Exploring music as a means to enhance children's spirituality

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to investigate the distinctive ways music and songs may facilitate children’s spiritual development. The concept of spirituality is tackled from a wide perspective and understood both as person’s awareness, openness to the transcendental dimension, connectedness, and capability to access and construct meaning. Interviews have been conducted randomly around Malta and Gozo among teachers currently teaching years 3, 4 and 5 of the junior streams in both State and Church schools. With the aid of these interviews, I intend to investigate whether teachers are aware of and regard music as an effective tool in the spiritual formation of the child. Moreover, I will attempt to study the teachers’ conception of spirituality and their awareness of music and songs in order to enhance spiritual development. The teachers’ perceptions of the use of music and songs in their lessons will also be considered. Findings are subsequently discussed in relation to the use of music and songs during the lessons in order to enhance children’s spirituality in the classroom. Conclusively, I will be calling attention to the teachers’ constricted vision of spirituality, particularly manifested throughout their attempts at defining it. This will in turn affect their outlook on the edification of children’s spirituality. Although teachers regard music as an important tool in educating children, it hardly is used with the intention of addressing children's spiritual formation.