The Characteristics of Catholic Schools: Comparative Perspectives from the USA and Queensland, Australia

Abstract

The faith-based identity of Catholic schools is increasingly problematic in a secularised society where the numbers of teachers belonging to religious orders are diminishing rapidly. Teachers’ views regarding the characteristics of Catholic schools are an important aspect of the identity of such schools. The authors locate Catholic schools in the USA and Queensland, Australia, in their respective contexts and compare teachers’ ratings of the importance of eleven given characteristics of Catholic schools as seen by 3,389 teachers in USA Catholic schools and 2,287 teachers in Queensland Catholic schools. When the mean ratings for each jurisdiction were statistically correlated, USA teachers were much more likely to rate these given characteristics as essential and the resulting χ² and associated Odds Ratio values indicated very statistically significant jurisdictional differences. Some tentative explanations are suggested including the differing political contexts, the conditions of teachers’ employment and the support structures for the spiritual and faith formation of teachers in the respective jurisdictions.;