Description:
Spiritual well-being (SWB) is reflected in the quality of relationships that people have in up to four areas, namely with themselves, with others, with the environment, and/or with God. A recent study has shown that the lived experiences of teachers have a major influence on their perceptions of help provided to nurture students' SWB in schools. Fischer's (1999) 20-item Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM) elicited pre-service teachers' ideals for SWB, and their lived experiences in each of the four domains, as well as the level of help these pre-service teachers believe is provided to school students in these areas of their lives. Data were collected from 1361 pre-service teachers in public, secular and religious universities, and Christian universities in Australia and Northern Ireland in 2000 and 2007-08. Significant variations were found in levels of SWB by gender and university type and between pre-service teachers from one year to another. The pre-service teachers in these studies were not overly optimistic about the level of help provided to nurture school students' relationship with God. This finding has implications for religious education in schools, as well as discussions of the holistic development and well-being of students. [Author abstract]
Description:
A Chinese version of the Spiritual Health And Life-Orientation Measure (SHALOM) developed in this study was shown to be a sound measure of spiritual well-being (SWB) in which 573 pre-service teachers from Hong Kong reported slightly lower levels of relating with themselves and other people, in Personal and Communal SWB, but higher levels of Environmental and Transcendental SWB compared with a group of 557 similar pre-service teachers at the University of Ballarat, Australia. Using regression analyses, investigation of the relationships between levels of spiritual well-being and helps revealed very similar results in explaining variance for each of the four domains, as well as overall spiritual well-being, for these two groups. Prayer, nature and being happy contributed most to explanation of variance in spiritual well-being in both groups helping others, friends, self-improvement, music, walks and other religious activities contributed variously as well. Common principles undergirded support provided for both groups of pre-service teachers' spiritual well-being. It was just a matter of degree as to how much they applied. SHALOM revealed more similarities than differences in spiritual well-being in these two groups of pre-service teachers, even though they were separated culturally and linguistically. These results do, however, raise questions about the efficacy of these pre-service teachers to adequately address school students' spiritual well-being.