Browsing by Subject "Early childhood educators"
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Item Connections, Virtues, and Meaning-Making: How Early Childhood Educators Describe Children’s Spirituality(Springer, 2020-01-31) Mata-McMahon, Jennifer; Haslip, Michael J.; Schein, Deborah L.Even though interest in children’s spirituality has increased in the past decade, there still remains a lack of consensus among scholars as to how it is defined. Likewise, little is known about how educators understand children’s spirituality. This study examines how 33 early childhood educators, working in secular educational settings, understand children’s spirituality. Multiple definitions of children’s spirituality from existing literature are explored and contrasted with the study findings to explore how wider consensus about this phenomenon can be achieved. Findings show that most early childhood educators surveyed have a multilayered understanding of children’s spirituality and most commonly believe children’s spirituality includes building connections, practicing virtues, and making meaning. To lessor degrees, educators also mentioned God and religion, self-awareness, mindfulness and presence, humanness and inner feelings. When describing children’s spirituality, surveyed educators placed more emphasis on inter-personal character traits related to the heart, as defined in the Circumplex Model of the VIA Classification. The study has important implications for scholars and practitioners who seek to examine or promote young children’s spirituality, and by extension, support the important processes of relationship building, virtue development and the ways in which we understand how children construct meaning about their lived experience, their own selves and the world around them.Item How U.S. Early Childhood Educators Understand Children’s Spirituality: A Framework of Essence, Origin, and Action(Springer, 2024-03-19) Mata-McMahon, Jennifer; Haslip, Michael J.; Hossain, ShahinThis study explores in-service early childhood educators’ understanding of children’s spirituality. Utilizing the recently validated instrument, Early Childhood Educators’ Spiritual Practices in the Classroom (ECE-SPC), responses to the question, “What do you understand children’s spirituality to be?” were analyzed. Participants included 318 educators working in secular educational settings with children ages zero to eight years across 36 U.S. states. Findings reveal a multilayered understanding of children’s spirituality. Through a grounded theory approach to data analysis using in-vivo codes in initial and axial coding, participants’ responses were organized in a response framework comprised of three main categories of understanding spirituality: (1) as Essence in itself (f 208), (2) as its place of Origin (f 122), and (3) as Actions in relation to others or as ways in which it is practiced (f 86). This framework contributes to constructing a shared understanding of children’s spirituality to build efforts toward promoting holistic development and intentionally nurturing the spiritual domain.