Too Important to Avoid: A Framework for Talking About Spirituality in Young Adult Literature

• In Event: 63.080 - Spirituality and Education SIG: Three-Paper Session

Abstract

Too often educators avoid discussions about spirituality in their classrooms. Researchers of Young Adult Literature are similar. Existing scholarship tends to focus on how religion is portrayed rather than on how characters experience spiritual growth/change within or outside of religious traditions. Given recent data on how the majority of today’s adolescents identify as religious/ spiritual, this is a significant gap in the field. We share findings from our critical qualitative content analysis study of 8 young adult novels that foreground a protagonist’s spiritual development. We analyzed common spiritual themes and created a Spiritual Development Matrix that can be used to talk with adolescents about protagonists’ religious/ spiritual experiences (or the lack thereof) as well as readers’ own experiences.

Authors

• Deborah Vriend Van Duinen, Hope College

• William Boerman-Cornell, Trinity Christian College

• Kristine Gritter, Seattle Pacific University