Teachers developing spiritual and moral education

Abstract

This article is an account of research done in close collaboration with primary school teachers in the United Kingdom, developing spiritual, moral and emotional education in the classroom. It describes the issues raised by teachers when they used a narrative process to encourage the children's development and how some of these issues were overcome by the use of a record sheet, which allowed the tracking of the skills of emotional literacy. This record sheet was designed as a result of an analysis of interviews with children in which these skills were identified. The reaction of the teachers and the outcomes of using the record sheets are discussed, and the conclusions stress the importance of a different view of knowledge and a different kind of teaching for children's development in this area.