for almost their entire lives go backinto, say, high school, for example,
and be able to adapt fairly quickly.
And that comes down to a lot of the thingswe've talked about in the previous
episode was like resilience andsome of the key skills and adaptability.
Yeah, yeah.
If you're kind of curious about like,you know, some of the,
(12:41):
just in general,like how to, how to get started with,
worldschooling or like,how more about these, like, educational
philosophies and stuffthat I have a lot of articles about it on,
my website, in particular,I do have an article that's focusing on
how to become a worldschooling family,
(13:02):
and that covers like these types of,like, mindset shifts that, that
you should take as, as a, you know,
from just travelingversus like worldschooling.
In the US, I want to mention.
Nope. That's it. Okay.
Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining uson this episode of Worldschooling.
(13:25):
Q&A with Astrid and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notesfor any links we mentioned in the episode,
and visit my website,
TheWanderingDaughter.com, to dive deeperinto worldschooling and family travel.
If you like what you hear,
please consider supporting The WanderingDaughter on Patreon.
It really helps us outand keeps the show going.
You'll also get exclusiveperks like episode transcripts,
(13:47):
additional resources, accessto office hours with us, and more.
You can find us on Spotifyor the podcast app of your choice.
If you're listening to this on Spotify,you can tap the bell icon to get notified
when new episodes come out.
And if you like this episode,please give us a five star review.
It really helps new people find our show.
If you're watching this on YouTube, don'tforget to like
(14:07):
and subscribe and tap the bellicon to get notified of new episodes.
You can follow me on Instagram
at Wander Daughter or follow The WanderingDaughter on Facebook.
Links tothese are also in the show. Notes.
If you have any worldschooling questionsyou'd like us to answer for future
episodes, feel free to throw themin the comments or send us a message
(14:27):
at The Wandering daughter.com/podcast.
Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
And that's how I seelike the holistic part of education being,
because it's like it'snot just the travel that you're
you're reading bookstogether, you're watching videos together.
You're like talking about,
how how those, things relate
to, you know, yourself and, and,
(00:21):
the place and the history of that place.
This is World. School in Q&A.
I'm Astrid, creatorof The Wandering Daughter.
As a traveling family,we spent four years traveling
full time to over 18countries and six continents.
Wherever we go, we try to learn
as much as we canabout the countries and cultures we visit.
(00:43):
While we didn't coined the termwe like to call this worldschooling.
Using the world as our classroom.
Each week, my husband Clint, and I willanswer one question about worldschooling
and share our experiencesof traveling the world with our kids.
Ready to get started?
Great. Let's dive in.
(01:08):
So today's question is
what educational philosophies align best
with worldschooling?
This is, a tough question, I think.
I'll let you start.
Since you've done a lot more of theresearch around, educational philosophies.
Well, I think,
(01:29):
in some ways,
any kind of,
educational philosophycan align with worldschooling
because it's so flexibleand adaptable. But,
I think one of the things that we loveabout worldschooling,
and if you're kind of the of this mindset,
is just the experiential nature of it.
(01:52):
You know, it'snot just reading about things in a book.
It's seeing it with your eyesand touching.
You know, sometimes it'slike touching things or or experiencing
it feeling like feeling thatwith all of your senses.
So if you're,
(02:13):
if you're more in line with that,
like educational philosophy of, like
learning is experiential based,then I think worldschooling,
lends itself to that.
Yeah.
I think one that I would say is,
kind of a holistic experience.
(02:34):
Immersive is another way of sayingit, really,
really learning from just being immersed
in a context. So,
whether that's, you know,you're picking up language
or picking up cultural differences,you're, you're learning
even math based skills,like from converting
(02:54):
currency or,
You're learning historynaturally just from being in an area
that has a lot of history.
Yeah.
That holistic kind of philosophyor educational,
mindset,is definitely part of worldschooling.
Yeah, I would expand on that.
(03:15):
And the idea of, like, holistic as, like,
you know, when you go somewhere,you're not just doing
the travel experience, but there's
background research that you door there's,
discussions that you engage
in as a familyas you're experiencing this thing.
(03:36):
So I would I would see an example.
What from our own travelsis we spent three months in Spain
in like the Andalucia regionin southern Spain.
And so while we were there, one ofthe things, one of the things I love about
southern Spain is just the influences
from other cultures,that you can find in there.
(03:58):
And so we kind of leaned into thatbecause we, we were seeing like
Roman ruins and we were seeinglike Arabic architecture.
And it made us more curious about like,
well, what's the historyof this part of the world?
And so we as a family,while we were there, like the kids
and I read a book about, oh, several booksabout like the Romans and, well,
(04:23):
even beforethe Romans, like the Phoenicians
and the Romans and the,
Arab Golden Age and and then as we were,
you know, spending time in Spainin that part of Spain, we were like,
oh, look,this, this building that we are seeing
(04:43):
is from that period in time or like these,
salt the, the ruins of the salt factorywas when the Phoenicians were here.
So they could make that connection.
And that's how I see, like,the holistic part of education
being because it's like, it'snot just the travel that you're
you're reading bookstogether, you're watching videos together.
(05:05):
You're like talking about,
how how those, things relate
to, you know, yourself and, and,
the place and the history of that place.
What about childhood education?
Because I think,
(05:26):
I think traditional travel,
what we think of travel, especially inlike Western countries, is that,
you know, go on vacation for two weeksand the parents plan it.
Yeah. The parents plan everything.
And they kind of
whether you go with the tour guyor the parents or your tour guide,
if the kids don't really get a lot ofsay in that, how is that different?
(05:48):
And world's going to you?
Yeah, I think at least for, for
us, we do try and,
make it more child led.
I think that actually makesthe worldschooling experience
so much betterbecause everyone in the family gets a say.
Everyone in the family is like investedin this,
(06:08):
this trip and experience. So,
one of the things we make, one of the wayswe make
worldschooling more childled is when we get to a new place.
I mean, you and I, we usually end up like
looking ahead of time, being like,oh, you can do this and you can do this,
you know, blah, blah, blah.
Like, but we'll have a family meetingand we'll list out all the things.
(06:32):
So it's like partially child led, I guess.
So it list out all of the things that,
that we could potentially do whilewe're there.
And as a family or, like, everybodykind of gets a chance to choose, like,
this is the one thing that we,we have to do that we want to do.
Yeah.
And then that sort of
(06:54):
informs how the trip will go.
Yeah.
And what's interesting is,
now that we're if we're in placesthat we're more familiar
with, like if we've gone back to placesMexico, for example, is a great example.
Yeah.
A great example of thiswhere we've been to Mexico several times.
So when we go to Mexiconow, we can ask the kids
what what is somethingthat you want to do,
(07:16):
while we're hereand they have enough context
to kind of understand what it is there,what there is to do.
Yeah.
And that in those environments.
So I think that becomesa little bit more child.
And of course, when we'rehere in the United States,
like visiting family and say, San Diegoor something.
Yeah, there's a lot more context.They understand.
So then it can be a lot more child then.
(07:38):
Yeah.
One of the things I wanted tomention was just unschooling.
The term unschooling gets connected a lot,I think, with worldschooling.
I think that's just because unschooling.
If you're not familiar, unschoolingis a philosophy of homeschooling.
And unschooling
is tied a lot with worldschooling,just because I think there's a lot
(07:59):
of families that are un schoolersin the world's going community.
For sure.
It can meanit can mean something significant to you
or can mean nothing to you.
It just kind of depends onif you've already
subscribed to the notion of unschooling.
Or if you if you don't,
some people don't like the ideaof unschooling as well.
(08:22):
How would you define unschooling?
Well, there'sI mean, it's a broad range, right.
And and I think looselyI would say that it's,
learning without like a
standard curriculum or a standard,
philosophy
(08:42):
is, is how I would say unschooling is.
Yeah.
And even at that,
I'm sure there's going to belots of listeners that disagree with.
No, you find it wrong.
Which is fine with that.
That's that's the great partabout like a term like that.
Yeah.
It's the only world is goingto is very similar.
It can be defined in all sorts of ways.
(09:03):
I think we took it.
I think we had, more of an unschooling,a slightly unschooling approach.
When we were traveling.
Would you say that or would you.
For some, for some things,I think we did have a curriculum
specifically for certain things like math.
Math and, and writing and, and stuff.Yeah.
So I think and we were alsomore structured about our day.
(09:26):
That's when it came to learning.
And so I think we probably itdepends on the day, the week, the context.
I think we wouldsometimes be a little bit more unschooling
and sometimes be a little bit more towardscurriculum led.
Yeah.
Or structured learning, I.
HeardI've heard the term eclectic unschooling.
Maybe that's sort of what we fit into.
(09:48):
But anyway, unschoolingis also probably don't
like to fit into different boxesto exactly.
It's it's a great I mean it'sa, it's a great fit for well, schooling
which is I think why there are so many unschoolers worldschooling
that that kind of leads me to like
how wouldyou overall define worldschooling?
(10:08):
Like what
what philosophy do you think
worldschooling kind of fits into?
And like I mentioned at the beginning
of this episode, like anything, you know,you can adapt worldschooling
to any kind of educational philosophyand, and mix and match to.
That's what I like about it is like you,we have tried different things.
(10:30):
As we were traveling, like we werein a worldschooling community in Mexico
and had the kidsdo Waldorf school for a while.
And then sometimes, like Clinton,I used to be in childcare.
So we do a lot more like child
lead type of, learning anyway,because that's
(10:51):
sort of how we were trained,when we were in childcare.
Yeah, I would say also
our kids or our backgroundscome from traditional school backgrounds.
And weare our kids are in a traditional school
right now, the traditional public schoolhere in the United States.
And so I think the one thing to understandabout worldschooling is very flexible.
(11:15):
Unschooling is very flexible,but the thing I would encourage families
who also come from traditional schoolbackgrounds is to be flexible.
If you have a chance to do a gap year,
you have a chance to do what's going,even if it's only for a month or two.
Yeah.
Like, take that opportunity to experiment,talk to other people.
(11:37):
Like,
if you're worried at all about, oh,my kid's going to fall behind
in the public school systemor the private school system.
Try to try to let go of that a little bit
and experiment and be flexiblewith your learning approach. And,
we have not
seen in all the families we've met,
(11:59):
we have not seen any kid who goes backinto the public school system be behind.
If anything, they are ahead.
Now, there may be a couple subjectsthat maybe they need to either
catch up onor that they need to brush up on.
But we've seen kidsgo back to the public school system,
even kidswho have been out of public school system
(12:20):
for almost their entire lives go backinto, say, high school, for example,
and be able to adapt fairly quickly.
And that comes down to a lot of the thingswe've talked about in the previous
episode was like resilience andsome of the key skills and adaptability.
Yeah, yeah.
If you're kind of curious about like,you know, some of the,
(12:41):
just in general,like how to, how to get started with,
worldschooling or like,how more about these, like, educational
philosophies and stuffthat I have a lot of articles about it on,
my website, in particular,I do have an article that's focusing on
how to become a worldschooling family,
(13:02):
and that covers like these types of,like, mindset shifts that, that
you should take as, as a, you know,
from just travelingversus like worldschooling.
In the US, I want to mention.
Nope. That's it. Okay.
Well, that's all for today.
Thank you for joining uson this episode of Worldschooling.
(13:25):
Q&A with Astrid and Clint.
Be sure to check out the show notesfor any links we mentioned in the episode,
and visit my website,
TheWanderingDaughter.com, to dive deeperinto worldschooling and family travel.
If you like what you hear,
please consider supporting The WanderingDaughter on Patreon.
It really helps us outand keeps the show going.
You'll also get exclusiveperks like episode transcripts,
(13:47):
additional resources, accessto office hours with us, and more.
You can find us on Spotifyor the podcast app of your choice.
If you're listening to this on Spotify,you can tap the bell icon to get notified
when new episodes come out.
And if you like this episode,please give us a five star review.
It really helps new people find our show.
If you're watching this on YouTube, don'tforget to like
(14:07):
and subscribe and tap the bellicon to get notified of new episodes.
You can follow me on Instagram
at Wander Daughter or follow The WanderingDaughter on Facebook.
Links tothese are also in the show. Notes.
If you have any worldschooling questionsyou'd like us to answer for future
episodes, feel free to throw themin the comments or send us a message
(14:27):
at The Wandering daughter.com/podcast.
Until next time, happy travels. Bye.
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