Critical challenges and dilemmas for Catholic Education Leadership internationally

Abstract

This paper considers the challenges faced by contemporary Catholic Education systems with particular reference to the contrast between the prevailing neo-liberal agenda and gospel values. It explicates this contrast from the perspectives of current critiques of the influence of the new manageralism in education and relevant literature on Catholic Education including successive documents originating from the Vatican's Congregation for Catholic Education. The challenge for Catholic Education is examined from the perspectives of curriculum policy and practice and the preferential option for the poor. The paper considers the possibility of integrating a Catholic perspective across the formal curriculum and outlines the approach adopted by the Ontario Institute for Catholic Education. Concerns regarding elitism in Catholic Education are examined from Australian and Irish viewpoints.

Keywords:

• neo-liberal agenda
• gospel values
• Catholic Education
• curriculum integration
• option for the poor

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on Contributor

Dr Jim Gleeson, inaugural Professor of Identity and Curriculum in Catholic Education at Australian Catholic University, Brisbane, former Senior Lecturer, Department of Education and Professional Studies, University of Limerick, Republic of Ireland.

Notes

1. Dubai Knowledge Village (DKV) is the world's only Free Zone area dedicated to Human Resource Management and learning excellence. Established in 2003 as part of TECOM Investments, DKV aims to develop the region's talent pool and establish the UAE as a knowledge-based economy. With over 500 business partners, DKV offers Human Resource Management, Consultation, Training and Personal Development programmes.

2. Contractual models of accountability are measurement-driven and concerned with standards and results whereas responsive or professional accountability is ‘more concerned with processes than outcomes, and with securing involvement and interaction to obtain decisions that meet a range of needs and preferences’ (Glatter, 2003, 53).

3. Charter schools in the United States are subject to fewer rules, regulations, and statutes than traditional state schools. While they receive less public funding than public schools, as non-profit entities, they can receive donations from private sources. The number of American charter schools has been growing exponentially to some 6400 in 2013–14.

4. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) is an international survey under the auspices of the OECD. It is conducted every three years and aims to evaluate education systems by testing the skills and knowledge of 15-year-old students in reading, mathematics and science. Students representing more than 70 economies have participated in this assessment to date.

5. Paulo Freire's (1921–1997) best known work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed, was published in 1968 against the backdrop of gross inequality in Brazil. Other works include ‘Education, the practice of freedom’ (1976); The politics of education: culture, power, and liberation (1985); Politics and education (1998).

6. As in surfing the internet for quick-fire answers to complex questions.

7. A number of Edmund Rice Education Australia schools are involved in that body's Curriculum of Justice and Peace project with its focus on the development of transformative and liberating curriculum. Other Religious Institute schools highlight the importance of social justice issues by drawing on the charism of their founder.

8. There are seven Ontario Catholic schools’ graduate expectations, including the development of responsible citizens who give ‘witness to Catholic social teaching by promoting peace, justice and the sacredness of human life’. Their curriculum mapping work involves the integration of all ten principles of Catholic Social Teaching into the formal school curriculum, grounded in their RE and Family Life programme.

9. See also Grace (2013, 99).