A qualitative study on the factors that influence faith development and education in adolescence

Faith development, nourished by formal and/or informal education, continues throughout life starting off with childhood. The purpose of this study is to determine the positive and negative factors that affect the faith development of youth in their adolescence, to reveal the processes and problems that lead young people to belief or disbelief, and to offer appropriate methods and approaches for the solution of these problems. The focus of this research lies on young people's relationship with religion in the context of religious education, which is constituted by their life experiences in the family, at school, and within the society they live in throughout their childhood, pre-adolescence and adolescence. In this framework, in-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 31 individuals, who were considered to be different from one and other in terms of religious orientation and religious attitudes, and whose faith development was thought to be shaped to a certain extent. A total number of 31 undergraduate students were invited to participate in the research, of whom 15 were from philosophy and 16 in theology. Participants were chosen through purposeful sampling, extreme case sampling, and snowballing sampling techniques. In order to achieve maximum diversity in the data, the participants with different backgrounds in terms of belief and religious education were included in the research. In this research, which was carried out in the narrative research and case study pattern, the data obtained through in-depth interviews, and observations was subjected to both descriptive and content analyses. The MAXQDA 12 qualitative data analysis program was used for data analysis. As a result of this research, it was found that the most influential factor in faith development and religious education of youth during the adolescence period is the family, including all childhood experiences. Additionally, it has been noticed that young people tend to consider themselves as subjects of their faith development in adolescence and late adolescence, which is related to the stage of developing an independent personality and self-consciousness, and to the ability of managing own decision-making mechanism. Consequently, it has been concluded that a religious educational approach or practice ignored these developmental characteristics of adolescence will not yield successful results regarding sound faith development.