Children’s life and spirituality development and their educations: sensing, spaces, and sources of influence

Inspired by Fisher (2011), Hay and Nye (1998), Hyde (2008), Tirri (2009), Trousdale (2005), Willis (2012) and many other scholars cited in this editorial and beyond, three S, namely Sensing, Spaces and Sources of influences are initially proposed to inform children’s life and spirituality education. There could be at least two broad interpretations of spirituality, one associated with secular spirituality (Meehan 2002, 292) under the humanist approach that implies the search for meaning, identity, and place, and for an individual in universal human experiences (Grajczonek 2010, 5–6). In this space, spirituality is prone to be associated with connectedness, wholeness or intrapersonal and interpersonal relationships, and nature or the world but not necessarily concerned with God, Divine or an Ultimate (Grajczonek 2010, 5; Eaude 2005). At the end of the spectrum lies the spirituality linked with religious understanding within the space of faith and religious contexts. Bradford (1999, 3) advocated three facets of spirituality with a holistic approach that includes human, devotional, and practical spirituality. Practical spirituality is connected and developed, as an ongoing and cyclical process, with everyday life experiences (Bradford 1995, 8 cited in Sharpe 1997, 33). There are also scholars who make reference to Habermas’s (2001, 9) philosophy advocates spirituality as expression of postsecular religiosity and highlights individuals’ initiative to search life meaning and make sense of life themselves without answers provided by the church (Tirri 2009, 248; Ubani and Tirri 2006).

There are different psychological and related perspectives on spirituality research that includes the notions of spiritual intelligence (Gardner 1983; Zohar and Marshall 2000; Tirri 2009, 246) and spiritual sensitivity (Tirri, Nokelainen, and Ubani 2006). For spiritual intelligence, there could be valuable contributions from ancient wisdom and eastern mysticism (Sisk 2016a, 183) towards an inter-connected world as well as cosmic whole, the Creator and the Creative Force (Sisk 2016b, 196). There exist many ways of strengthening spirituality for learning and enhancing spiritual intelligence such as development of a sense of community, consideration of personal goals, desires and wants and emphasis on love and compassion (Sisk 2016b, 202).

Children spirituality was elucidated by Hay and Nye (1998, 119–124; cited in de Assis 2021, 13) as ‘intentional and natural process of relating to the world, to all things animate and inanimate, to others, including a Divine Other, and the self’. They propose, from the perspective of children’s spiritual sensitivity (Tirri 2009, 247), three components of relational consciousness, namely awareness sensing (of immediateness), mystery sensing (of awe and wonder) and values sensing (of moral values) (Hyde 2008). In addition, there has been an identification of community sensing (Stoyles et al. 2012, 207; de Assis 2021, 13–14). According to Nye (2017, 6, 2018), spiritual awareness of childhood reveals a relational character and consciousness that comprises child-people, child-people, child-self and child-God orientations and reflects in aspects such as mystery, delight, despair, wonder, the present moment, a sense of place, and connotative meaning-making (Nye 2018). These orientations or aspects to some extent resonates the dimensions of spiritual well-being (Fisher 2011) or domains of life education that entails self, communal/other people/society, matter/environment, and transcendence/Universe (adapted from Lee, Yip, and Kong 2021, 4; Lee 2020a). While Hay and Nye (1998)’s referral to God is under the Judeo-Christian tradition and faith, some others (Willis 2012, 1) refer the notion of relational consciousness more broadly as a ‘trans-religious’ concept based on the philosophical perspectives of Martin Buber and Georg Hegel (de Assis 2021, 13) or ‘connectedness’ (Tacey 2000; Grajczonek 2010, 6). Many scholars have asserted that child is a spiritual child (Hay and Nye 2006) and spirituality is natural for ‘children of all faiths or none’ (Nye 2017, 5). The paper by Ghane, Najjarian, and Pooyan (2021) studied the children books on the basis of Douglas Wood’s work that employs the Relational Consciousness theory (Hay and Nye 2006). It is notable that Willis (2012, 3) considered children’s experiences (spiritual) as their ‘being in the world’, relational consciousness as ‘part of the fabric of life and being’, and spiritual education as ‘both/and’ (instead of either/or) between truth and error, being and knowing, etc. (7).

The term ‘Spaces’ in this editorial, from different socio-cultural, religious and interdisciplinary perspectives, refer to many meanings. Space could be physical space, be it indoor or outdoor. There are, for example, through physical labour and emotional engagement with places, possibilities of young adults and children’s involvement in environmental volunteering could bring about spiritual awareness (Muirhead 2012, 149; Perriam 2015, 21).

Space may be related to geographical and spatial perspectives and spaces of spirituality might be explored ‘from the body to the global’ (Holloway and Valins 2002, 5; Bartolini, MacKian, and Pile 2018, 1). From a mindfulness perspective, space might mean ‘mind-space’ or ‘soul-space’ which may imply the awakening of ‘the subtle mystery of the sublime soul’ (O’Leary 2014, 432). There are also sacred spaces from some of the Christian perspectives such as the Sabbath and churches as well as sacred objects, events, practices and activities as possible sources of influences such as birth, marriage and death, viewing crucifix, listening to choral music and prayers where and when people engage and may experience religiosity or spirituality (adapted from Zinnbauer, Pargament, and Scott 1999, 907–908). There are also sacred places and landscapes of spiritual and therapeutic significance where participants may search for alleviation, connection and renewal (Perriam 2015, 30).

A qualitative study of young children’s spirituality in England revealed some findings that a range of activities in the outdoor and indoor spaces could be utilised for cultivating spiritual development in early development. Also, it is imperative to offer chances for children in developing positive relationships and experiencing a sense of awe, wonder and mystery, hence, to reflect on these experiences and so on (Hudson 2018, 108).

For sources possibly conducive to spiritual development, Worthington (2012) and colleagues suggested four possible sources of spirituality, namely theistic (related to religiosity), nature, human (for example, through caring for the poor and needy), and transcendent (associated with feelings of smallness) (Westbrook et al. 2018, 126). From a curriculum perspective, Schwab’s (1973, pp. 502–504) suggested bodies of experiences or commonplaces of curriculum (Lee and Wong 1996, pp. 124–125; Lee 2020b), including subject matter, learners, milieus, teachers, and curriculum making, to some extent throw light on the curriculum development of life and spirituality education. Milieus, for example, could be related to sources and spaces that encompass school, classroom, family, community as well as religious, class, or ethnic groups (Schwab 1973, 503) while subject matter could be reflected by the content and values embedded in instructional materials (Lee and Wong 1996). The study by Bagherpur et al. (2021) revealed that spirituality-based problem solving positively and meaningfully influence students’ moral responsibility. Another paper in this issue by Saadatzadeh et al. (2022) illustrated the importance of Heavenly Gifts curriculum on cultivating children’s spiritual self-awareness.

In the early stage of children’s spiritual development, language learning how to read and speak under the support of parents and teachers could be beneficial. Children literature has been coined as one of the sources of influences or possibly an educational medium for shaping and nurturing children’s spiritual development. By analysing the late 20th century children’s books in relation to spirituality, religion and gender, Trousdale (2005, 74–75) suggested no definitive answer or clear patterns as the contents and embedded values were very complex. The study on spirituality in death-related literature for children identified three spiritual themes that entail meaningfulness, connectedness and transcendence (Corr 2004, 377). It is notable that some of these books related to death contain information of formal and informal memorial ritual and bereavement activities (378). Westenberg (2017) adopted the theoretical perspective of spiritual intelligence, consisting of self-awareness and understanding others, which are conducive to creative thinking, compassion, and connecting to other people (163) to analyse young adult fiction. There are good examples of novels in historical context or contemporary dystopian fictions to explore ideas among self, responsibility and justice (pp. 168–169). In some religions such as Islam, education is well integrated and closely related with aqidah or faith which refers to Al-Quran as the main source (Colina and Listiana 2021, 19). Al-Quran-based learning is important for the Muslims because of dogmatic, socio-cultural, political and historical aspects (Colina and Listiana 2021, 21). While children literature or books may have some religious, moral and/or spiritual connotations, African children’s literature might have the potentials of offering contributions to understanding African traditional folklore such as praying for rain and responses to environmental issues including climate change and fostering people’s harmonious interactions with nature which comprises various gifted animals (Chitando 2017).

David Csinos (2010) investigated the children’s spiritual styles and the findings demonstrated four ways of knowing God which were composed of a word-centred (p. 15), an emotion-centred (p. 19), a symbol-centred (p. 22) and an action-centred (p. 25) approach to spirituality respectively. There are possible complicated interactions, which need further research and reflection, among children’s and teachers’ cognitive and spiritual orientations, representations of gender, religions, spirituality and values, prior and new experiences what they could bring in and from children books (adapted from Trousdale 2005, 75). Some questions could be used for educators to reflect upon and guide the discussion of children’s books about and for life, religious and spiritual education (selected and modified from Trousdale 2005, 75–76; Peterson and Seligman 2004; Westenberg 2017):

• What dimensions of life values and spirituality are explored?

• How the author depicts the religious and spiritual beliefs and practices explicitly or implicitly?

• Does the book promote a sense of possible gender roles? What are the admirable qualities, character strengths and virtues (Peterson and Seligman 2004) portrayed in males and females?

• Does the book stimulate readers’ thoughts and discussions in terms of self-awareness, understanding of and connectedness with others (Westenberg 2017)?

Spirituality has been influenced by positive psychology in the new millennium and transcendence has been seen as an important dimension of well-being as shown in Values in Action Scale (Peterson and Seligman 2006; Moulin-Stozek 2020, 511).

From the psychological and psychometric research perspectives, there has been attention on measuring the extent of spiritual health and well-being. Based on Fisher (2011)’s four domains of spiritual well-being, a study on pre-adolescents in Australia was earlier conducted to gauge the gap or degree of harmony, if any, between the ideal (feeling good) and the reality or living expression (living good) (Fisher 1999, 2004, 309). In that study, Feeling Good Living Life (FGLL) composite measure comprises four factors: self-concern, family, environment, and God (Fisher 2004, 313). Based on this model, the measure of children’s spiritual health has been tested in other settings and for different age groups (Gomez and Fisher 2003). Shaver et al. (2020) adapted a 10-items scale to assess adolescent spiritual health. The ‘Self’ factor consists of items such as ‘experience joy in life’ and the ‘Others’ factor entails items related to ‘forgiving to others’. The ‘Nature’ factor includes items such as ‘care for the natural world’ and the ‘Transcendent’ is exemplified by action item of ‘meditate or pray’ (2). Francis, Lankshear, and Eccles (2021) paper in the Junior Spiritual Health Scale (JSHS) for 8-to-11-year-old students provides empirical support and an instrument to globally gauge the spiritual health of students from both religious and non-religious primary schools. Heland-Kurzak and Holmes (2021)’s paper demonstrates how COVID-19 might have shaped parents’ religious activities and children’s spiritual well-being.

Kathleen Harris’s (2021) paper on intentional spiritual care for sick children pinpointed the importance of health and medical professionals as well as family members in helping nurture sick children’s spirituality. Significant people in home, church and school contexts as well as specific contexts such as professionals in hospitals for sick ones where children interacts with adults on open and sometimes intimate conversations could help provide spiritual care and address spiritual needs of our children regardless of their backgrounds (Lee 2021). For cultivating children’s spirituality, there could be ample opportunities for environmental educators and teachers to explore and engaging themselves and children in nature as a source of influences (Robinson 2019).

From an educational perspective, there remains issues to ponder how to search for universal values and specific cultural values that could shape educational goal(s) of spiritual development for children at local (at school level), national and international levels of schooling (Moulin-Stozek 2020, 515). The consideration of three Ss approach to and for life and spiritual education is merely just an initial and premature discussion in this editorial which calls for more empirical and intellectual discussions. We should not ignore the phenomenon that the natural environment as a domain of the life and values education could be a spiritual resource. Natural environment might have regional variations in religious affiliations and it could also serve as one of the social forces through interacting with individuals in society (Ferguson and Tamburello 2015, 295, 311). Demographic factors could also have associations with religious belief such as the study on Adolescents’ Buddhist belief (Le 2021). All these aspects could offer the potentials for intra- and inter-religious and cross-cultural dialogues as well as spiritual approaches for understanding a plurality of religious beliefs, life, moral, environmental and spiritual values in different societal and educational contexts (modified from Tirri 2009, 245; Sun and Lee 2021; Yip, Kong, and Lee 2021).

Acknowledgments

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. Please note that all comments, remarks, words used in this editorial are made without seditious intentions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

John Chi-Kin Lee

John Chi-Kin Lee is the Chair Professor of Curriculum and Instruction and Director of Centre for Religious and Spirituality Education, The Education University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR.