a journal of analysis and comment
advancing public understanding of religion and education
Volume 34 Number 1
You Buy into the Whole Idea of ‘God the Father’?”
How College Students Talk about Spiritual Transformation
spiritual lives have been understudied in higher education and students’
personal beliefs have been under-explored in the classroom environment.
Yet, spirituality is a key aspect of many students’ identities, and one
they desire to explore. The purpose
of this study is to bring to light the experience students had in one university
class that, counter to the usual academic expectations, was specifically
designed to foster their spiritual development.
work will be important for colleges and universities due to their roles as
“mentoring communities”. This
study could persuade educators to increase their focus on the spiritual elements
in students’ lives, and influence faculty members to understand spirituality
as an area worthy of academic study. Higher
education faculty and student affairs administrators could use the findings of
this study and better understand many students’ yearnings to discuss the topic
of spirituality and, in the process, explore their identities.
Consequently, this study provides analysis of both narratives and
interactional dialogue spoken by students in focus groups held to gauge their
experiences in the course, in order to reveal how one course on spirituality
impacted students’ lives.
study took place with students who were about to conclude their enrollment in a
course entitled Psychology and Spiritual Development.
Focus groups were held to discuss students’ reactions to and
interpretations of the course, and their reflection papers and essays written
for the course were collected.
original orienting question for this study involved trying to understand if and
how an academic classroom setting designed to expose students to spirituality
fostered their spiritual growth. The
research questions were:
Analysis techniques were applied in order to examine students’ reactions to
the course and their understandings of their own spiritual transformations.
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