Faculty of Education - Theses
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ItemThe adaptation of the Irish Christian Brothers' education system to Australian conditions in the nineteenth century( 1988)This thesis argues that the Irish Christian Brothers successfully adapted their denominational system of education to Australian conditions in the nineteenth century. Initially, the Brothers brought an elementary system which they extended to superior or advanced education to provide the lower middle-class Catholics with opportunities for upward social mobility. The commitment of the Christian Brothers to denominational education suited the Catholic bishops in Australia, so the adaptation to the needs of the Church required little or no change in the policies of the religious order. By the end of the century, the Catholic Church in the colonies had taken a course of action to set up a denominational system completely separate from the State; the Irish Christian Brothers and other religious orders presented the bishops with the means of pursuing such a course. The first small contingent of Brothers arrived in Sydney in 1843 but remained only four years, mainly because of a difference of opinion between the Irish order and the English Benedictines. When the second mission of Christian Brothers arrived in Melbourne in 1868, they brought with them a system of education which was thoroughly religious and which had been already adapted to meet the needs of the poor in Ireland since 1810. Their system was mainly derived from the French de la Salle Brothers' educational system (as set out in Conduite des Ecoles, 1733). As most of the Melbourne Catholics were of Irish descent and were poor, both Goold and the Irish Christian Brothers believed that the system would readily adapt to Australian conditions. In this sense, the process of adaptation was relatively uncomplicated. In Ireland, the system had evolved from being in direct opposition to the national system to being an independent system based on specially prepared textbooks and on pedagogical methods developed by the order. In the colonies, the system in a constant state of evolution. (From Introduction)
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ItemSharing the spirit: transmission of charism by religious congregations( 1998)Catholic schools have experienced significant changes in recent years. Other than the pressures that all schools face, the issue of the identity of Catholic schools has loomed large. With the dramatic decrease in the active membership of religious congregations, the continuation of their charism, their philosophical and spiritual tradition, has been a crucial concern. In this study, the processes for charism transmission were examined in order to identify these processes and their underlying assumptions. Through the use of interviews, participant observations and document analyses, the processes for charism transmission currently in use were documented. Charism transmission was found to occur through a range of formal and informal processes. Informal processes included school structures, networks, personal contact and the everyday reality of school life. Formal processes included a range of programs planned to share overtly the charism with lay colleagues. These included inservices, extended reflection programs and explorations of personal spirituality. These processes were consistent with the definition of charism proposed by Lee (1989) and with the model of shared praxis proposed by Groome (1991). In addition, vision, in this study, was influenced significantly by the historical context and tradition of the group. Thus, the description of vision, as proposed by Staessens and Vandenberghe (1995), was augmented with this additional perspective. The assumptions, which strongly influenced the chosen processes, were primarily related to the expected roles of religious and their lay colleagues. Although a shared or mutual responsibility was advocated by the majority of congregations, the processes employed were not always consistent with that assumption. As a result, a framework, based on the work of Butler (1996), for the development of more coherent and comprehensive approaches has been proposed.