Abstract
The shortage of teachers who can strongly identify with the religious mission of Catholic schools is at the point of an “existential crisis,” according to a system leader in Catholic schools in Western Canada. Drawing upon exploratory interviews completed with ten chief superintendents (who oversee large school districts), this paper reveals that while school districts offer various forms of faith formation regulating the personal lives of teachers amidst divergences between Church doctrines and social trends is complicated. Because the complexity of teacher faith formation is incredibly difficult to address, we discuss three key areas to renew the state of affairs: focusing on the individual teacher’s journey, creating content that is dialogical and seeks to integrate faith to life, and coalescing of Catholic educational partners to forge the political will to better support teacher faith formation.
DOI
10.15365/joce.2702032024
First Page
39
Last Page
58
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.
Recommended Citation
Hoven, M., Sarnecki, D., & Pagotta-Kowalczyk, E. (2024). Teacher faith formation as response to an “existential crisis” in Catholic schools: Western Canadian superintendents’ perspectives. Journal of Catholic Education, 27(2), 39–58. https://doi.org/10.15365/joce.2702032024
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