Spirituality, learning and personalisation: exploring the relationship between spiritual development and learning to learn in a faith-based secondary school

Abstract

In this paper we explore the relationship between spirituality and learning how to learn in a faith-based secondary school. The development of a spiritually grounded pedagogy is a way of explicitly attending to spiritual development in teaching, learning and curriculum. The research described here comprises a personalised enquiry project in which students attend to four ‘stations’ in a learning journey; these focus on their identity and story, foster learning dispositions and values, develop their knowledge, skills and understanding, and engage them with issues which are meaningful in their world. Three teacher researchers in a Church of England school implemented this pedagogy with two year-8 English classes and one year-9 French class. The findings from a pre- and post-intervention self-report ‘measure’ of learning power are synthesised with student and teacher interviews to explore the contribution this pedagogical approach makes to students’ spiritual development and learning.

Keywords:

• spiritual development
• personalised learning
• narrative learning
• enquiry-based learning

Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge funding from the Jerusalem Trust to undertake this research. We are also grateful to the headteacher and governors of the school in which the research was carried out for their support for the research and to the assistant headteacher, the three teachers who worked with us on the project and to all the students who participated.