Catherine of Siena on Sociality and Virtues

SAGE Reference is proud to announce the Encyclopedia of Religious and Spiritual Development. This Encyclopedia covers the topic of spiritual development as it occurs and is experienced within the first two decades of life. Spiritual development is an important part of human development that has links to identity development, moral development and civic engagement. Entries refer to links between spiritual and religious development and the contributions that they make to positive personal and social development in youth. The Encyclopedia presents the connections that exist between domains of human development in general and spiritual development in particular. It includes religious traditions and spiritual exemplars, spiritual texts, places and concepts and organizations with missions having to do with spirituality. A logical starting point for the interested student, it serves as a gateway to lengthier articles and more in-depth research. Key features and benefits include: - short entries in accessible terminology are written by specialists that include leading international theorists and thinkers from a wide range of disciplines and professions, providing broad, multidisciplinary scope; - looks at spirituality in the broadest sense and encompasses religion as just one path toward spiritual development; - the Encyclopedia includes community-based programs that focus on enhancing spiritual development and on the links between spiritual development and positive personal and social development in youth; - reference lists for each entry enable readers to gain further information related to the topic; - the advisory board consists of academics from multiple disciplines whose work focuses on spiritual development, theologians, university librarians and leaders of organizations recognized for their work in promoting the healthy, positive development of youth.

Religious Education is an education process that has a purpose to form religious character of the religious tradition to individuals. This formation process includes an understanding of the Holy Book, religious traditions, and moral and spiritual development in accordance with religion culture and tradition. This religious education is the basis for students meditative thinking because it plays an important role in shaping human spiritual and moral development. As writers, we are using the literature review approach in writing this article in order to compile a deep understanding to improve the character education of the people based on the principles of religion culture and tradition. The results of this study confirm that Religious Education can form the students personality and character responsible individuals.

The article, dedicated to the actual problem of spiritual and moral development and education of bachelors of the pedagogical direction, presents a meaningful analysis of the possibilities and prospects of educational and other organizations carrying out educational activities in the implementation of spiritual and moral development and education of students in social and pedagogical conditions. The directions of interaction between educational organizations and students are determined as a condition for the spiritual and moral development of students in the educational process of the university. The ideas of enlightenment and educational activities for the spiritual and moral development of students of the university, the teachers themselves, based on the basic national values and traditions of national culture. The article presents the fundamental principles of spiritual and moral education and development of bachelors. The main directions of work on the formation of basic concepts included in the structure of self-consciousness are proposed. The role of the consolidating participants in the educational process in the spiritual and moral education of young people is determined. An attempt has been made to analyze educational programs focused on solving the problems of education, development and socialization of university students.

This research article aims to study the Buddhist principles for development of human behavior, morality, mind and wisdom. Qualitive method with documentary study was applied in this research. The results of the study were found that human behavior is influenced by internal factors such as the inherent mental state and temperament. Besides, there are external factors including upbringing, associations with friends, and the surrounding environment. The development of morality in Buddhist means, at least observing and following the five precepts namely: to refrain from killing, to refrain from stealing, to refrain from committing adultery or sexual misconduct, to refrain from false speech and to refrain from taking intoxicants that cause heedlessness. Buddhism teaches the development of precepts to purify the body and speech from sins and unwholesome actions. Mind is very important as humans think, plan, and intend before doing something. Mind is a leader of all behavioral movement and activity. If the mind is purified and peaceful, one will experience happiness and bliss in their lives. Buddhism encourages humans to develop wisdom through tranquil and insightful meditation. With a tranquil mind, people can see the truth of all things, be calm and reasonable. Calmness, happiness, and stability of mind can be achieved through meditation practice. Buddhism teaches people to cultivate their wisdom at all the time. Wisdom can be achieved through learning, critical thinking and meditation. Following the Buddhist principles result in proper and virtuous behavior, actions, and expressions, and eventually leads to happiness and peace of mind.

The OFSTED inspection report on Stalham High School praised the quality of its pastoral care and PSE, but also noted that the promotion of students' cultural and spiritual development across the whole curriculum was less satisfactory. The writer describes how the school set about responding to this weakness through the development of a whole-school policy. It was decided to develop an overarching policy for social, moral, cultural and spiritual development. Once an outline policy was produced, the views of staff were sought in a way which also increased their awareness of and involvement in the programme.

Thomas Arnold was a Victorian for scarcely five years but his major national influence continued into mid‐Victorian times and beyond. Arnold worked in a climate in which the state was trying to keep out of direct involvement with education and the churches were concerned to raise money to overtake their rivals in developing their schools. It was left to individuals to develop the vision that would enable education to start to cope with a rapidly changing, increasingly industrial society. Arnold was eager to engage in this. He was a hyper‐active controversialist. Though not acting alone, he was the energising leader in a process that raised the profile of spirituality in the public schools and, by subsequent cascading, among their imitators. Insofar as spiritual, moral, social and cultural development ('SMSC) were apprehended by Victorian educators, Arnold must be given much of the credit for highlighting the centrality of them, within for him an unquestioned but liberal Christian context. These values were already implicitly or notionally in all denominational schools; Arnold made them explicit high‐profile core values that were intended to penetrate the whole of school life at Rugby. He did not entirely achieve this. His views and practice were so bound up in his persona that in the end he could not be imitated by other people in different times, but for all that he left a discernible historic legacy for ‘spiritual development’ as a concept and intention in UK education.

Current debates regarding spiritual and moral development in English education can only be understood in relation to legislation and policy both within and beyond religious education (RE), especially since 1988, and recent social and cultural changes. The 2002 Education Act (Section 78) requires schools to provide a balancedand broadly based curriculum which:• promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils at the school and of society; and• prepares pupils at the school for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life.

This research pursues the design of a qualitative means of assessing Spiritual Awareness and Development in college students. An historical perspective regarding the relationship of religious, theological and spiritual concerns to higher education along with the projection of an emerging paradigm within which the student development profession can be expected to operate is presented. A review of the professional and related literature treating Spiritual Development is given. A review of literature involving related aspects of Psychosocial, Cognitive, Ethical, Moral, Faith, Religious, Identity and Ego Development follows. The significance of Life Story, Myth, Metaphor and Community to Spiritual Awareness and Development and other related Developmental models is discussed and a review of pertinent literature is presented. A Methodology incorporating these implications is then hypothesized. The first phase of a two phased pilot project to develop a qualitative assessment instrument is described and discussed. In addition to establishing that the Process developed in Phase 1 can produce consistent and credible participant 'data' across several (5) small groups (n = 6-10), results suggest that the process can be applied as an Intervention and Curriculum component as well as a Research or Assessment Method.

The training of teachers, who are ready for schoolchildren’s spiritual and moral development, becomes a major priority of the modern stage of higher education development. The article represents the analysis of foreign and domestic scientists’ points of view on this issue. It is emphasized that future teacher’s readiness for the process of primary schoolchildren’s spiritual and moral development is the result of careful work of both the student himself and people who accompany the processes of personal and professional growth. It is believed that in the student age there appears an increasing interest in such moral issues as aim and way of life, love and loyalty, obligation; but at the age of 17-19 the ability to consciously regulate one's own behavior is not fully developed and often there appear unmotivated risk in behavior, inability to predict the consequences of actions, etc. In a multicultural society, there exist many differences in the education and development of children, which deal with the knowledge about personality’s spiritual and moral development, literature, and art. It is noted that it is important for future teachers to learn to compose a full spectrum of their own creative-basic, general and specific abilities, and through the comprehension of these abilities the students can discover their own unique inner world. It is proved that in order to improve students' readiness for primary schoolchildren’s spiritual and moral development, we need to take into account two scientific approaches: improvement of readiness by means of organization of educational work of higher education institution (specificity of social institute) and self-improvement of future teacher’s readiness – in this case the future teacher has the opportunity to consciously manage this process (specificity of personal growth).

ABSTRACTChile’s General Law of Education states that one of the purposes of education is the spiritual development of all its schooled population. Furthermore, guidelines in Chile’s education system place school directors as key players in student’s learning. This article presents the results of a research involving school directors from Valparaíso, Chile. The aim of this research was to identify how directors of secular and religious schools understand their students’ spiritual development. We studied this aspect in particular through semi-structured interviews conducted with 20 participants. Results show that directors understand spirituality as a typically human ability that can be strengthened in schools and, thus, they believe it to be highly important in schools. In addition, they see a strong relation between spiritual development and ethical and moral development. This study also shows differences in how secular and religious schools’ directors understand this relation. This opens the way for more in-depth analysis regarding spiritual development in Chile’s education system, especially considering that directors generally believe it to be a part of a holistic and quality education.

The article is devoted to the description of the approach to assessing the dynamics of personal achievements in primary school in accordance with the requirements of the Federal State Educational Standard of Primary General Education. The new goal of spiritual and moral development of schoolchildren has required us to review the old technocratic paradigm of diagnosing educational results. The central aim of education today is to support the formation of a child’s value attitudes system, therefore, the teacher must be able to qualitatively assess the process of child’s moral and spiritual development. The importance of such work at primary school age is highlighted by the author, who describes the evaluation system designed to measure the development of value attitude components. Emphasis is placed on the assessment of the emotional-evaluative component being the most complex. The key difficulties of administering assessment and interpreting the obtained diagnostic results are revealed. They are instability in component demonstration, the influence of reference adults, constant change of the studied component and the whole value-semantic structure of the child’s personality during this particularly sensitive period. The author suggests possible ways of overcoming the difficulties by means of several techniques, repetition to establish the stability of the emotional reaction, discussion of the results with the children in order to create the atmosphere of trust and openness, comparison between the manifestation of the studied component with others and the manifestation of the value attitude as a whole. The paper refers to the titles, authors, and descriptions of the methods, and presents the data obtained as a result of research conducted over several years. The author describes the qualitative characteristics of the levels of emotional-evaluative component of value attitudes in accordance with the proposed criteria and indicators, and provides specific examples of the qualitative characteristics of the emotional-evaluative component of the value attitude to family, nature, and homeland. The article emphasises the importance of correct identification and interpretation of single components component and the value attitude as a whole in the organisation of an effective education process.

This study investigated psychological dimensions of race and religion by examining the relationship between the White racial identity statuses proposed by J. E. Helms (1984, 1990d, 1995), Contact, Disintegration, Reintegration, Pseudo‐Independence, Immersion/Emersion, and Autonomy, and 4 forms of religious orientation, intrinsic, extrinsic, fundamentalism, and quest. Participants included 233 undergraduates from a public university in the southeastern United States. They completed the White Racial Identity Attitudes Scale (J. E. Helms & R. T. Carter, 1990), 3 measures of religious orientation, and a demographic questionnaire. A canonical correlation analysis found 3 significant canonical pairs suggesting that higher and more complex racial identity statuses may be positively related to more integrated and flexible forms of religious orientation. Implications for counseling are noted.

Spiritual Development, Moral Development and Citizenship Education

Transition to sustainable community systems calls for re-envisioning human development. Human development does not only mean economic, political and ethical development; it also means artistic and spiritual development. All these dimensions of development are interlinked, but we have not paid sufficient attention to artistic and spiritual bases and horizons of human development and social transformations. In order to develop both individually and collectively, it is necessary to develop one’s artistic and spiritual potential. The essay explores relationships between art, spirituality and human development and describes examples from histories of ideas, art experiments and educational movements for creatively cultivating cross-fertilisation among them further.

Human development means not only economic, political and ethical development but it also means artistic and spiritual development. All these dimensions of development are interlinked but we have not paid sufficient attention to artistic and spiritual bases and horizons of human development and social transformations. To develop, both individually as well as collectively, is to develop one’s artistic and spiritual potential. The essay explores relationships among art, spirituality and human development and describes examples from histories of ideas, art experiments and educational movements for creatively cultivating cross-fertilization among them further.