Spirituality in education and wellbeing – a philosophical reflection on my personal and professional journey

My PhD research in the mid nineties found Year 12 students asserting ‘I am spiritual but not religious.’ This led to my subsequent postdoctoral research into the role of spirituality in education. Here, I reflect on my life as someone who has lived with a foot in two cultures so that I learnt to live comfortably with diversity, and I consider the experiences which generated my research journey. It led me to a contemporary understanding of spirituality as an essential human trait, a relationality that encompasses all human interactions – mental, emotional and physical. Subsequently, I argued that professionals working with children and adolescents/young people should develop strategies to foster the spiritual dimension of their students/patients/clients’ lives and to do this, they need to become aware of and nourish their own spirituality.