Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives Review

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Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives ReviewThere is no question that Cultivating the Spirit is another book in a long line of ground breaking research put out by the Astins that will help shape the field of higher education. It is refreshing to see mainstream researchers take on the once taboo subject of spirituality. A book length manuscript allows for a detailed explanation of the concepts they deal with, with some surprising results here and there sprinkled among what might be predicted. For those who know of the Astin's data set, there will be no surprise that they offer an amazingly deep pool of participants to shed light on issues of spirituality and religion among both students and faculty in higher education. They also are highly adept at multivariate statistical modeling, and explaining it, which helps breath life into their findings. One of their findings which raises an eyebrow initially is that students level of religious commitment changes very little during college. This stands in contrast to many findings of the past, and popular presumption that there is a fade away from religious commitment during the college years. Upon further inspection though, the items used to measure religious commitment talk about gaining spiritual strength, and ask about spiritual/religious beliefs. This raises the point about whether this construct is really measuring religion or spirituality. It struck me that future iterations of their work could benefit from a more precise operational definition and more distinct differentiation between religion and spirituality. That said, I found the book worthwhile and believe that it should be on the shelf of all of us who care about the spiritual development of college students.Cultivating the Spirit: How College Can Enhance Students' Inner Lives OverviewThis book is predicated on the belief that the spiritual development of college students has been largely ignored in our colleges and universities, despite the importance of spiritual matters to young people in their quest to lead integrated lives. Thus, while academics are understandably proud of their "outer" accomplishments in the fields of science, medicine, technology, and commerce, colleges and universities have increasingly come to neglect the student's "inner" development--the sphere of values and beliefs, emotional maturity, spirituality, and self-understanding.
The book defines "spiritual development" very broadly: how students make meaning of their education and their lives, how they develop a sense of purpose, the value and belief dilemmas that they experience, as well as the role of religion, the sacred, and the mystical in their lives. Each student, of course, will view his or her spirituality in a unique way. For many, traditional religious beliefs and practices may form the core of their spirituality; for others such beliefs and practices may play little or no part. While two-thirds of the students in the study express a strong interest in spiritual matters, well over half report that their professors never encourage discussions of religious/spiritual matters, and about the same proportion report that professors never provide opportunities to discuss the purpose and meaning of life.

By raising public awareness of the important role that spirituality plays in student learning and development, by alerting academic administrators, faculty, and curriculum committees to the importance of spiritual development, and by identifying possible strategies for enhancing that development, the book will encourage institutions to give greater priority to these spiritual aspects of students' educational and personal development.


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