Barriers to young children’s spiritual growth – and some pointers to how these can be overcome
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20504265 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Tony Eaude (0000-0001-6242-1458, University of Oxford, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Volume | 30 |
| Issue | 1-2 |
| Pages | 1-16 |
| Publication date | 2025-04-03 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Journal of Children s Spirituality (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1364-436X • E-ISSN: 1469-8455 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/1364436x.2024.2397971 |
| OpenAlex | W4402055947 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 27 |
This article identifies three types of barrier which may inhibit young children’s spiritual growth and considers how these can be overcome. One type includes physical and emotional harm, stress and discrimination often associated with socio-cultural factors such as gender, race/ethnicity, class, disability and religion. The second result from societal expectations which commodify children and encourage material pursuit, trivialisation and immediacy and those resulting from performativity. The third are more individual stemming from how adults interact with children, including tendencies to overcontrol or overprotect and silence children’s voices and close down enquiry. The importance of strengthening children’s sense of agency and qualities such as resilience, empathy and reflectiveness is highlighted. Adults must be attuned to children’s age, backgrounds, feelings and beliefs, guiding rather than controlling. A holistic approach with inclusive environments and mutually respectful relationships is advocated but structural barriers make this difficult in schools in the current policy context
Developmental psychology · Early Childhood Education and Development · Poverty, Education, and Child Welfare · Psychology · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
Expanding the framework
How can a spiritual pedagogy in religious education contribute to children’s spiritual growth
Reflections on the search for meaning in confusing but fascinating terrain
Slow pedagogy in the age of artificial intelligence
Teaching the unseen
Exploring Some Implications for Spiritual, Moral and Religious Education of the Research on Children's Spirituality
Education, spirituality and the common school
Toward a psychology of being.
The Culture of Education
Apprenticeship in Thinking
Unequal Childhoods
Social Inequality and Racial Discrimination
The social construction of reality
Ethnicity, Culture, and Spiritual Development
Leading Trauma-Informed Education Practice as an Instructional Model for Teaching and Learning
Primary early childhood educators’ perspectives of trauma-informed knowledge, confidence, and training
Navigating the spaces of children’s spiritual experiences
Silenced by performativity
Creating hospitable space to nurture children’s spirituality-possibilities and dilemmas associated with power
The potential of ‘wonder’ to engage children’s spirituality
Social Identity
Miseducation
Miseducation
Brit(ish)
The teacher's soul and the terrors of performativity
| Citations per year | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Highly cited | No |