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Since spiritual beliefs have a significant effect on how people understand and deal with problems in their lives, it is important that human service and social work educators prepare professional practitioners for competent practice regarding spirituality and religion. This exploratory qualitative study utilized an open-ended questionnaire aimed at exploring students' perception of spirituality as it pertains to their Human Services studies. Results showed the importance of early spiritual experience, as well as life experience, to students' religious identity. Spiritual diversity was also found. The value of developing and implementing resources for dealing with spiritual issues into social work and human services course curricula is reinforced.
Keywords: Teaching social work and human services, student spirituality, religious identity, religious adaptation
THE CURRICULUM FOR SOCIAL WORK PRACTITIONERS NOW GENERALLY includes competencies in addressing clients' diverse religious and spiritual lives. Past studies examined the importance of spirituality and religion in social work education and addressed innovative approaches to infuse the issue into social work curriculum (Ai, Moultine, Picciano, Nagda & Thurman, 2004; Cnaan, Boddie, & Danzig, 2005; Coholic, 2006). The inclusion of religious/spiritual content into the social work curriculum will influence professional values to incorporate the key elements of diversity sensitivity and client-focused practice, as established in the NASW Code of Ethics, and this will reflect more multicultural competency among human service and social work practitioners (Hodge & Derezotes, 2008; Williams & Smolak, 2007). Social work students themselves state the importance of spiritual values in their daily lives and the need to gain greater understanding of religious/spiritual diversity from their educational program (Graff, 2007). Students who have had religious/spiritual diversity as part of their curriculum had higher satisfaction with their overall learning experience (Ai, et al., 2004).
There is significant need as stated by professionals, students, and academia to include the issue of religion and spirituality in social work
education. This warrants further study to discover more about students' spirituality and students' perspectives, as well as their experiences, to aid academicians in developing and implementing spiritual issues into course curriculum.
Table 1 illustrates previous studies that have focused on including the topic of spirituality and religion within social work curriculum. In general, no studies have denied the importance of spirituality in the social work field. Infusing religious topics...