ND Task Force on Catholic Education: Implications for Research?

In 2005, the President of the University of Notre Dame, Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., appointed the Task Force on Catholic Education in response to an invitation from the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to help revitalize America’s unique Catholic school system. In December 2006, the University published the work of the Task Force, “Making God Known, Loved, and Served: The Future of Catholic Primary and Secondary Schools in the United States,” identifying 12 areas in which the University can support Catholic schools, and five recommended steps for Church and civic leaders.

The recommendations of the Task Force are specific to actions that can be - and are being - taken by the University of Notre Dame. However, they suggest broader themes that might be explored through an agenda of research on Catholic Education. Although a case could be made for the implications of each of the recommendations, the following 3 seem like fertile ground for immediate and ongoing research:

Recommendation #1
Recruit and Form a New Generation of Effective Catholic School Teachers
In a response to last week's post, Katie Bennett suggested that many of the challenges facing Catholic schools are attributable to "financial woes caused by the critical transition in staffing from predominantly vowed-religious to lay persons that occurred during the second half of the twentieth century". If this is true, then not only will recruitment of a new generation of teachers be important, but research about who can and should be recruited, what Catholic teacher education programs currently look like and can be in the future, the role of Catholic teacher preparation in education departments at Catholic colleges and universities, and preparation and retention of Catholic school teachers - to name just a few - seem like fruitful areas for research. Among other research in this area, Katie's research, along with, for example, John Watzke's edited volume Beyond Alternative Teacher Education: Integrating Teaching, Community, Spirituality and Leadership, might provide a good start for future research.

Recommendation #2
Recruit and Form Effective Catholic School Leaders
Parallel to Recommendation #1, developing leaders of Catholic Schools for the new millennium seems of paramount importance to creating new, innovative ideas and models for Catholic Schools and Catholic Education. Through its ACE Leadership Program, the University of Notre Dame has begun to develop the next generation of leaders. This initiative addresses the need for well-trained leaders, and it could provide a foundation upon which to research leadership in the Catholic school context, specific characteristics of effective Catholic school leaders, and models of development appropriate for the Catholic School context.

Closely related is Recommendation #11: Develop a National Program to Develop Effective Parish School Leadership Programs. The implementation of such a recommendation should be founded upon research on - or at least best practice in - what makes parish leadership teams unique in education and how they can be developed productively.

Recommendation #4
Build a National Initiative for the Academic Improvement of Catholic Schools
Although a "Catholic School effect" - greater achievement for Catholic School students as compared to their public school counterparts - has been noted, in particular for low income and ethnic minority students, the effect is not observed in all Catholic schools. This effect seems to interact with the needs of new immigrant populations served by Catholic schools, as described in Christian Dallavis's comment to last week's post, the effects of low teacher salaries on teacher quality and retention, and the particular kinds of environments, curricula, and instruction that make Catholic Schools unique (see David Yeager's comment to last week's post). Research is needed to tease out these effects and explore their interactions.

Some subjects, such as science, present opportunities to explore the interaction between Catholic belief systems and traditional school curricula. Catholic Schools also seem to be ideal contexts in which to study service learning and character education, and among the only places where Catholic identity formation and instruction can be studied. These topics are important not only for the education of our children, but also for the future of the Church.

There are no doubt more specific applications of these Task Force recommendations to research, as well as areas in which research can inform progress toward fulfilling the other recommendations, but I offer these as a beginning point, open to comment, elaboration, or disagreement. Ideally, the collective comments of interested and skilled readers of this blog will result in the beginnings of an agenda for research on Catholic Education.