The Role of Spirituality in Academic Resilience: Benefits and Barriers for BSW Students

Overview: This session will review research findings that aimed to uncover the role of spirituality in academic settings for BSW students. The presenters will discuss alignment of findings with CSWE self-care standards and implications for future curricular programming.Proposal text: The awareness of the role of spirituality could offer insight into the future development of higher education programming for students and faculty. Although student’s perceptions of spirituality are vast, research suggests that spiritual capability and spirituality can positively influence perceived self-efficacy in college students (Rakshanderou, Safari-Moradabadi & Ghaffari, 2020). For social work students, developing meaningful and sustainable self-care practice is vital for academic, personal, and professional wellness and is an integral part of ethical and competent practice. Furthermore, for students who may be at a higher risk for poor student and short and long-term individual and professional outcomes, awareness of the value of a multitude of self-care practices, including spirituality is essential. Research suggests that there are many forms of spiritual practices that can be successfully integrated into academic settings, including meditation and mindfulness practices (Biber, 2020; Khaki & Habibabad, 2020). Further studies have shown that the community support component of spirituality has the potential to reduce feelings of isolation and loneliness, making attention to spiritual practices particularly important for many college students who often report feelings of disconnect while in college (Kim, Crutchfield, & Kim, 2021; Saleem, Saleem, Mushtag, & Gul, 2021).
This presentation will review a subset of outcomes from a larger IRB approved study on self-care practices of BSW students. Specifically the outcomes will include correlations found in a sample of 250 BSW students between spirituality practices and academic resilience. Further relationships between student physical, mental, and relationship health with spirituality will be discussed. Student participation in and barriers to engaging in spiritual practices will be reviewed along with implications for understanding the role of spirituality to strengthen social work implicit curriculum.