Gerald Rupert Grace

• PhD
• Managing Director at St Mary's University Twickenham London

The field of International Studies in Catholic Education has been developing in recent decades. This Chapter narrates how the emergence of new scholarship and new research in Catholic Education internationally has brought into sharper focus the challenges currently facing Catholic schools. Part 1 reviews the ten challenges facing Catholic Education...

International research shows that the curricula of Catholic secondary schools are increasingly becoming dominated by the pressures of conforming to the requirements of nation states. These requirements are generally expressed in economic and utilitarian terms and evaluated by criteria of measurable outputs. As a result of these pressures, Catholic...

This article argues that faith-based schools are a necessary feature of democratic and pluralistic societies and a legitimate expression of human rights as constituted in the European Convention in Human Rights (2000). It further argues that if the rights of parents to have a real choice for faith-based schools (regardless of ability to pay) are to...

When researching the responses of 60 Catholic school leaders to their demanding work in English inner-city secondary schools, I encountered evidence of a deep vocational commitment. These headteachers were clearly drawing upon a spiritual and religious resource that empowered them and which gave them a sustained sense of mission, purpose and hope i...

This paper argues that the professional development and in‐service educational needs of faith school leaders have been neglected by mainstream providers of continuing professional development programmes in the United Kingdom. Given the substantial presence of Church of England and Roman Catholic schools and colleges in the UK system and current pla...

This paper is a reflection upon the research findings of Rebecca Allen and Anne West in relation to religious schools in London. While welcoming this contribution to the systematic study of faith schools (a neglected area of empirical inquiry), the paper argues that the use of ‘religious schools’ as a unitary category is problematic for the analysi...

There is a considerable contradiction in the field of Catholic education. On the one hand, the Catholic educational system is the largest faith-based educational mission in the world, having over 200,000 schools and over 1000 universities and colleges, while on the other hand, very little systematic scholarship and research exist to assist, evaluat...

In the notes of guidance to the contributors to this volume, the editors assert that [a]s the nature of educational sites alters in late modernity, the issue of educational cultures and pedagogic identity becomes powerfully de-linked from notions of citizenship and more and more powerfully linked to economics or to religion. The framing of the topi...

Using the concepts of classification and framing and other relevant writings by Basil Bernstein, an attempt will be made to construct a theorised account of changes in the socio-political context of education in Britain; of the mode of governance in education and of the constructs and practice of educational leadership from the 1950s to the present...

One of the purposes of the International Handbooks in Education Series is to review the state of research and systematic analysis in particular fields of educational practice and to suggest agendas for future research to stimulate and develop the field. This is the intention of these two volumes, with specific reference to the international field o...

In this chapter I want to consider the importance of theory in locating the challenges of urban education within a wider analytical framework, which I shall argue, is necessary for an in-depth understanding of the urban education problematic. I will attempt to do this by providing a personal, reflective account of my own struggles as an Urban Educa...

Intelligence, Destiny and Education: the Ideological Roots of Intelligence Testing by John White. By John White. Pp. 172. London and New York: Routledge. 2006. £21.99 (pbk), £70.00 (hbk). ISBN 0-415-39493-7 (pbk) 0-415-36892-8 (hbk).

This paper attempts to provide some answers to two questions: What are the distinctive challenges of urban education (especially in London) and how can schools help to meet them? Using theoretical frameworks derived from the writings of two leading scholars of the urban, Manuel Castells and David Harvey, this paper argues that the challenges in urb...

In Good Faith: schools, religion and public funding, MARIE PARKER-JENKINS, DIMITRI HARTAS & BARRIE IRVING, 2005 Aldershot: Ashgate, 254 pp., ISBN 0 7546 3351 9 £16.99(pb), 0 7546 3350 0 £55 (hb)

This article argues that a problem for the contemporary sociology of education is that it has operated within a 'secularisation of consciousness paradigm'. This has limited both the depth and the scope of its intellectual enquiries. Sociological analysis which elides a religious dimension not only presents an over-simplified view of social relation...

Much of the political and public debate about faith-based schooling is conducted at the level of generalised assertion and counter-assertion, with little reference to educational scholarship or research. There is a tendency in these debates to draw upon historical images of faith schooling (idealised and critical); to use ideological advocacy (both...

This article is based upon the assumption that a comprehensive construct of sociological enquiry in education must include engagement with specific faith-based educational systems in various settings. The analysis presented here attempts to advance that process of engagement by examining, both theoretically and empirically, the role of contemporary...

It is often assumed that issues to do with Catholic school leadership are relevant only to Catholics and are therefore marginal to mainstream research and literature in the field of educational leadership. This misconception probably arises because of two pervasive and stereotypical views of the nature of Catholic schooling.

Changing relations between the English State and the Roman Catholic Church in the sphere of education policy are examined in two historical periods. Between the 1870s and the 1970s, despite initial anti-Catholic prejudice, the Catholic hierarchy was able to negotiate a favourable educational settlement in which substantial public funding was obtain...

Incl. bibl., abstract. There is a widespread policy assumption that school leaders such as headteachers and governors need to have 'raining courses' which are constituted by a growing corpus of Education Management Studies (EMS) if they are to achieve successfully current schooling goals of 'effectiveness', 'quality', 'excellence' and 'value for mo...

The study of school leadership is in danger of being reduced to a set of technical and management considerations. School leadership is not simply about management. It is about moral values, educational values and professional principles. There is an urgent need to place the study of school leadership in broader social, cultural, political and histo...

New Zealand's radical education reforms (1987‐1990) provide a valuable case study for the examination of the politics, ideology and process of educational change. This paper examines the strategy of New Right agencies in attacking the established education settlement which embodies principles of Welfare Labourism. The crucial role of the New Zealan...

*This article originally appeared in The Australian Educational Researcher, Vol. 17, No. 1, May 1990, pp. 37-48, and is reprinted here with permission from the Editor. It is based upon a Keynote Address given at the AARE Conference, Adelaide, December 1989.

Supply, retention and morale problems related to teaching are in themselves the surface manifestations of deeper historical, structural and ideological contradictions within state policy in education. Such issues cannot possibly be explained without reference to the radical changes in state policy in education which have transformed both the terms...

This paper argues that the assessment and evaluation of teachers in slate provided schooling in Britain has never been simply a matter of technical competence. Judging teachers has always involved social, ideological and political considerations which have varied in different historical periods.An analysis is made of attempts to apply principles an...

I n September 1996, the Centre for Research and Development in Catholic Education (CRDCE) was inaugurated at the University of London, Institute of Education, with the support of a group of its senior academics including Professor Peter Mortimore (the director). Professor Denis Lawton (a former director), and Dr. Paddy Walsh (head of the Curriculum...