This article examines the impact over two years of a study pilgrimage to the Holy Land by Master's students enrolled at the University of Notre Dame Australia. The students undertook a study pilgrimage to the Holy Land in 2023 as part of the Master's course, Scripture and Church. Through the study pilgrimage, the students showed a significant increase in skill, knowledge and understanding of their faith and the cultural, social and religious complexities within the State of Israel. The findings relating to their study pilgrimage were captured in the research paper 'Deepening an educator's understanding of Scripture and Church through an immersion experience in the Holy Land' (RAiD Number 102.100.100/485606). The Master's course is aimed at educational teachers and leaders with responsibility for formation for mission in Catholic education. Formation offers teachers of RE an opportunity to discern their place in the world and their purpose to bring Gospel values to the service of others. This research is a longitudinal investigation into the impact of the study pilgrimage to the Holy Land two years later. The impact to be explored includes the students' professional career, faith, social and cultural engagement and growth. To measure life changes reported by students who had travelled to the Holy Land, one-on-one interviews were conducted with each participant. Open-ended questions were asked, and researchers conducted individual analyses on each. Themes were identified and compared with relevant research. Conclusions and discussions are explored in this article, giving students, teachers, leaders and Universities involved in Catholic education insights into the ongoing impact of the extraordinary human experience of study pilgrimage.
As digital technologies become an integral part of education, teachers have every reason to promote critical digital citizenship (CDC) competencies to guide responsible online behaviour, recognise misinformation, and ensure safe digital practices. Despite its importance and relevance, there are limited validated Critical Digital Citizenship (CDC) interventions. The aim of this research study is to design and develop Critical Digital Citizenship intervention modules and assess their effectiveness through an intervention programme for Catholic school secondary teachers. The research adopted a mixed-method research design comprising three phases: module development, expert validation, and intervention-based effectiveness assessment. Draft modules underwent expert review to ensure face and content validity. Quantitative validation was conducted using the Content Validity Index (CVI), while qualitative feedback assessed clarity, educational context, and pedagogical effectiveness. A quasi-experimental pre-test-post-test design was employed with a sample of secondary school teachers who participated in a CDC intervention programme. The Critical Digital Citizenship Competency Scale was used to evaluate the intervention's effectiveness. The results of this research indicate a statistically significant improvement in teachers' CDC competencies. These findings have implications for teacher education and policy initiatives that aim to promote ethical and critical digital engagement in secondary education.
The Congregation of Holy Cross is an international Roman Catholic apostolic religious congregation community of priests, brothers, and sisters, that educates more than 110,000 students across 21 countries. Within the contemporary United States parish school context where Holy Cross sponsored schools often function with considerable independence and are led primarily by lay educators, questions of shared identity and mission coherence persist. In this context, eight parish schools have historically operated in relative isolation, limiting opportunities for shared mission integration and collective formation. Recognising this challenge, the Congregation partnered with the University of Notre Dame's Alliance for Catholic Education (ACE) to design a leadership and mission formation intervention grounded in Holy Cross spirituality, educational tradition, and a relational understanding of charism. Drawing on theological scholarship that understands charism not as a static inheritance but as a living, communal reality expressed through culture and relationships, this research initiative sought to study the coherence across independent school contexts. In particular, the model was informed by research on Catholic school identity that emphasises the formation of persons through relationships as the primary means by which charism is embodied and transmitted. Through shared formative experiences, pastors, school leaders, and educators engaged in reflective practices that integrated theology, pedagogy, and institutional life, strengthening Catholic identity while honouring local contexts. This article presents the rationale, theological foundations, design, and emerging outcomes of the Congregation of Holy Cross and ACE partnership, highlighting how charismatic circularity and socio-historical theology inform practical strategies for mission integration, charism identification, and cultural renewal. Early evidence suggests that Catholic school culture is strengthened by sharing these experiences across institutions, enabling a shift from independence toward interdependence. The model offers a replicable intervention for other religious congregations and Catholic networks seeking to renew mission identity through collaborative formation.
Catholic schools celebrate the sacraments in communities which include students and faculty of all faiths and of no religious affiliation, facing various challenges to student engagement. This paper begins with a summary of the challenges in Catholic school liturgies, particularly in the celebration of the Eucharist, with an overview of the limited relevant guidance from Church documents. Suggesting a paradigm shift away from the challenges and towards the opportunities of multi-faith assemblies at Catholic Mass, it names 'liturgical virtues' which can be advanced in worship, are promoted through school culture, and are beneficial to all members of the community regardless of religious affiliation. With these virtues in mind, it suggests principles to guide the preparation needed for students to engage with the Mass in a way appropriate to their developmental stage and religious practice. It concludes by contemplating how Catholic school Masses can be a sacrament of unity, reinforcing student and school identity while maintaining the sanctity and distinctiveness of Catholic sacramental practice.
Although mentoring practices are widely recognised in educational settings, mentoring by the principal alongside other mentors remains largely unrecorded, making the formation of their identities as mentors an important area of inquiry. This self-study examines the evolving mentorship identity of a Salesian educator who served as a school and college principal and as an educational researcher engaged in a national mentoring mission. Six episodes of formal mentoring across institutional and national contexts, along with mentees' feedback, were collected to reflect on mentoring experiences and contributed to the thematic analysis. The study is grounded in Bandura's (1997) self-efficacy theory, the prepare-support-growth lens from the National Mission for Mentoring (NMM) in India, and in alignment with the Salesian educational philosophy. The findings revealed three themes that illuminated the process of mentoring identity formation: mentoring as accompanying presence, mentoring identity and leadership formation, and mentoring as a dialogic and transformative practice. The dual vantage point of practitioner and researcher enriches reflexivity and reveals how mentoring identity is shaped. This study presents a contextually embedded model for mentorship development, illuminating the development of mentoring identity through mentoring practices and feedback.
This study aims to map the trends, themes, and directions of the study of religious moderation education in Islamic and Catholic schools through bibliometric approaches and systematic literature review. This study departs from the increasing urgency of religious moderation education in responding to intolerance, polarization, and the challenges of living together in a multicultural society. The study used a hybrid design with Scopus indexed article data sources. The literature selection process follows the PRISMA flow, from 484 initial documents to 359 articles that meet the inclusion criteria. Bibliometric analysis is conducted to identify publication trends, countries, affiliations, authors, journal sources, and keyword co-occurrenceence, while systematic literature review is used to synthesise the theme, focus, and tendencies of the research substance. The results show that publications have increased sharply in the last five years and are dominated by the Indonesian context. The most prolific states, affiliates, and journals come primarily from Islamic educational colleges and publications, while the contribution of Catholic perspectives begins to strengthen through the themes of interfaith dialogue, religious literacy, and peace education. The keyword analysis places religion, education, Islam, tolerance, Catholicism, and religious moderation as the main nodes, which indicates that this field is developing at the intersection of religious education, attitude formation, and interpersonal relations. Religious moderation is not enough to be understood as a curricular content, but as a pedagogical, relational, and institutional process. This study concludes that religious moderation education in Islamic and Catholic schools has a substantive meeting point in building inclusive, dialogical, and socially responsible religious diversity. This study has implications for the importance of strengthening the curriculum, teacher capacity, and school culture that supports interfaith education.
Christian education becomes fundamental for changing the educational and societal patterns of Jharkhand. The establishment of academic institutions, such as St. Xavier's, Gossner College, and Don Bosco schools, arose from missionary activities to address illiterate tribal people while teaching basic literacy and practical skills. Since independence, these educational institutions have received constitutional endorsement for growth, resulting in notable increases in literacy rates among marginalise section and educational opportunities for women. Modern challenges to sustainable operations include the FCRA (Foreign Contribution Regulation Act) framework, which reduces foreign contributions; allegations of religious conversion by politicians; bureaucratic barriers to land acquisition; and tribal opposition to Indigenous education programmes, financial challenges, cultural preservation, and lack of government support are major challenges in Christian education in Jharkhand. The preservation of Christian institutions in Jharkhand requires policy interventions between increased grants and public-private partnerships, together with community engagement. The successful development depends on Christian institutions maintaining their commitment to educational progress.
Within contemporary Catholic pedagogy, education is facing unprecedented pressures owing to globalisation, digitisation, and the increase in pluralisation of societies. Within this study, the focus will be on assessing the sustainability and relevance of contemporary Catholic philosophical ideas on education that are grounded in religious expressions and backed up by findings from Lebanese Catholic schools. Built on an integral anthropology that commits to attaining harmonious development of the intellect, morality, community, and spirituality, the paper seeks to assess the relevance of contemporary pedagogies. A mixed-method design was adopted, combining questionnaires (N approximate to 200), semi-structured interviews with principals, teachers, chaplains, and catechists (n = 10), and two focus groups across twelve schools in Mount Lebanon. The results demonstrate a wide tendency towards convergence between Catholic purposes and modern 'student-centered' practices, particularly with regard to aspects of reciprocity, inclusivity, and autonomy. The results also pose pressing questions with regard to performance-based cultures, overexposure to media, and disenchanting spiritual times in overly packed curricula. The Catholic schools should be seen as educational synthesis where tradition and innovation are merely contrasted in terms of insight rather than opposed to one another. This study contributes to the discussion of religious education by highlighting the potential and necessity of a collaborative renovation and by pointing out regional strategies meant to guarantee holistic formation in times of instability.
Given that educators are primarily responsible for ensuring elementary and secondary schools help build a strong democracy, their perceptions matter. This study sought to understand what they believe about the contributions schools make, with an emphasis on those unique to Catholic schools. Through qualitative analysis of open-ended survey questions, the insights of 118 participants in a virtual, online convening were explored. Findings indicated that schools' greatest contribution is the preparation of citizens who possess civic competence. This involves four educational domains including: (1) knowledge acquisition (i.e. a strong foundation in the academic disciplines and civics) (2) the development of skills (i.e. different types of literacy, cognitive skills (i.e. critical thinking, creativity) and social skills), (3) other attributes (i.e. values and virtues) and (4) opportunities to integrate these in practice. Catholic schools prepare a distinctive citizen, a Christian citizen, whose civic competence reflects the same domains but with special characteristics. The findings of this study offer insights to guide and better coordinate the diverse initiatives within Catholic education to strengthen the future of US democracy.
