Readdressing Spiritual Growth: What Can We Learn From Childhood Education?

Abstract

The present article is specifically devoted to summarizing the literature on children’s emerging spirituality, so as to provide a synthesis of traditional and current understandings of spiritual development. To this end, it pulls together all the disparate yet interconnected theoretical positionings on this dubious construct. Specifically, the first section explains the importance of spiritual experience in children’s lives, as depicted in statutory requirements, and evaluates ongoing efforts to demarcate spirituality from—or to locate spirituality within—religious education. Subsequently, a critical overview of selected theoretical taxonomies tracing spiritual progression during the early school years is presented. Similarities and differences are contemplated, followed by considerations on how these may inform curriculum implemen-tation decisions and how they might advance ongoing efforts to instill spiritual literacy in public schooling.