Educational Psychology—Limitations and Possibilities

CHAPTER 51
Without Using the “S” Word: The Role
of Spirituality in Culturally Responsive
Teaching and Educational Psychology
ELIZABETH J. TISDELL
Spirituality is an important part of human experience. Bookstores are filled with many popular titles
on the subject. Not surprisingly, most popular press books on spirituality focus on its individual
dimensions: how to cultivate mindfulness; how to develop a better relationship with God or a
Higher Power; how to draw on spirituality and meditation to reduce stress, and thus lead to a
greater sense of health and well-being; even how to have a prosperous life. There are few
discussions of spirituality that focus on its cultural aspects. Indeed, just as in psychology, where
the traditional focus is on the individual with little attention to the cultural context that inform
the life and development of that individual, most discussions of spirituality also focus on its more
individual dimensions. But there is a cultural dimension to spirituality, and a spiritual dimension
to culture. Thus far in the field of educational psychology, there has been little attention to spirituality
in general, much less to its cultural dimensions.
The relative silence about spirituality is not particularly surprising in educational psychology.
Indeed, the field has been dominated by behaviorists and clinically oriented cognitive psychologists,
who have been grounded in positivism and the scientific method. Such a view of the
world has traditionally seen spirituality either as wish fulfillment, or “background noise” that
needs to be tuned out to make studies “scientific.” In addition, the separation of church and
state grounded in enlightenment period philosophy and in positivism might give further pause to
educational psychologists about either considering the role of spirituality in cognitive and overall
development, or doing research in this area.
Just as the field of educational psychology has been reticent about dealing with issues of
spirituality, until recently they have been quite hesitant at acknowledging how structural power
relations between dominant and nondominant groups based on sociostructural factors of race,
ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and class, affect one’s view of the world. Traditionally, theories
of human development, including cognitive development, in all areas of psychology were
based on white, male, middle- to upper-middle-class participants. If a particular person didn’t fit
with the theory, he or she was assumed to be less developed, or less evolved, since most of these
theories tended to ignore gender and cultural issues. This of course has changed in the last two decades,
with the greater attention to gender, and to some extent cultural differences in the field
of psychology (Hays, 2001). However, because educational psychology has focused largely on