Synergies between home economics and spiritual health and well being

Spiritual health and well-being is essential for human survival and sustainable development. Home Economics education is an ideal vehicle for delivering and promoting spiritual health and well-being concepts. This chapter offers an historical overview of influences and philosophical insights into these interrelated concepts. A model is in development that demonstrates synergies between the multidisciplinary curriculum subject of home economics and spiritual health and well-being. Spiritual health and well-being in home economics contexts may be considered an umbrella concept that unifies ideas about quality relationships with one's self (individuals), how we relate to others (families and communities), our care and stewardship of living creatures and non-living environments (sustainable development) and acknowledges humans are capable of transcendence and operate within larger realities (local and global citizenship). My research posits spirituality as observable because it is a publically expressed and socially enacted phenomenon. The frameworks discussed in this chapter were necessary to ensure clear parameters for observing spiritual health and well-being in a virtual home economics environment and to provide a platform for the next phase of research.