Much Catholic school and church rhetoric suggests that Catholic schools possess distinctive learning environments. However, little empirical evidence has been found to support this assertion. Research has been hampered by the lack of an appropriate assessment instrument. This paper describes the development of a seven-scale instrument to assess…

Schools of choice are fast becoming part of the national debate on educational reform. This study, part of a larger study of schools and families, examined how the work context of teachers and opportunities for parent involvement differ under different choice arrangements, and investigated aspects of the sociobureaucratic context of teachers' work…

Findings of a study that examined the impact of parent involvement on student performance in Catholic and public schools are presented in this paper. Methodology involved regression analysis of the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS:88) database, which contains information on 1,035 schools (802 public and 233 private schools) and…

The first of a series, this publication consists of two symposium presentations. The first paper, "Annual Fund: Cornerstone of Development," by Robert L. Stuhr, defines the annual fund concept in the context of institutional development and provides five requisites for a successful annual fund: it must (1) be part of an ongoing…

Consequences of the first allocation of public aid to independent schools in British Columbia in 1979 and 1980 were explored in this study. Interviews and questionnaires were used to query principals, education committee (or school board) members in private schools, and superintendents and presidents of teachers' associations in public schools.…

This paper explores whether or not an effort to centralize the administration of several metropolitan Catholic high schools for the purpose of economy of resources would produce an unanticipated consequence that would severely offset any savings. The research suggests that Catholic parents perceive a difference among these schools in terms of…

Since the early 1980s, efforts have increased to educate Catholic and Protestant students together in Northern Ireland. This case study examined the impact of mixed Protestant and Catholic education on former students' respect for diversity, friendship patterns, and their own religious, political, and cultural identity. A case study approach was…

A study recorded the experiences of elementary school students with cooperative learning in two schools in Singapore. The students worked cooperatively in various assigned social studies tasks through the process of social interaction and sharing with their peers. One school was used as the experimental school while the other served as the…

This interpretative case study examines how the faculty at Ohio Dominican College, a Baccalaureate II, coeducational college, perceives the college's academic and religious identities, and how these identities are expressed in the life of the campus. Additionally, on a more conceptual level, the study offers an opportunity to examine the emerging…

This paper explores how students from three different high schools (one all female, one all male changing to coeducation, and one previously all female, and now coeducational) experience school culture, how institutions, through their policies and practices, communicate normative behavior about gender, and how gender is communicated through…

Similarities and differences in elements determining the religious character of 104 four-year Catholic colleges sponsored by women religious are examined. Literature on Catholic higher education, an analysis of college catalogs, and interviews with college presidents and the executive director of the Association of Catholic Colleges and…

The current debate about social studies education is the focus of this paper, and the questions and the charges raised by recent surveys and reports are addressed. Survey results from the Ravitch and Finn, the Chandler, and the National Catholic Educational Association studies reflecting student ignorance of social studies knowledge are discussed.…

Spanish-speaking people constitute almost one-fourth of the American Catholic Church's membership, yet they have had little representation in the structure of the Church. In the 130 years of interaction of the Chicano population with the Church, little indigenous leadership has emerged from its ranks; of the 58,301 American priests today, less…

In an attempt to investigate and define the "clarity of presentation" complex of teacher behaviors and to relate them to a number of presage and context variables, four instruments consisting of selected low inference behaviors were administered to four groups of ninth-grade students for rating the behaviors of their most clear and least clear…

This paper reports learning environment research conducted in Australian Catholic high schools. A two-stage methodology involving quantitative and qualitative data-collection methods was employed. In the first stage, a sample of 1,719 students and 160 teachers responded to a specially developed classroom-environment questionnaire. Results…