Teaching Responsibility
LJMU Schools involved in Delivery:
LJMU Partner Taught
Learning Methods
Lecture
Online
Module Offerings
7502ALEFTP-SEP-PAR
Aims
1. To contextualise the contemporary interest in spirituality in historical and cultural perspective.
2. To explore in depth the relationship between psychology and spirituality, including issues of measurement and frameworks for explaining spiritual phenomena in ways that adhere to the conventions current in academic psychology.
3. To examine critically how the above issues of measurement and explanation can be applied with respect to two areas (available from a range offered as optional topics within the module) that exemplify approaches in which spiritual traditions and their practices have been viewed through the lens of contemporary psychology.
Learning Outcomes
1.
Demonstrate understanding of two specific approaches to spirituality to a depth that enables them to evaluate how the approaches relate to contemporary psychology.
2.
Critically address issues of defining spirituality and recognising where ontological assumptions may clash with those that underpin scientific psychology.
3.
Explore in depth both the value and potential limitations of applying psychological perspectives to two areas (available from a range offered as optional topics within the module) that exemplify contemporary expressions of spirituality.
Module Content
Outline Syllabus:• The rise of modern spirituality:
o Secularism and post-secularism;
o factors influencing the decline of traditional religion
o trends towards ‘quest’
• Issues of definition and measurement:
o conceptualising the ‘sacred’
o scales of measurement and qualitative approaches
• Consideration of the above in two areas from a list of optional topics. Such optional topics may include:
o Contemporary spirituality
o Transpersonal ecopsychology
o Transpersonal dreaming
o Sufi psychology
o Kabbalistic psychology
o Shamanistic psychology
Additional Information:This module is a core module on a fully online, distance learning MSc programme. All activities take place via the Collaborative Learning Environment (CLE) into which students will be inducted at the commencement of the programme.
The term "online" under Delivery Options includes teaching delivered through synchronous webinars and through asynchronous forums.