“Because They Are Spiritually Discerned‪”‬

The purpose of my qualitative research was to explore with early childhood education teachers, their understanding of children’s spirituality and how they think educators can support this type of development in the classroom. I wanted to search further with them how spirituality in early childhood education paves the way toward social justice. This study was grounded in the critical Black feminist and interpretive theoretical frames with a situated methodology. It incorporated grounded theory. The research included five participants from two different early childhood education settings, who were selected purposefully through community nomination. The instruments to gather data included: individual interviews, observations, written field notes and narratives. The findings pointed to a theoretical framework that integrates the four major themes across the data: identity and connectedness with the self, identity and connectedness with self and others in relation to social justice, spirituality embedded in loving education, and multiple spiritualities negotiated within earlychildhood education. The theoretical framework for spirituality in early childhood education that emerges from the findings.