African-American Adolescent Spirituality: Implications for School Counseling

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

The authors encourage secondary school counselors, as appropriate, to ethically explore with African American students the value of spirituality as a developmental resource. To broadly contextualize the discussion, spirituality and religiousness are first defined within the African American culture. Research on the spiritual development of African American adolescents as well as the interconnections among the positive psychology, resiliency, and African American spirituality literature are summarized. Implications for high school counseling are considered. In particular, the importance of spirituality education and training for preservice and inservice counselors are discussed, including meaningful approaches to qualitatively and quantitatively assess the spiritual resources and other developmental assets of adolescents. Sample methods to nurture healthy spirituality in Black youth through individual and group counseling, mentoring and modeling, service learning, and spiritual education are reviewed.