Weaving the threads of meaning: a characteristic of children's spirituality and its implications for religious education

Abstract

Although well documented from a British perspective, empirical research exploring the spiritual lives of primary school children in the Australian context is a field in which scholarship is beginning to emerge. This article reports on one particular finding which emerged from an Australian study seeking to identify some characteristics of children's spirituality in Catholic primary schools. The characteristic has been termed weaving the threads of meaning. It describes the way in which the children who participated in this study appeared to use their sense of wonder as a means of expressing their spirituality by piecing together a worldview based around their attempts at meaning making. This article argues that the existence of this characteristic presents a challenge for religious education, in particular for those programmes which operate within faith schools where the Christian narrative forms a source of the authoritative wisdom to be handed on to its students.