Annotated bibliography on human and faith development
Over the last hundred years, developmental psychology has provided important insights for educators in general, and religious educators in particular. Because the literature on developmental psychology is vast, those of us who are practicing religious educators can't expect to know everything about the field, but we can keep informed about some of the major trends in the field.
While I'm a religious education practioner, not an expert on developmental psychology, I have tried to keep up with the field insofar as it has helped my own praxis in religious education. This reading list includes those books that I have found provide useful insights in my religious education praxis, as well as books that have some currency in liberal religious circles today. I have included my own comments on why I have found these books useful in order to help you decide which books you may wish to read. Those books that you might want to read first I have marked with an asterisk (*).
-- Rev. Dan Harper, January, 2003 (updated and somewhat revised, March, 2006)
* Wadsworth, Barry J. Piaget's Theory of Cognitive and Affective Development: Foundations of Constructivism. 5th ed. White Plains, N. Y.: Longman, 1996.
Jean Piaget developed a developmental stage theory for the cognitive and affective development of persons up through age 14 or so. Piaget hypothesized a given, invariant progression of developmental stages in the development of a child's reasoning abilities. In his theory, stages are discontinuous, and once a new stage has been reached, there is no going back. In Piaget's theory, cognitive and affective development end during adolescence.
Work on Piagetian developmental theory continues, and Barry Wadsworth's book is a good basic introduction to the state of Piagetian theory today. It's important to remember that there is no longer a wide consensus in educational circles that Piaget is the sine qua non of developmental theory. (Wadsworth's book is used as a text for undergraduate and graduate education courses, and may be available in university libraries.)
Influence on Unitarian Universalism: Sophia Fahs appears to have relied heavily on Piaget in her New Beacon Series of curriculum.
Fowler, James W. Stages of Faith: The Psychology of Human Development and the Quest for Meaning. New York: Harper Collins, 1981.
Fowler based his faith development theory on the work of Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg developed a theory of developmental stages for the development of moral reasoning. He presented moral dilemmas to persons, and observed how persons talked about those dilemmas. Kohlberg has been accused of serious gender bias by Carol Gilligan and others, who argue that girls actually reason differently about morality than boys. Additional research has brought Gilligan's work into question, and the debate is by no means over. James Fowler picked up on the work of Kohlberg, and identified six stages of faith development.
There are three adult stages of faith, and most adults don't reach the highest two stages. In fact, during his research Fowler found only one example of someone at stage six, which gives questionable statistical support to the existence of that sixth stage. Fowler has also been criticized for not adequately defining what he means by "faith"; some such critics (e.g., Gabriel Moran) state that Fowler's definition of faith is limited to the cognitive realm, and that the definition ignores other dimensions of faith. A small number of researchers, primarily psychologists, continue to follow up on his work, but Fowler himself has gone on to other fields.
A particularly problematic area of Fowler's model of human development is that many individuals do not reach the higher two stages. Therefore, according to his model many human beings never reach full development, and could be judged as being developmentally disabled.
Influence on Unitarian Universalism: A few UU religious educators have been interested in Fowler (at least one studied with him, Rev. Elizabeth Ellis), but he seems to have had no widespread influence. However, one recent writer (Mishra) uses Fowler's work to show that many people are not capable of becoming Unitarian Universalists, since Unitarian Universalists must have achieved one of the higher stages of faith in the Fowler model.
* Erikson, Erik H. Identity and the Life Cycle. New York: W. W. Norton, 1980.
Erik Erikson proposed a psycho-social developmental stage theory, based in part on the insights of depth psychology, biology, and anthropology. Erikson is best know for his theory of "identity crisis," wherein individuals face a series of eight distinct crises over the entire course of life. Erikson places more emphasis on society's role than does Piaget. Based on the insights of depth psychology, Erikson said that no crisis is ever completely resolved, and may re-emerge as an issue later in life. Erikson identifies eight stages of human psycho-social development.
Erikson has been criticized for lack of sound research and cultural bias. Nonetheless, he has been quite influential, and the idea of an "identity crisis" is now a part of pop culture. Erikson is of interest to religious educators because he looks beyond cognitive development to social development.
His wife later extended his work, adding a ninth stage of human psychol-social development to cover the extended lifespans in the developed world.
Influence on Unitarian Universalism: Beginning in the late 1960's, Erikson appears to have deeply affected liberal religious approaches to ministry with youth. However, overall Erikson's influence has probably been more on the pastoral side than on the religious education side.
Levinson, Daniel J., et al. The Seasons of a Man's Life. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978.
Remember Gail Sheehy's book Passages? Her book was based on Levinson's book. Levinson et al. come at developmental theory from the point of view of depth psychology, claiming inspiration from Freud, Jung, and Erik Erikson. The obvious critique of this book is that it is about men only. Nonetheless, like Erikson, this book has been tremendously influential.
Influence on UUism: This book and Gail Sheehy's Passages have probably influenced UUs to think of adulthood as being divided into young adulthood, middle adulthood, and older adulthood. The practical influence has probably been more in the pastoral and programmatic realms than in the realms of curriculum or education.
Kegan, Robert. The Evolving Self. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press,
Robert Kegan is primarily interested in adult education and in psycho therapy. Responding to critiques of Piaget, Erikson, Kohlberg, and Fowler (including Gilligan's charge of gender bias), Kegan proposes a developmental stage theory across the lifespan, incorporating psycho-social and other aspects of development. Kegan proposes a spiral model of development, where persons return to the same problems and issues may times over the course of a lifetime, but from at least six identifiable stages. Persons swing back and forth between inclusion and introspection.
Kegan is a clinical psychotherapist, as well as an education theorist. The case studies he provides in this book are drawn from his clinical practice, not his educational practice. However, I do not know of any other researchers who have tested Kegan's ideas.
Influence on Unitarian Universalism: Kegan has inspired certain UU religious educators who have advocated that persons return again and again to educational themes, gradually moving up the developmental spiral over time -- this is the so-called "spiral/pillars" approach to curriculum.
* Gardner, Howard. Intelligence Reframed: Multiple Intelligences. New York: Basic Books, 1999. This book updates his earlier, more comprehensive book, Frames of Mind.
Howard Gardner has proposed that individuals possess at least eight "intelligences": linguistic, logical-mathematical, musical, bodily-kinesthetic, spatial, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Gardner is primarily interested in cognition, and he has explicitly stated that he does not believe there are separate moral, existentialist, or spiritual intelligences. Gardner believes his intelligences are based in neurobiology.
In terms of developmental psychology, Gardner challenges us to think of individuals as having greater or lesser strengths in different types of intelligence, where each intelligence in an individual exhibits "a distinct developmental history, along with a definable set of expert 'end-state' performances." Gardner's model brings into question linear (or spiral) developmental models; a developmental model using his research might produce a bar graph, with several different lines representing different stages of development in each of the multiple intelligences.
Gardner's work has been widely tested in practical educational settings, and Gardner himself is involved in using his model in a lab school for disadvantaged children. You can get a good sense for the critiques of Gardner from his responses in this book; Gardner himself admits that more pure research (as opposed to practical implementation of his ideas) is needed.
In a 2003 paper [link], Gardner critiques multiple intelligence theory as having fallen behind the advances in biolodgical understandings of the brain; he also believes that additional research is needed into understanding the interplay between social structures and the way human minds work. In this paper, Gardner also mentions several critiques of Piagetian developmental theory, pointing out that we can no longer take for granted that there is one general intelligence.
Influence on Unitarian Universalism: Gardner is widely read among UU religious educators, and many congregations have included a multiple intelligences approach in children's religious education. Multiple intelligence theory seems to be falling out of favor recently, however.
Vygotsky, L. S. The Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes. Michael Cole, et al., ed. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978.
Lev Vygotsky was a Soviet psychologist who took seriously the historicism of Marxism. An individual's psychological development is necessarily shaped by the historical era they live in, and individuals can benefit from the advances made by society and culture over the course of historical development. Vygotsky observed that in certain settings children could perform above their presumed level of competence, leading him to conclude that an individual's development cannot be considered separately from a social setting.
Vygotsky has some interesting implications for religious education. For example, a congregation could be taken as a setting where children could perform above their presumed level of development. That also implies that a congregation could be deliberately structured so as to support children's learning.
Since the fall of the Soviet Union, there has been an explosion of interest in Vygotsky among theorists, and his work is frequently cited by those doing work in the area of "distributed cognition." Among other things, the notion of distributed cognition says that a tool carries with it the accumulated knowledge of generations; this could imply that a church building might be an example of distributed cognition in the area of religion.
Influence on Unitarian Universalism: Almost none; the social aspects of learning have been regretfully ignored by many or even most Unitarian Universalists.
* Moran, Gabriel, and Maria Harris. 3 chapters on development in Reshaping Religious Education: Conversations on Contemporary Practice. Louisville, Ky.: Westminster John Knox, 1998. See also Moran's Religious Education Development (which I have not read).
A number of religious educators have directly criticized the relevance of developmental stage theory to religious education. Gabriel Moran and Maria Harris critique assumptions in developmental stage theory from the perspectives of ecology, economics, gender, and the role of death in our lives. Moran offers an alternative to a linear model of development stage theory, proposing instead "life being ordered around the center of a sphere [God]," with the possibility of growing nearer, getting farther away, eccentric orbits, and shortcuts.
Influence on Unitarian Universalism: This particular book has not had much of an influence on Unitarian Universalism. However, the idea of developmentalism as not entirely applicable to religious education does have a Unitarian Universalist history.
During Hugo Holleroth's tenure in the UUA RE Department (late 60's and early 70's), there was little attention to developmental theory in the development of curriculums. This was probably an outgrowth of Holleroth's Tillichean existentialist theology. Holleroth's so-called "Multimedia" curriculums were roundly criticized by UU religious educators because they didn't pay adequate attention to developmental theory.
At the same time, most of us UU religious educators have not addressed the fundamental problems inherent in the idea of "developmentalism." If developmental theory is primarily about cognitive/affective development, is it possible that religious development goes beyond cognitive/affective development? Does the whole notion of "development" imply that persons who are further along in their development are somehow worth more than those who are at earlier or lower stages? Does a linear model of development adequately describe the complexity of a person's trajectory through life? How can we allow for non-linear discontinuous events in a person's religious life (personal or spiritual crises, "conversion" experiences, "transcendental" experiences, etc.)?
Kenneth E. Hyde, Religions in Childhood and Adolescence (Birmingham, Ala.: Religious Education Press, 1990).
A critical overview of the psychological literature on developmental theory as it pertains to religious education of young people. Dense and hard to read, Hyde does not cover Kegan, Vygotsky, Gardner, or Moran. It's also over a decade out of date by now. Yet the book is worth skimming if only to get a sense of the range of approaches to developmental theory as applied to religious education, and to understand better some of the research that has been done. At one point, Hyde writes:
It would seem that as yet there are not sufficient grounds for rejecting the idea of stages as a basis for religious development, provided it is regarded as a performance rather than a competence theory and used with some caution. [emphasis added]
However, I note that Hyde is concerned with religious thinking, not religious being or doing; and it is not clear to me whether religious education educates persons primarily in how to think, or primarily in how to be, or to do. Second, Hyde cautions us that developmental stage theory, even in the limited sense in which he uses the term, is still in the process of being tested by research.