Spirituality, multiculturalism, religiosity, and transpersonal learning among social work students: Implications for social work education

CSWE standards (2001) mandate accredited schools of social work integrate content that promotes understanding, affirmation, and respect for people of diverse backgrounds and spiritual development across the lifespan. Because of the lack of knowledge concerning the receptivity and educability of social work students in the area of spirituality, curriculum design and content as well as the overall scope of spirituality in social work education and practice is ambiguous. Transpersonal theory represents a knowledge base that while inclusive of psychological theory, extends psychology to focus on spirituality. Although, transpersonal theory is not based on any religious creed, the primary focus of the transpersonal is spirituality. Transpersonal spirituality includes those aspects of human spirituality that go beyond the ego defined self.;The primary purpose of this study was to investigate social work students' openness to transpersonal learning. Student transpersonal orientation to learning was assessed, as well as, student spirituality, religiosity, and multiculturalism. The secondary purposes in this study were to: (1) attempt to discriminate between the attributes of spirituality and religiousness of social work students, (2) explore the development of spirituality across demographics of the social work student population, (3) examine the relationships between the attributes of spirituality and religiousness, and (4) investigate social work students' relationship with multiculturalism and transpersonal orientation to learning. Structural equation modeling was used to examine these purposes.;A cross-sectional survey design was utilized with a sample of 248 BSW and MSW/MSSW students from two mid-western universities. The findings of this study suggest that the most influential predicator of a social work student's openness to transpersonal learning is multiculturalism. Spirituality, however, did have the largest total effects when multiculturalism acted as a mediating variable. Age had a significant relationship with spirituality. No other significant relationships were found between any of the demographic variables and the latent variables. The lack of significant relationships with demographic variables may indicate that non-theological based spirituality is not dependent on such characteristics as a person's gender, religion, ethnicity/race, or work experience.