Catholic School Identity: The Purpose, Mission, and Practice of Education in the Catholic Tradition

Abstract

In this dissertation, I use Alasdair MacIntyre’s (1981, 1987) theory of practice to better understand the identity of Catholic schools. The first chapter is a philosophical discussion of the relationship between identity and the purposes of school. The second chapter defines Catholic school identity in the context of the school as an organization and institution. And the third, fourth, and fifth chapters describe an empirical study I conducted on one Catholic elementary school with a particularly strong Catholic identity.Researchers such as Coleman (1966) and Bryk (1993) have studied Catholic schools for decades, often in an attempt to understand the “Catholic school effect,” in which students in Catholic schools outperform public school students on academic measures. These research programs necessarily assume a secular purpose of education, which Labaree (1997) described as social mobility, social efficiency, and democratic equality. In contrast, the Catholic tradition defines beatitude as the purpose of education. Beatitude is the internal joy that derives from virtuous living according to natural law. An education centered on beatitude may succeed according to secular academic metrics, but academic success is not the purpose of such a school. Researchers who attempt to understand Catholic schools through a secular lens necessarily misunderstand them. Organizational identity is a claim about what is central, distinct, and enduring for an organization (Albert & Whetten, 1983). So Catholic school identity must be a claim for what is shared between Catholic schools, different from other schools, and consistent over time. Catholic school identity is rooted both in a particular Imago Dei anthropology (Groome, 1996) and also in the particular symbols and rituals of Catholicism (Convey, 2012). Organizations with strong identities elicit internal goods, the particular satisfactions of practice, in contrast to necessary but morally neutral external goods such as money, prestige, and power. Principals of Catholic schools must balance the legitimacy schools need for external goods with the internal goods that derive from strong organizational identity. These ideas inform and define the concept of Catholic school identity, but the lived reality of a school attempting to create and maintain its identity is full of practical complexities. To study how these complexities affect Catholic identity, I selected a Catholic elementary school with a reputation for a strong identity. I then interviewed administrators, teachers, and parents in the school community to assess their perceptions of how and why the school creates and maintains its identity. Because identity is created by the perceptions of stakeholders, these interviews gave significant insight into the nature of Catholic identity at this school. After understanding identity through the perspective of these administrators, teachers, and parents, I claim the following: First, the primary way the school distinguishes itself, and therefore defines its identity, is by using a classical curriculum. Second, contrary to the expectations in the literature, the school has flourished as a result of its pursuit of strong Catholic identity. And third, because the school’s success relies not only on distinctions from non-Catholic schools, but from other Catholic schools as well, the very strength of this school’s identity simultaneously undermines claims to a universal nature of Catholic schooling. I believe these conclusions will have significant theoretical value to researchers of Catholic schools, and practical value to Catholic school principals.