Children’s spirituality: personal reflections on International Journal of Children’s Spirituality (IJCS)

As quite many journals under major publishers such as Taylor and Francis are now running in both on-line and print versions, there may be interesting questions on the role of editorials. In a journal where I have been engaged as one of the executive editors, I remembered that in the past I could choose some accepted articles (already appeared online) to make a coherent theme and then write an editorial for an issue. It is quite an interesting but challenging task as it is not written as an editorial for a special issue of a journal. In addition, the journal papers are coming in, often revised and then accepted sporadically and sometimes unpredictably in terms of time and responses of authors, reviewers and editorial board members or associate editors especially the Editor and Book Review Editor who coordinates book reviews.

Rust (2018) quoted Purmalo and highlighted the importance of editorials to focus on issues that are crafted to ‘provoke conversation rather than to represent a specific viewpoint’ (p. 600). Moreover, she also indicated the function of honouring the scholarly contributions of these authors and the reviewers who spent time providing feedback and considering the papers as appropriate for publication in journals. Looking back to my first year of editorship of International Journal of Children’s Spirituality (IJCS) in 2020, I would sincerely thank all old and new editorial board members, Dr Tony Eaude (Book Review Editor), Ms Abi Amey (Portfolio Manager), members of College of Reviewers and other reviewers for their hard work and valuable contributions.

In my past editorials, I have not quoted and cited the papers just accepted and published for an issue of IJCS partly because these papers altogether might not be very coherent in terms of concepts, themes or methodologies while individually they have made remarkable contributions and useful discourses to the literature of children’s spirituality. It is also part of the reason that I would like to get acquainted to the ‘protocols’ of the IJCS’s editorial system as well as the ‘culture’ of the editorial process. Under this backdrop, my editorials tend to refer to the works of some editorial board members as well as some of the possibly interesting educational issues related to children’s spirituality as my academic background is more from curriculum and educational studies (Lee 2020a, 2020b).

In this editorial, I would like to take a snapshot of some of the figures of IJCS between 2009 and 2019 and offer some of my preliminary observations of the published papers in volume 25 (2020).

As shown in Table 1, it is expected that keywords such as spirituality, children and children’s spirituality as well as spiritual well-being, well-being and spiritual development tend to be frequently used for indexing or highlighting the key themes or concepts in the published in IJCS or research on child spirituality (de Souza, Bone, and Watson 2016). In past published articles, there were terms such as children, youth and adolescents. According to The Convention on the Rights of the Child: The children’s version (UNICEF 2019), ‘A child is any person under the age of 18’. In addition, the children have the rights, among many others, to have ‘life survival and development’, ‘freedom of thought and religion’, ‘sharing thoughts freely’ and ‘respect for children’s views’ by adults (UNICEF 2019). As regards the meaning of adolescence, it refers to transitional phase between childhood and adulthood (Csikszentmihalyi 2020) and adolescent is defined as any individual between ages 10 and 19 by World Health Organization (WHO). It is notable that ‘youth’ is defined as the age group between ages 15 and 24 and ‘young people’ as individuals having the age range 10–24 years, respectively, according to the World Health Organization (WHO) (Retrieved 3 January 2021 from https://www.who.int/southeastasia/health-topics/adolescent-health). For the IJCS, the scope of the journal covers children and young people and therefore for the age range, we might consider issues related to and/or pertinent to individuals probably any person below the age of 24 (Retrieved 3 January 2021 from https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?show=aimsScope&journalCode=cijc20). Other more frequently cited keywords of the articles are related to education, religion, religiosity, God, religious education and spiritual education. Some articles have adopted other keywords such as relationship and identity. To a certain extent, these keywords frequently appeared in the abstracts echo the three categories of research on children’s spirituality from 2005 to 2015 which encompass spiritual meaning-making and relationships to/with God, children’s spirituality in education as well as identity formation and sense of self (Mata-McMahon 2016, 140). From a developmental and spiritual perspective, there are a lot of changes when a child develops from infancy to adolescence. Surr (2014, 128), for example, pointed out that at the stage of early childhood, children might explore ‘boundaries between reality, imagination and spirituality’ while at the early adolescence, parents and adult mentors’ support for children’s wholeness is important (p. 129). Gellel (2018), for example, advocates and implements a symbolic literacy approach through interdisciplinary pedagogy for primary students in the Maltese context. Some scholars further emphasise the aspects of ‘transcendence, fidelity, transformation and action’ as well as elements of intentional living for adolescent spirituality (King and Boyatzis 2015; Gellel 2019, 124). Yust, Watson, and Hyde (2017, 107) further advise that if family support could not be adequately available for children’s nurturance of spirituality at an early stage, educators, religious leaders and social service providers have to devote a lot of care and extra efforts in filling in the gap later. At the adolescence stage, programmes and framework with notions of ‘cultivation of moral reasoning, ethical decision-making, virtuous character, and/or religious confirmation’ are likely to be conducive to adolescent spirituality (Yust 2016, 81).

Table 1. Frequency of keywords appeared in the International Journal of Children’s Spirituality (IJCS) (2009–2019)

No.	Keywords	Count
1.	Spirituality	103
2.	Children	34
3.	Children’s spirituality	18
4.	Education	12
5.	Religious education	12
6.	Adolescents	11
7.	Spiritual development	11
8.	Religion	10
9.	Spiritual well-being	10
10.	Well‐being	8
11.	Youth	8
12.	Identity	7
13.	Spiritual education	7
14.	God	5
15.	Relationship	5
16.	Religiosity	5

In Volume 25 (2020) of IJCS, a total of 15 papers contributed by scholars from different parts of world such as Australia, New Zealand, Thailand, Singapore, Iran, Belgium, Germany, the United Kingdom, South Africa and the United States were published excluding book reviews and editorials. It is not straightforward to cluster or group these papers as some of them could have some keywords or themes slightly overlapping in nature. Two papers, for example, have ‘context’ in their titles or sub-titles (Capitano and Naudé 2020; Dillen 2020) while another two papers touch upon the word ‘context/contexts’ in their abstracts (Hyde 2020, 197; Robinson 2020, 254).

It is noteworthy that some scholars such as Haugen (2018, 307) highlight the nature of nurturing children’s spirituality being ‘highly diverse, and context dependent’ and spiritual development pertaining to ‘meaning-making, enhanced awareness and connectedness’. Children’s constructions of their identities are often shaped by culture and traditions (Eaude 2019, 1). A paper has a focus on the connections between relationships and context as well as the influences of parents, peers, the educational environment and geographical location in shaping South African adolescents’ spirituality identity development (Capitano and Naudé 2020) while another paper highlights the context of a hospital or after a migration experience of children from a postcolonial theological perspective (Dillen 2020). Robinson’s paper (2020, 254) discusses in Western Australia the early years’ educators’ perceptions and practices in promoting children’s (3 and 4 years old) spirituality in faith-based early learning centres.

Spiritual formation and spiritual development of children and young people may hinge on their own identity development which may have different forms of expressions and various sources of influences (Ubani and Murtonen 2018, 103–104). Brailey and Parker (2020) paper examines the identity formation of Christian young adult from the perspective of Christian mentoring as a tool. de Kock (2020, 224) explores learning in encounter in Flanders (Belgium) and youth’s spiritual development in Protestant evangelical faith communities. Hyde (2020, 197) provides a detailed account of using the evocative method of phenomenological inquiry and the anecdotes of adults as a powerful approach to unpacking children’s expressions of spirituality under different contexts. Livingston (2020) instead explores youth athletes’ and their parents’ perceptions of the competitive environment as well as possible influence of church attendance on children’s spirituality.

Three papers seem to be more related to spiritual care and spiritual needs of children with diseases or those with serious or chronical illness. Parkinson, Bray, and Kool’s (2020) paper reveals that health professionals in New Zealand might have diverse views on the meaning and practices of spiritual care. Some of the findings suggest the importance of understanding child development and family’s culture as well as the potentials of education and peer and self-reflection for enhancing the perspectives and practices of health professionals in spiritual care (Parkinson, Bray, and Kool 2020, pp. 64–65). In the paper by Thanattheerakul, Tangvoraphonkchai, and Pimsa (2020), the perceptions of spiritual needs and practice of chronically ill children and primary caregivers in the Isan region of Thailand are studied. The results reveal that their perceptions are to some extent related to the influence of Buddhism and Thai Isan traditions. The paper on the spiritual life and anxiety of children with immunodeficiency investigates the effect of prayer painting and the results tend to suggest prayer painting as a practice for reducing anxiety for these children (Zarei et al. 2020).

Some papers broadly pertain to materials and strategies for accessing and understanding children’s religious concepts and spiritual formation. The study by Kaiser and Riegel (2020) indicates that boys and girls tend to use technical objects and natural motifs, respectively, to express their concepts of God which may be affected by gender-stereotypes. Another study on young people by Sewell (2020) using narrative approach and the theoretical perspective of theological aesthetics highlights the potentials of composite methods and visual strategies underpinned by diverse theoretical bases that could help unpack adolescent’s spiritual narration and well-being. In a digital world where the use of technology is more prevalent, digital photographs taken by children followed by conversations could provide a powerful means for understanding children’s spirituality (Harris 2018). The paper by Lucey and Lin (2020) discuss the introduction of critical compassion as an aspect of spirituality to the teaching and learning digital citizenship. More research could be conducted in the areas where technology might be employed to facilitate the children’s spiritual development and cyber spirituality (Yust, Hyde, and Ota 2010).

In the literature of Christian writings, there is a concept of attentive presence for knowing God, self and others and nurturing integrated wholeness (Johnsen 2018, 53–54). The paper by Morris (2020) investigates the possible links between attentive presence and spiritual flourishing of children in the curatorial of worship through Participatory Action Research. In the East, Wu and Tan (2020) propose for preschool education a Neo-Confucian curriculum based on the notions of attentiveness and the writings of Zhu Xi around the concept of jing which is conducive to self-cultivation and the development of moral values. Jing proposed by Zhu Xi could be called single-minded and reverential attention (Tan 2019, 360–361) which is to some extent related to the reverence for interconnected life (Angle 2017). More dialogues could be engaged to discuss the implications of attentive presence, jing, other forms of reverential attention or mindfulness (Tan 2019) for life, religious and spiritual education.

Watson (2017, 12) asserts that in a post-secular spiritual landscape, spirituality connotes some key values such as spiritual diversity and inclusivity, every individual/child’s human right to spiritual voice (because he/she still matters), an emphasis on the whole child (and person) and spiritual practice. Reading back and through these published papers with pleasure and respect, Volume 25 and other previous volumes of IJCS have provided us with a lot of diversified and enriched research findings as well as multi-disciplinary or interdisciplinary, thought-provoking ideas for further research and development in life, moral, religious and spiritual education for children and young people’s spiritual development and spiritual well-being under diversified contexts.

Disclaimer

The views presented in this editorial are personal only and do not necessarily represent those of The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) and The Education University of Hong Kong, and do not commit the respective organisations.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank Dr Huang Jing, Mr Zhang Xingzhou and Ms Sharon Siu and Ms Hilton Cheung for their kind assistance in preparing this manuscript. The frequency of authors appeared in the International Journal of Children’s Spirituality (IJCS) from 2009-2019 (including editorials) is checked and we would like to acknowledge the following authors/contributors with the frequency ranged from 5 to 32: Adrian Gellel, Ann M. Trousdale, Brendan Hyde, Cathy Ota, Jacqueline Watson, Jennifer Mata-McMahon, John Surr, Karen-Marie Yust, Kate Adams, Kathleen Harris, Marian de Souza, Ruth Wills, and Tony Eaude (in alphabetical order).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.