The spiritual quest to find meaning and purpose in life: opportunities and challenges for education

The search for meaning and purpose begins in childhood, yet despite the spiritual being part of some international curricula, performativity agendas in many education systems negate its importance in favour of metrics. However, education can play a crucial role in helping children and young people navigate this critical aspect of life which is central to wellbeing. In this article, I utilise a predominantly analytical autoethnographic approach to explore pivotal moments in mine and others’ existential quests in educational settings. Adopting a multi-disciplinary lens, I use data from my youth, my careers in primary teaching and academia, and my research into children’s dreams and ‘imaginary’/invisible friends. I argue for children’s spiritual voice(s) to be heard, and that adults have much to learn from them. This methodological process generates a counternarrative to dominant cultural discourses that overlook or undervalue children’s natural, often intuitive, capacities to seek meaning and purpose.