Spiritual Education in a Divided World

Dr Cathy Ota is Director of the Working With Others Research and Education Unit at the University of Brighton, UK. She is co-editor of the International Journal of Children’s Spirituality. Dr Mark Chater is curriculum adviser with responsibility for Religious Education and spiritual and moral development for the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority of the UK, and an Associate Research fellow of Bishop Grosseteste University College Lincoln, UK.

• VOLUME 11 NUMBER 1 APRIL 2006 Special Issue: Spiritual education in a divided world: Social, environment and pedagogical perspectives on the spirituality of children and young people, 1. Preface2. Diagnosis 3. Children make you happier … and poorer 4. The disenchantment and re-enchantment of childhood in an age of globalization 5. Capitalizing on children’s spirituality: parental anxiety, children as consumers, and the marketing of spirituality 6. An ecological critique of education 7. Just another brick in the wall: education as violence to the spirit 8. Difference, explanation, certainty and terror: a view from a Londoner about the formation of children’s spirituality as relational consciousness 9. Praxis 10. A conceptual investigation into the possibility of spiritual education11. Wrestling with the spirit(ual): grappling with theory, practice and pedagogy 12. Five classroom activities for sustaining a spiritual environment 13. Spiritual development and inclusivity: the need for a critical democratic approach 14. A risky business: the potential of groupwork skills for spiritual education in a classroom of difference 15. If you don’t know the difference you are living with, how can you learn to live with it? Taking difference seriously in spiritual and religious education 16. Children’s spirituality in social context: a South African example 17. Educating for hope, compassion and meaning in a divisive and intolerant world 18. Creating an idyllic world for children’s spiritual formation 19. Conclusion