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The last month has seen me making a switch in focus as I turn my attention to a research project which has been on my plate for over six years. I am now devoting half of my time to rounding out this project: looking at the impact on families who have extremely premature infants. I am currently reading in the areas of faith development, looking at the ways in which people's response to the extended crisis of extreme prematurity impacts their world-view. In one sense it is an examination of a faith journey which does not take place within a christian framework. Fowler's Stages of Faith has been the latest read... Fowler seems unable to extricate himself from the framework of a christian worldview, assuming that the ultimate of faith development will lead someone to a christian profession. A healthy contrast is the work of Robert Kegan, whose focus is on the activity of meaning-making as something fundamental to what it is to be human. In his two key works, Kegan takes the approach of embeddedness (we rest within certain frameworks unless prised out) and then that of being "in over our heads".
At the bottom, however, is an uncritical acceptance of development as a paradigm, which assumes that people move from one level of thinking to another, with an implied "best" level to be attained, a view borrowed from psychology. It is a thoroughly modern and linear approach. I'm not sure life is so simple, or sequentially organised.
Further reading and thoughts to follow...
Posted by gary at August 23, 2005 08:29 PM
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