Spiritual Development in Developmentally Responsive Practice

• In Event: Developmentally Responsive Practice in Middle-Level Schools

Abstract

In the middle grades concept of developmentally-responsive education, spiritual developmental characteristics of young adolescents are absent from the foundational literature’s construct of human development. This interdisciplinary research was a critical constructivist (Kincheloe, 2008) inquiry of the following question: What is the educational relevance of spiritual development in middle grades education? Critical historiographical research methods (Villaverde, Kincheloe, & Helyar, 2006) were used to interrogate the academic discourses of three fields related to the research question. The results offer encouragement for the relevance of spiritual development as part of the middle grades concept, as they suggest that integration of knowledge of adolescent spiritual development is theoretically supported by commitments to caring relationships in schools and constructivist learning theory.

Author

• Audrey Lingley, Portland State University