In exploring how ritualized activities can help to nurture children's spiritual growth, this article encourages a re-thinking of what ritual involves. The link between ritual and routine is explored. Distinctions are drawn between personal and collective and between 'everyday' and 'special occasion' rituals, with neither the sole preserve of…

The REA Annual Meeting 2023 theme is organized around the question, "Whose children are they?" as a way to explore diverse and intersecting ways that we take and/or assign responsibilities for children's religious education. In this essay, the Program Chair reflects on personal and scholarly experiences and questions that have framed and…

Contemporary discourses regarding children's spirituality in ECEC professional publication streams (academic and practitioner readership) were analysed, with consideration of impacts of these discourses on practice in the early years sector. Many established theoretical concepts regarding children's spirituality were not evident in the early years…

It is increasingly acknowledged by a range of sectors, particularly health and educational, that collaboration with parents is fundamental to improving the developmental outcomes of children. It is also becoming more commonplace within the UK church and para-church organisations to emphasise the importance of supporting parents as they seek to…

Traditionally, children have generally been considered as developmentally immature and unable to experience spirituality. However, more recent studies seem to indicate the opposite. This article aims to: (1) explore how religiosity and spirituality evolve in the developing person; (2) describe the perceptions of children about God; (3) explore how…

US Catholic schools have been known to educate the whole child. However, the Catholic sector has not widely embraced a shared understanding of whole child education or how it is operationalised, nor have researchers interested in this sector effectively measured the impact of approaches in any or all domains. This conceptual paper presents a…

From expressing wonder and awe about the natural world to contemplating the significance of life to conveying compassion and expressing concern for others, the spiritual child has much to offer the world. However, the topic of spirituality is rarely addressed in early childhood or child development textbooks. Spirituality can be defined in many…

In 2006 and then, seven years later in 2013, a small scaled research project was carried out into Christian children's developing perspectives as they encounter sacred text from the context of their home lives (Worsley in Br J Relig Educ 28(3):247-257, 2006, Br J Relig Educ 35(1):55-71, 2013). Fourteen years on in 2020, these same children and…

In Pangbisa village in Paro, Bhutan, a unique institution is a testament to His Majesty the King's recognition of the critical role of education in enriching the lives of people and the society, nurturing successive generations of leaders and building a strong, secure, and prosperous nation. The Royal Academy consists of three centers--the School,…

This study explored caregivers' experiences of virtual Godly Play in the United States, South Korea, and the UK during COVID-19 lockdowns. Thematic analysis of thirty-three caregiver surveys and six semi-structured interviews revealed four themes: support/community, intergenerational Godly Play, spiritual maintenance and growth for the family, and…

Indigenous frameworks suggest environmental risk and protective factors for American Indian (AI) children's development can be understood in terms of connecting and disconnecting forces in five domains: spirituality, family, intergenerational ties, community, and environment/land. This study examined the prevalence of these forces among 156 urban…

This paper attempts to move beyond a critique of historically dominant ways of thinking about teaching and learning relationships to offer a conceptualization of relational pedagogy from a theological perspective. It offers commentary on the potential of relational pedagogy for Christian faith-based schools informed by the scholarship of German…

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…

Spiritual neuroscience is one of neuroscience sub-discipline which specialized in a study over brain and human spiritualism. Spiritual neuroscience study is aimed to enhance early childhood's potentials, particularly, brain spiritualism. This research is directed to answer, to know, and to analyze over a study of spiritual neuroscience in a…

In the current study, the formal education of the Syrian children living in Turkey who are in the position of refugees under temporary protection was investigated sociologically in terms of the two basic dimensions of social integration. Social integration are regarded in two dimensions as functional and spiritual. According to official data,…