Spiritual Development in Public and Religious Schools: A Case Study

Abstract

This article addresses teachers' understanding of spiritual development in public and religious schools in Boston and Chicago. It examines how teachers define spiritual development in different educational contexts and looks at the way they relate spirituality to a number of factors including community, identity, and character. The data from the research indicates that teachers understood spiritual development within the specific environment of their school but that they all located the need for spirituality within education as part of the reaction against the perceived negative side effects of modern society.