Alternative education, also known as non-traditional education or educational alternative, describes a number of approaches to teaching and learning other than traditional publicly- or privately-run schools. These approaches can be applied to all students of all ages, from infancy to adulthood, and all levels of education.

Educational alternatives are often the result of education reform and are rooted in various philosophies that are fundamentally different from those of mainstream compulsory education. While some have strong political, scholarly, or philosophical orientations, others are more informal associations of teachers and students dissatisfied with certain aspects of mainstream education.

Educational alternatives, which include charter schools, alternative schools, independent schools, and home-based learning vary widely, but emphasize the value of small class size, close relationships between students and teachers, and a sense of community.

For some, especially in the United States, the term alternative refers to educational settings geared towards students whose needs cannot be met in the traditional school such as underachievers who do not qualify for special education, rather than educational alternatives for all students. Other words used in place of alternative by many educational professionals include non-traditional, non-conventional, or non-standardized, although these terms are used somewhat less frequently and sometimes have negative connotations as well as multiple meanings. Within the field of educational alternatives, words such as authentic, holistic, and progressive are frequently used as well, however, these words each have different meanings which are more specific or more ambiguous than simply alternative.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Overview

Over the 200-year course of compulsory education, various widely-scattered groups of critics have suggested that the education of young people should involve much more than simply molding them into future workers or citizens. The Swiss humanitarian Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi, the American transcendentalists Amos Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Henry David Thoreau, the founders of progressive education John Dewey and Francis Parker, and educational pioneers such as Maria Montessori and Rudolf Steiner (founder of the Waldorf schools), among others, all insisted that education should be understood as the art of cultivating the moral, emotional, physical, psychological, and spiritual aspects of the developing child.

More recently, social critics such as John Caldwell Holt, Paul Goodman, Frederick Mayer and Ivan Illich have examined education from more individualist, anarchist, and libertarian perspectives, that is, critiques of the ways that they feel conventional education subverts democracy by molding young people's understandings. Other writers, from the revolutionary Paulo Freire to American educators like Herbert Kohl and Jonathan Kozol, have criticized mainstream Western education from the viewpoint of their varied left-liberal and radical politics.

In the indian context one can see from the early part of the 20th century itself many thinkers have talked and introduced radically different ways of education. For example, Shantiniketan of Rabindranath Tagore, the ideal of basic school by Mahatma Gandhi etc are primary examples. Any one interested in alternative initiatives in India also may read articles in the following link In recent years, some of the major initiatives are schools like sarang, sita school, Kanavu, timbaktoo collective, etc where formal schooling is not the objective. Similarly even at higher levels of education one does find initiatives like multiversity.com that have built upon the ideal of open knowledge. in the last few decades something that has coupled education is environment. In such a situation, education is seen more holistically than just factory schooling system.

Another quality that distinguishes educational alternatives from their traditional counterparts is their diversity. Unlike traditional privately run and publicly run schools which are remarkably similar in many aspects to one another, most alternatives do not subscribe to a "one model fits all" approach. Each educational alternative attempts to create and maintain its own methods and approaches to learning and teaching. Practitioners aspire to realize that there are many ways of conceiving and understanding the needs of the whole child in balance with the needs of the community and society at large. Thus, each alternative approach is founded upon, sometimes drastically, different beliefs about what it means to live, learn, and grow in today's society.

One aspect that distinguishes educational alternatives from each other is the curricula taught within their respective settings. Across these alternatives, we find that traditional subjects such as reading, writing, and mathematics are not always taught separately but integrated into the overall learning experience. Other subjects like environmental education, ecology, or spirituality, which are often not found in more traditional school curricula, emerge from the interests of learners and teachers in a more open-ended learning community. For the most part, however, subject matter is only indirectly related to the root philosophies and educational approaches utilized in many alternative education systems. Often alternative approaches to education will vary considerably within a single type of alternative from one cultural or geographic setting to another.

Alternative School: Any public or private school having a special curriculum, especially an elementary or secondary school offering a more flexible program of study than a traditional school.

Autodidacticism: self-education or self-directed learning

Blended Learning: Combination of multiple approaches to learning

Charter School: Publicly funded elementary or secondary schools that have been freed from some of the rules, regulations, and statutes that apply to other public schools, in exchange for some type of accountability for producing certain results, which are set forth in each charter school's charter.

Computer-Based Training: Type of education in which the student learns by executing special training programs on a computer.

Coyote Teaching: Method of teaching and mentoring made popular by Tom Brown, Jr. and Jon Young

Deschooling: Belief that schools and other learning institutions are incapable of providing the best possible education for some or most individuals. Belief that most people learn better by themselves, outside of an institutional environment, at a self-determined pace

Distance Education: Field of education that focuses on the pedagogy/andragogy, technology, and instructional systems design that are effectively incorporated in delivering education to students who are not physically "on site" to receive their education

E-Learning: Approach to facilitate and enhance learning through both computer and communications technology

Early Childhood Education: Covers the education of a child from the period from birth to eight years of age.

Education Voucher: Certificate by which parents are given the ability to pay for the education of their children at a school of their choice, rather than the public school to which they were assigned

Experiential Education: Process of actively engaging students in an authentic experience that will have benefits and consequences

Free School: Decentralized network in which skills, information, and knowledge are shared without hierarchy and the institutional environment of formal schooling

Gifted Education: Broad term for special practices, procedures and theories used in the education of children who have been identified as gifted or talented

Home schooling: Process by which children are educated at home rather than in an institution such as a public or private school

Inquiry Education: Student-centered method of education focused on asking questions

Instructional Theory: Discipline that focuses on how to structure material for promoting the education of humans, particularly youth

Montessori Method: Emphasizes the uniqueness of each child and recognizes that children are different from adults in the way they develop and think; discourages traditional measurements of achievement (grades, tests) as negative competition that is damaging to the inner growth of children

Online Tutoring: Process by which knowledge is imparted from a tutor or knowledge provider or expert to a student or knowledge recipient over the Internet

Outdoor Education: Refers to organized learning that takes place in the outdoors

School Refusal: Refusal to attend school, due to emotional distress

Special Education: Educational alternative that focuses on the teaching of students with academic, behavioral, health, or physical needs that cannot sufficiently be met using traditional educational programs or techniques.

Umbrella School: Alternative education school which serves to oversee the Home schooling of children to fulfil government-mandated requirements regarding education

Universal Preschool: Notion that access to preschool should be available to families similar to Kindergarten

Videobook: Form of online training that delivers web-based training via downloadable training videos

Vocational Education: Prepares learners for careers that are based in manual or practical activities, traditionally non-academic and directly related to a specific trade, occupation or vocation

Waldorf Education: Considers child development as a process of the child's soul and spirit incarnating into a developing living, physical organism