This study details the background to the establishment
of Parish School Boards in the Archdiocese of Canberra and
Goulburn, and reports and analyses the perceptions of all
ACT Catholic, systemic, primary school Principals who
operated with a Parish School Board in 1993.
The movement towards Parish School Boards finds its
genesis in the Second Vatican Council where the Church was
invited to collaborate in decision-making based on the
belief that all the faithful have gifts, knowledge and a
share of the wisdom to bring to the building of the Church.
The nature and structure of Catholic education was seen as a
suitable vehicle for encouraging communities to engage in
shared decision-making and in participatory democracy under
the Church model of subsidiarity, collegiality and
collaboration.
The introduction of Parish School Boards into the
Archdiocese can be seen as the implementation of a radical
change to the educational mission of the Church and the
educational leadership of the faith community. Reflecting
'new management theory' in both the secular and Church
worlds, a key stakeholder is the school Principal whose role
and relationships change as he or she learns to work within
a team, sharing leadership.
This study examines the responses of nineteen
Principals who were interviewed by the researcher in order
to determine how they work with a Parish School Board and
what effects the board has on their work.
Research studies in the area of School-Based
Management and Shared Decision-Making have informed the
review, and the Principals' responses from this study have
been analysed in the light of secular and Church literature
on leadership, devolution and change.
The respondents of this study, the school Principals,
report the benefits of collegiality and collaboration but
their unresolved tensions relate to work overload, lack of
clarity of the roles and responsibilities of the various
local level decision-making groups, increased administrative
complexity, community demand for ever widening consultation
and the challenge of consensus decision-making.
All Principals report an urgent need for professional
development for themselves and for the system to provide a
more explicit focus on parish and community formation with
the commitment of the necessary resources to sustain this
radical change.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/218697 |
| Date | January 1993 |
| Creators | Hanks, Jennifer A, n/a |
| Publisher | University of Canberra. Education |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Rights | ), Copyright Jennifer A Hanks |
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