Teaching Spirituality in Higher Education: Opportunities and Challenges A calendar icon

The Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies is organising an interdisciplinary workshop to explore issues around teaching spirituality in higher education in the UK.

Event type: Workshop

Organiser: Subject Centre for PRS

Location: Old School Board, Leeds

Country: Great Britain

Date: 14th January 2010 to 14th January 2010

Deadline for submission of abstracts: 16th October 2009

Contact name: Rebecca O'Loughlin

Contact email: rebecca@prs.heacademy.ac.uk

Details:

Keynote speaker: Marion Bowman (The Open University)

Other speakers:

  • Kate Adams  
  • MaryCatherine Burgess
  • Dominic Corrywright and Nick Swarbrick
  • Douglas Davies
  • Paul Dearey
  • Ian Delinger
  • Christian Kaestner
  • Ursula King
  • Bernard Moss
  • Aru Narayanasamy
  • Mark Plater
  • Simon Robinson

Teaching Spirituality was a one-day, interdisciplinary workshop to explore issues around teaching spirituality in higher education (HE) in the UK. The workshop was aimed at academics, chaplaincy workers, equality/diversity officers, staff developers, and students. It provided an opportunity for participants to discuss the approaches, issues and challenges involved in teaching spirituality, to showcase and share examples of good practice, and to network with colleagues teaching spirituality in different institutions, both within and outside of Theology and Religious Studies departments.

The idea for this event came out of the Subject Centre’s ‘PRS  Beyond Boundaries’ project, which explored teaching PRS subjects in non-PRS departments. A number of the people who got in touch to share their experiences of teaching ‘PRS beyond boundaries’ were academics and other university staff teaching spirituality outside of TRS departments. More details of the project can be found at http://prs.heacademy.ac.uk/projects/beyond_boundaries/index.html

Programme

10:00 – 10:30 Registration and coffee

10:30 – 10:45 Introduction to the day

10:45 – 11:30 Keynote address: Marion Bowman (The Open University)

11:30 – 13:00 Parallel session 1

A. Teaching spirituality outside Theology and Religious Studies departments (I) - Chair: Jonathan Wooding (University of Wales Lampeter)

B. New approaches to spirituality - Chair: Gary Bunt (University of Wales Lampeter)

13:00 – 13:45 Lunch

13:45 – 15:15 Parallel session 2

A. Teaching spirituality outside TRS (II) - Chair: Simon Smith (Subject Centre for PRS)

B. Recent developments in spirituality - Chair: Rebecca O’Loughlin (Subject Centre for PRS)

15:15 – 15:30 Break

15:30 – 17:00 Parallel session 3

A. Spirituality and spiritual learners - Chair: Ian Arch (University of Chester)

B. Teaching spirituality and the development of student identity - Chair: Edward Howells (Heythrop College)

17:00 – 17:30 Closing remarks (Ursula King) and evaluation

 

Event Report

A very successful and well-attended interdisciplinary conference initiated by PRS but involving academics from social care, nursing, education, and even those who had taught spirituality within Business Studies and Engineering. As this was planned to explore where spirituality is taught outside TRS it achieved its aim. All papers should eventually be on/in PRS website and Discourse.

12 high quality papers from very different backgrounds but similar themes emerging. There follows some points from the sessions I attended which interested me.

Keynote speech Marion Bowman (OU) gave an excellent overview from RS perspective defining and locating spirituality, stressing contested and changing nature of definitions, dangers of assumptions which are beliefs eg that all are innately ‘spiritual’, and illustrating from her own research on Glastonbury. Note William Bloom’s ‘Foundation for Holistic Spirituality’ f4hs.org. Danger of blurring teaching ‘about’ spirituality as in RS and teaching ‘spiritual development’ – is Spirituality the new Theology?

Paul Deary (Hull), who teaches MA in Spirituality Studies for healthcare, education and social care professionals examined what he saw as the suspect concept of spirituality with no philosophical or theological underpinning. This is presented as neutral and empirical for the use of the institutions of the secular state but has an unexamined set of assumptions which conflict with eg his own theological ones.

Bernard Moss (Staffordshire) Professor of Social Work Education and Spirituality looked at the history behind the hostility of Social Work Education towards both religion and spirituality but the emerging importance of these areas especially internationally beyond UK. The religious and spiritual backgrounds of both practitioners and clients cannot be ignored as part of both cultural context of work and personal reflexivity. He outlined a successful Problem Based Learning approach to integrating teaching about spirituality into his teaching which could be transferable to other disciplines.

Anu Narayanasamy (Medicine and Health Sciences, Nottingham) demonstrated and discussed his ‘spiritual journey boardgame’ as a way in to this difficult area for nursing professionals and others. Much fun was had as we collected ‘spiritual resource’, and ‘spiritual distress’ cards and found ourselves sent to the spiritual wellbeing centre for recovery. A good way to stimulate discussion, but possibly an example of a particular understanding of spirituality not shared by all.

Ian Delinger (Chester) talked about his experience of being drafted in as chaplain on the final session of a nursing degree to talk about teaching spiritual care. He looked at the problems emerging from students’ views of and societal attitudes to religion and the development of better ways of integrating this aspect into nursing education and the connection with equality and diversity issues. We discussed how ‘spirituality in nursing care’ had become a professional construct.

Dominic Corrywright (Oxford Brookes) shared his (and colleagues’) experience of designing modules on spirituality for students on various programmes including eg Early Childhood Education, TRS, Healthcare etc. Again useful transferable ideas about the use of film, discussion boards/blogs, Learning Journals and innovative ways of teaching and assessing this area. He also drew out themes emerging from student work illustrating their various understandings of and engagement with the topic – as well as discussing academic definitions of spirituality we need to start with student perceptions and end with student reflections.

Simon Robinson (Leeds Met) described his experience of teaching spirituality on a variety of professional course including Engineering. He considered that the concept is closely aligned to that of responsibility and professionalism, and that it is an important component of PDP, an interesting and transferable idea.

I deliberately attended papers most removed from my own teaching in RS and Education, and thus missed what I heard were equally stimulating papers from the following people:

  • Douglas Davies (Durham) on Spirituality, Learning and Wisdom
  • Mark Plater (Bishop Grosseteste) on Spooky Spirituality (in education)
  • Kate Adams (Bishop Grosseteste) on Placing children’s spirituality on the map of education studies
  • Mary Catherine Burgess (Edinburgh) on Teaching spirituality through story and interspiritual conversation in a multifaith university chaplaincy
  • Christian Kaestner (Leeds) on Interfaith dialogue as a way of facilitating spirituality in higher education.

I thoroughly recommend looking these conference papers up when they appear in/on Discourse and the PRS website.

Denise Cush (Bath Spa University)

This event report was originally published in the BASR bulletin, May 2010.