Chapter 7: Mindfulness, Structure, and Effectiveness: A Catholic Elementary School Study

Catholic schools have a special mission. It would be a hollow accomplishment, indeed, if we were to succeed academically and fail in teaching what it means to be a child of God. Still, it is important that the schools succeed as learning organizations that address both secular and religious curricula. The maintenance of a Catholic school identity seems to rest on scholastic achievement while keeping the spiritual aim paramount. To those ends, school leaders who avail themselves of current organizational research in the schools may be positioned better to realize the complementary goals of spiritual and academic growth.

Catholic schools, at least in our sample, are different from public schools in important ways. The Catholic schools do not have the huge apparatus of a central office that formally monitors them through a myriad of forms. Nor do they have access to the multiplicity of organizational roles that one finds in large public systems. To the contrary, the Catholic elementary schools in our study operate as islands in which the principal is a major factor in the school’s operation. Certainly, there are central offices, but these are not characterized by the size and variety of staffing one finds in the public systems. It is common for a Catholic school principal to be the chief curricular change agent, the primary hiring person, and, on occasion, a mover of desks and chairs. Because the schools are relatively small, the principal’s connection to the faculty is close and, consequently, it is important that the principal’s administrative practice be as thoroughly grounded in research and theory as possible. The intellectual bases of administration cannot operate in a vacuum; rather, it is the theoretical knowledge that can animate the inclination to bridge academic knowledge and actual practice. On-the- job experience completes a triumvirate of practice in combining knowledge, experience, and the inclination to apply one to the other. Therefore, we argue for the importance of Catholic school administrators maintaining currency with the knowledge base of school organization.