The Relationship between the Religious Knowledge, Beliefs and Faith Practices of Catholic High School Teachers and the Vocation of Teaching
The Relationship between the Religious Knowledge, Beliefs and Faith Practices of Catholic High School Teachers and the Vocation of TeachingPhyllis Crotty MorrisonDirector: Dr. Merylann J. Schuttloffel, Ph.D.ABSTRACT The purpose of Catholic education is to transmit the faith to each generation of students. Church documents place particular emphasis on the importance of the teacher as the critical determiner of whether or not the purposes of Catholic education come to fulfillment (Declaration on Christian Education, 1965). In 1965 ninety-five percent of teachers were members of religious orders. In 2010 ninety-six percent of teachers were members of the laity (MacDonald, 2012). This increase in lay faculty laid the foundation for concerns regarding the formation and faith life of Catholic schoolteachers and their ability to transmit the faith to the next generation (Jabobs, 1996). This study examined the religious knowledge, beliefs and faith practices of Catholic high school teachers of all academic disciplines and their relationship to the teacher's understanding of the vocation of teaching. The theoretical framework for this study comes from Galetto's (1996) Building the Foundations of Faith: The religious knowledge, beliefs, and practices of Catholic elementary school teachers of religion. The four major variables of this study are: teacher religious knowledge, beliefs, faith practices and vocation. Data for this national study came from an on-line survey responded to by 608 teachers in 510 secondary schools from each of the six secondary regions of the National Catholic Educational Association. Data analysis was performed on the teacher. The individual responses were averaged to form the total means for the instruments. Descriptive statistics of means, correlations and ranges were computed for the instrument and each of the subtests of the instrument. Pearson product-moment correlation coefficients were used to determine patterns among the variables. The results of these analyses reveal that there is a relationship between the vocation of teaching and the religious knowledge, beliefs and faith practices of teachers. All of the independent variables predict vocation. The faith practices of teachers have the most significant impact on vocation while teacher religious knowledge the least impact on the vocation of teaching.The findings of this study can provide Catholic educational leadership with data and suggestions to assist them in ensuring that Catholic high school teachers are fully engaged in the Church's ministry of education.
Stats
Viewed 215 timesDownloaded 33 times