The divine dreams of a sample of South African children: the gateway to their spirituality

• Published in: International journal of children's spirituality Vol. 14; no. 1; pp. 31 - 46
• Main Authors: Potgieter, Ferdinand J., van der Walt, Johannes L., Wolhuter, Charl C.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 01-02-2009
• Subjects: children's dreams; dreams; Early Adolescents; education; Fear; Foreign Countries; Grade 6; Grade 7; Interviews; Psychological Patterns; Racial Bias; Religion; Religious Education; Religious Factors; Sleep; Social Influences; South Africa; Spiritual Development; spirituality; Student Attitudes; Violence; South Africa
• ISSN: 1364-436X; 1469-8455
• DOI: 10.1080/13644360802658735

As part of a research project on religion, spirituality and education, the authors attended to the role that children's divine dreams could play in religious education (RE). They contend that such dreams can indeed be used by RE teachers as the gateway to understanding the spirituality of their learners. They defend their claim by firstly developing a conceptual-theoretical framework with respect to religion, spirituality and children's divine dreams, and then presenting the results of an explorative quantitative-qualitative investigation in three schools. They find their claim to have been vindicated, and suggest that although RE teachers should not necessarily teach divine dreams per se, they should, nevertheless, explore the possibility that (at least some of) the contents of children's divine dreams may be useful for the purpose of teaching them RE from religion itself, rather than teaching them only about religion.