For What Mission Are School Leaders Prepared? Analyzing Leadership Formation Programs and the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Schools

• In Event: Complicated Conversations in Catholic Education

Abstract

There is an emerging consensus in the field of Catholic education in the US about what constitutes effective Catholic school leadership defined by the National Standards and Benchmarks for Effective Catholic Schools (NSBECS). NCEA has endorsed the NSBECS and the Journal of Catholic Education recently published a focus section dedicated to the NSBECS focusing on the increasing use of standards to help (arch)dioceses assess leadership and school quality (Ozar, Weitzel-O’Neill, Barton, Calteaux, & Hunter, 2019). Simultaneously, there have been recent efforts to redesign leadership formation programs specifically for aspiring Catholic school leaders in light of the NSBECS (Boyle, 2016). To this point, though, there has been little effort to unpack the assumptions underlying these new consensus definitions of leadership effectiveness or leadership formation.

This paper presents findings from the first phase of an empirical study of Catholic school leadership formation programs that identifies major trends shaping the ways educators are prepared to become leaders in US Catholic schools. The study asks: How is Catholic school leadership formation designed and implemented within and across major sites of practice? The first phase of this study asks: How do programs define leadership formation and what are the implications of this definition for how programs intend to prepare leaders? The purpose of this first phase is to offer a critical interpretation of how Catholic school leadership formation is defined in light of the emerging NSBECS consensus.

This study draws upon a new conceptual framework proposed by the authors at the AERA Annual Meeting in 2019 articulating the complex interrelationships among narratives defining the current enrollment-driven ideology of US Catholic education policy, practice, and research (Author & Author, 2019). This study and its conceptual framework are also informed by the complementary theoretical frameworks of critical Catholic educational research brought to light in this symposium (e.g., Burke, 2012; Garcia-Huidobro, 2017; Manning, 2018) and culturally sustaining pedagogy (Paris & Alim, 2017). The first phase of the study uses qualitative research methods to analyze a data corpus composed of public documents describing programs/program structures, proprietary program documents received from the programs under investigation, and insider interviews conducted by the researchers.

The significance of this study is that there is almost no peer-reviewed, empirical research of leadership formation programs preparing leaders for Catholic schools in the US conducted by researchers outside of a program. At a time when NCEA and many Catholic universities running leadership formation programs have identified the NSBECS as the clearest way to define school leadership effectiveness, there is a need for independent, complex analysis of the ways this consensus creates boundaries around what counts as leadership formation and the effects of that boundary for the preparation of leaders in the field. This paper provides initial evidence to help make sense of the consequences that emerge for leadership program design as the NSBECS consensus continues to emerge in the field.

Authors

• Andrew Frederic Miller, Boston College

• Michael T. O'Connor, Boston College