ABSTRACT
The focus of Religious Education as a learning area is promulgated by the Catholic Bishops of Western Australia as the cultivation of religious understanding in the hope that an individual’s faith develops. Existing literature asserts that the starting point for Religious Education must be spirituality. When young children are afforded spiritual experiences, they have the potential to develop or deepen their spirituality as a relationship with God – a religious or faith relationship. This chapter reports on research undertaken with educators in faith-based early learning centres in Western Australia regarding their practices for supporting three- and four-year-old children’s spirituality. A key finding from this qualitative research was the need for educators to be further supported in understanding how spirituality and religion are connected and, specifically, the pedagogical skills for providing opportunities for children’s spirituality to be attended to as the starting point to more formal Religious Education. This chapter also draws and extends on the earlier work of the authors in developing the notion of spiritual and religious capabilities for educators in Catholic schools. In particular, this chapter posits that providing early years’ educators with spiritual and religious capabilities that make explicit the connection between the two concepts across the early years may respond to the need arising from the qualitative research presented. A key recommendation arising is for the development of spiritual and religious capabilities that provide links between the spiritual and religious to assist educators in meeting the needs of their students as well as attending to Religious Education as a learning area.
