Q. How would you respond to an educator or youth worker who asked how you think spiritual development fits in the context of overall healthy development of young people?
Pamela Ebstyne King, Ph.D.
Spiritual development can be a central part of the healthy development of young people. Spirituality can serve as an important resource for positive youth development. Specifically, spirituality provides ideological, social, and transcendent resources for young people. With in the exemplars research project, we see that the young people we have interviewed draw on the ideology of their spiritual traditions to inform their values, morals, and worldview.
Having a strong sense of right and wrong and a means of making sense of the world seems to help these young people navigate through life. In addition, these exemplars speak to the importance of the social support that they garner through their experiences of spirituality. Many of the young people recount the empowering presence and important examples of people in their faith communities.
Lastly, they speak of profound experiences of transcendence which fuel or motivate their spiritual commitments and their commitments to contribute to the common good. The lives of these youth suggest that educators and youth workers might draw upon the ideological, social, and transcendent aspects of spirituality to promote healthy and full development in the young people they work with.
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