here’s always been this big question in human development: What triggers development? What propels 
us to move forward?” Dr. Peter Benson is reflecting upon the core issue of his work at Search Institute. “It’s probably as big, in its own way, in the human sciences,” he suggests, “as the big questions the astrophysicists ask about what has spirit got to do with the cosmos?”
His conclusion is that spiritual development is an important motor in the maturing of humanity. Since childhood and youth are the periods during which human beings experience major development, that is the current focus of his research. With the help of a $2 million grant, his program “Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence: Science, Practice, and Field Formation” is the launch project of the Center for Spiritual Development in Childhood and Adolescence that Search Institute has established to pursue research on this subject.
It has four focus areas: advancing scientific study of spiritual development; building an interdisciplinary, international field of scholarship; strengthening practice across traditions and sectors; and public communications. The project is directed by a team of ten people at Search Institute, networked with 120 international advisors spread across 19 countries, including Brazil, Jordan, India and Korea. Research partners have set up focus groups in 13 countries and research collaborations are being negotiated with partners in seven countries to conduct the field test survey.
Benson is thrilled by the scale of this outreach. “This is quite exciting for us, to do this in a global context. That, of course, is part of the design of the Center and we just love playing in that kind of international community: it adds spice to it, depth, and it certainly adds complexity.”
He also detects a new receptiveness in the academy to the study of spiritual development—changed days from three decades ago when he was pressured not to do his dissertation in this field, on the assumption it would marginalize him academically. “Two very important mediums for psychologists—the American Psychological Association and the International Society for the Study of Behavioral Development—have accepted symposia based on our work,” reports Benson.
The program survey, scheduled for completion in spring 2008, will provide data from the study of young people in 17 countries. Additionally, interviews have been conducted with 34 adolescents identified as “spiritual exemplars” around the world. Although all the data furnished by the program will not be fully synthesized until the end of 2008, certain findings have already emerged.
Many young people are hungry to explore this area of life, says Benson. Here he makes a sharp distinction between spiritual and religious development. His research indicates that young people believe adults mostly talk to them about spirituality in relation to a desired conformity to a faith tradition, rather than exploring their potential spirituality. “When you get to spiritual development,” claims Benson, “it opens up the possibility of the individual actually having perceptions, ideas, and experiences that nobody has ever given them permission to talk about before.”
The team would like to do more work with public school teachers, but there are problems with such an initiative in America. Benson explains: “This church/state thing here freezes people in schools from ever daring to talk about things spiritual for fear that they’ll get slapped down because it gets too close to religion. We also know a lot of public school people say this area of spiritual development is such an important part of becoming a human being, how can we not talk about it? So I think Search Institute, across time, will be providing language and ideas that make it safer to explore this territory within a school context than it ever has been before.”
Although for practical reasons the formal research so far has been confined to adolescents, Benson hopes, as the framework of the Center begins to mature, to extend its work to cover childhood by implementing two strategies. First, he intends to utilize a developmental perspective and to try to identify the variety of paths that children take from birth through adolescence and into young adulthood. Second, he hopes to conduct studies that explicitly focus on younger ages.
One of the most uplifting aspects of the program has been its encounter with the youthful “spiritual exemplars” in different countries. It is Benson’s impression “that these young people defy the stereotypes of youth who are adrift or disengaged. We believe they will teach us a great deal about human flourishing while also helping to offer a more positive image of young people in society.
