A conceptualization of children’s spirituality arising out of recent research

Abstract

This paper presents a model of children’s spirituality which provided a structure for conducting some recent research and for analysing the findings. The model consisted of four dimensions of spirituality derived from the literature, namely consciousness, relationality, roadmap and identity, with a central integrating concept of worldview. The hermeneutic phenomenological analysis of material gained from semi-structured interviews with state primary school children led to the conclusion that these four dimensions are closely interlinked, and provided some evidence that children’s spirituality progresses towards a meaningful, integrated sense of Identity. This led to the production of a modified form of this model which provided a progressing, multidimensional conceptual framework which complements the conceptualisations of other researchers in the field of children’s spirituality.

Keywords:

• spiritual development
• consciousness
• relationships
• identity