Emery, Roberta Mary2024-08-132024-08-1319741974https://hdl.handle.net/1828/17709This study was undertaken to: (1) explore the effects of religious teaching on the pre-school child, and (2) determine whether or not the child attempts to interpret religious information on the basis of his previous experience. The hypotheses to be examined were: 1. There is an important difference between the major religious concepts that adults profess and aim to teach the pre-school child, and those that the child actually forms. 2. This disparity is not due to illogical thinking* on the part of the child, but rather, is a result of his attempt to organize, assimilate and relate religious information in terms of his previous experience. 3. Religious concepts in children are like other concepts in that they are based upon concrete types of experiences. The sample consisted of 30 boys and girls ranging in age from 4 years, 3 months, to 5 years, 10 months, all of whom attended the Goosey Gander Kindergarten in Saanich, B.C. Since the children came from a wide variety of socio­economic backgrounds and home life-styles, it was assumed that the responses of the sample represented the religious thinking of boys and girls in this age group who attended the kindergarten. It was also assumed that, since all of the children involved in the study had been exposed to a more or less degree to religious concepts in the community, selection of subjects need not be based upon Sunday school or church attendance. In order to discover how the children conceptualize such religious matters as God, Bible, Jesus, church, prayer, death and life after, and creation, individual, open-ended unstructured interviews were conducted. The wording of questions asked in the interviews was based upon information gathered through observations of spontaneous conversations of children at the school, and the questions about religion they most often asked. To obtain the adult view, parents not affiliated with religious groups were questioned, and Sunday school manuals of the Catholic, Anglican and United churches were studied. The most typical responses of the children were then: ( 1) compared to tho.se conceptions common to the teachings of the Anglican, Catholic and United Churches; and (2) interpreted in order to ascertain whether or not the responses were attempts to relate religious information to previous experience. The findings indicated that there is an important difference between the adults' and the pre-school child's concepts of religious matters. They also appeared to confirm the findings of a number of authorities on cognitive development, that: the more abstract and complex concepts pose the greatest difficulty for young children; and children associate information gathered from adults with that gathered through previous experience, elaborating the resulting idea with fantasy. Implications for these findings are discussed, along with the need for further study in the area of religious education for young children. *Although many authorities equate logical thinking with abstract thinking, many others contend that children's thinking is based upon a "concrete" type of logic. Piaget (1955) defines logic as "the sum of the habits which the mind adopts in the general conduct of its operations" - (pp. 65-66).138 pagesAvailable to the World Wide WebThesis