This book highlights the model of contemplative Catholic school leadership as an influence on faith-formation cultures within the Catholic school, and it demonstrates the impact of cultural factors on Catholic identity formation. By integrating reflection and Catholic values with a leader’s decision-making process, the model described in this volume seeks coherence between the leader’s faith beliefs and their behaviors. Including five unique, international case studies, this research emphasizes the character of the school leader—including faith identity—as the principal architect of the school’s culture.

This book highlights the model of contemplative Catholic school leadership as an influence on faith-formation cultures within the Catholic school, and it demonstrates the impact of cultural factors on Catholic identity formation. By integrating reflection and Catholic values with a leader’s decision-making process, the model described in this volume seeks coherence between the leader’s faith beliefs and their behaviors. Including five unique, international case studies, this research emphasizes the character of the school leader—including faith identity—as the principal architect of the school’s culture.

James D. Kirylo gives a personal and reflective account of what it means to be a Catholic teacher, drawing on the rich history of the Church and its inclusive nature through ecumenical, interfaith, and interreligious dialogue, along with the Church's social teachings and its link to liberation theology and a critical pedagogy in the light of faith. Recognizing teaching as a sacred vocation, Kirylo covers how faith should inform the practical matters of teaching and how these intersect with broader debates outside the classroom, including the COVID-19 pandemic, gun control, the sanctity of life, and climate change. The Catholic Teacher: Teaching for Social Justice with Faith, Hope, and Love is a book that underscores the dialectical interweaving of faith and action in the effort to foster a more just, loving, and right world.

Research demonstrates that the dual mission of Catholic schools, which integrates academic and spiritual growth, requires unique leadership from its principals (Bryk et. al 1993; Ciriello, 1996, 1998; Coleman & Hoffer, 1987; Cook, 2001, Jacobs, 2002). Contemplative leadership is a model suited to the distinctive principalship of the Catholic school. Contemplative principals, who understand and utilize reflective decision making based on Gospel values, Church tradition, and their personal Catholic character, employ a needed and "unique rationale for decision making" (Schuttloffel, 2008, p. 3). This reflective decision making along with other components of contemplative leadership behavior and the individual Catholic character of principals provides a leadership construct that guides teachers toward an understanding that this educational community is concerned with the student's mind and soul (Schuttloffel, 1999, 2008, 2013). This study examined the extent to which contemplative leadership is practiced by principals and experienced by teachers while exploring the relationships between the formation of these principals and the use of contemplative practices and teachers' experience of contemplative leadership and their care for students' spiritual lives. Participants for this study included principals and teachers from three dioceses in Michigan. Surveys were sent to the principals and teachers of 75 schools. Sixty-one schools (81.3%) participated with a total of 56 principals and 295 teachers who completed the survey. Two surveys were developed for this study: Principals' Contemplative Leadership Practices Survey and Teachers' Experience of Contemplative Practice Survey. This study uncovers three major findings: Contemplative leadership is practiced by principals and experienced by teachers at a high level; there is a significant and positive relationship between the formation of principals and their use of contemplative practice; the most important finding is that there is a significant and positive connection between teachers' perception of contemplative leadership and teachers' care for students' spiritual lives. These findings provide current principals, priests, diocesan leadership, and those in Catholic higher education insight into contemplative leadership practices and its impact on teachers' care for students' spiritual lives.

Catholic School Leadership addresses many of the challenges facing those who prepare faith leaders and education leaders for the Catholic schools of the future. The well-known editors and contributors to this volume have written about their personal experiences with Catholic schools; the educational foundations of Catholic schools; teacher preparation and development; Catholic school leadership; dealing with parents and families; and the challenges of technology for Catholic schools. The contributions emphasize the perspectives of both scholars and practitioners within Catholic education and will interest anyone who has experienced time in a Catholic school either as a student, teacher or administrator, as well as those interested in what is happening within Catholic schools today.

The administration of Pre K – 12 Catholic schools becomes more challenging each year. Catholic school leaders not only have the daunting task of leading a successful learning organization, but also to serve as the school community’s spiritual leader and the vigilant steward who keeps the budget balanced, the building clean, and maintaining a healthy enrollment in the school. Each of these tasks can be a full time job, yet the Catholic school principal takes on these tasks day after day, year after year, so that teachers may teach as Jesus did. The goal of this book is to provide both beginning and seasoned Catholic school leaders with some insights that might help them to meet these challenges with a sense of confidence. The words in this text provide research?based approaches for dealing with issues of practice, especially those tasks that are not ordinarily taught in educational leadership programs. This text helps to make sense of the pastoral side of Catholic education, in terms of structures, mission, identity, curriculum, and relationships with the principal’s varied constituencies. It also provides some insights into enrollment management issues, finances and development, and the day in day out care of the organization and its home, the school building. As a Catholic school leader, each must remember that the Catholic school is not just another educational option. The Catholic school has a rich history and an important mission. Historically, education of the young goes back to the monastic and cathedral schools of the Middle Ages. In the United States, Catholic schools developed as a response to anti?Catholic bias that was rampant during the nineteenth century. Catholic schools developed to move their immigrant and first generation American youth from the Catholic ghetto to successful careers and lives in the American mainstream. However, most importantly, Catholic schools have brought Christ to generations of youngsters. It remains the continuing call of the Catholic school to be a center of Evangelization—a place where Gospel values live in the lives of faculty, students and parents. This text attempts to integrate the unique challenges of the instructional leader of the institution with the historical and theological underpinnings of contemporary Catholic education.

This book presents a range of perspectives on the current state of Catholic education in the opening decades of the twenty-first century. All of the chapters have their origin in an International Conference on Catholic Education, held at Heythrop College (University of London) in September 2016. The book brings together many leading scholars to present a survey of the latest research on Catholic education in areas such as the aims of Catholic education, Catholic schools and Catholic identity, leadership issues in Catholic schools and fresh thinking about the place of Religious Education (RE) in Catholic Education. This book demonstrates how the field of Catholic Education Studies has firmly come of age. Rather than being a subfield of educational or theological discourse, it is now an established field of research and study. As such, the book invites readers to engage with much of the new thinking on Catholic education that has grown rapidly in recent years. It offers a broad range of contemporary perspectives on research in Catholic Education and rich insights into current thinking about Catholic Education.