Catholic Curriculum - Amazon S3



Catholic CurriculumIn our current context, the answers to questions about what does the Catholic identity of a school look like and how do we develop and nurture it, do not have simplistic checklist type answers. We need to re-examine our thinking and mind frames so that they are relevant to today and at the same time honour Catholic tradition. We also have to consider the context in which schools operate if we are to find meaningful answers to these and similar questions. In a largely secular age where the practice of religion has fallen markedly, it is essential for Catholic schools to be clear about what they offer in terms of curriculum offerings, approaches to teaching and learning and how this inter-relates with a Catholic world view.In conjunction with the rollout of the Australian P-10 National Curriculum, the Australian Government sponsored the development of the National Framework for Values Education in Australian Schools. Supported by significant resourcing to implement the framework, the reviews of the school-based projects that ensued were distilled into a second report which set out the principles of good practice in values education. These include: “establish and consistently use a common and shared values language across the school; explicitly teach values so students know what the values mean and how the values are lived; and, implicitly model values and explicitly foster the modelling of values.”When I was first appointed as Principal at St Mary’s College, Bishop Morris charged me with re-establishing a “Sense of the Sacred” at the College. Over time, I understood that he was making this judgement on the basis of the interactions of the community members, both staff and students with each other and with him. In the same way that the establishment of an agreed and known set of national and personal values in all Australian schools was the aim of the Values Education project, the Bishop was asking me to be clear about what I valued and what I as Principal expected of my community in being explicitly Catholic. Thomas Groome contends that the sacramental principle is the most significant aspect of what makes us Catholic in this way.Catholic Christianity emphasizes that the divine-human covenant is enacted within the everyday of life; here is where “it’s at” between ourselves and our God. Here God outreaches and engages with us. Here we respond as responsive partners. Catholic tradition gathers up this conviction that our covenant is realized through the ordinary of life in the principle of sacramentality. Nothing is more significant to what makes us Catholic than the sacramental principle. It epitomizes a Catholic outlook on life in the world; if allowed only one word to describe catholic imagination, we’d have to say sacramental.?The sacramental principle means that God is present to humankind and we respond to God’s grace through the ordinary and everyday of life in the world…..Life in the world is sacramental—the medium of God’s outreach and of human response.?As a rule of thumb, we can say that sacramental consciousness amounts to being alert to more in the midst of the ordinary….A sacramental consciousness recognizes and responds to the Transcendent in the everyday, the Creator in the created order, the Divine in the human, the Cosmos in the grain of sand, and the connectedness of all in God’s Spirit.?People with a sacramental consciousness are able to “pull back the curtain” (revelare) on God’s presence and grace in the everyday….It encourages us to “choose life” for ourselves, others, and the world (Deuteronomy 30:19) and to live life to the full (John 10:10). It puts a spin on everything for life for all.As the sacramental consciousness that Groome argues is so fundamental to Catholic tradition and experience, it follows that this must underpin any Catholic ministry. It also leads us to the prayerful celebration of God’s presence through the ordinary and the everyday and to the high point encounters we have with God in the sacraments. One way to conceptualise this is to further examine the concept of the Sense of the Sacred.Trish Hindmarsh reports of her participation in the “A Sense of the Sacred” project team in the Sydney Catholic Education Office. The project has at its core the understanding that values education must be a whole school approach and for a Catholic school that these are drawn from the Gospel and Catholic tradition. These values are expressed in relationships, experienced, recognised and encountered in the everyday cycle of teaching and learning in school life. The five foundation statements developed relate to the mission of Catholic Education and are drawn from Catholic tradition. They are:All of God's creation is essentially goodWe are created in God's image and likenessWe learn and grow in relationship with othersWe are part of the unfolding story of God's word being revealedWe are people of hope whose faith is strengthened by reason.Each of these foundation statements is linked to four Gospel values which are grounded in the experience of Christian faith through which we grow in knowledge of the mystery of God revealed in Jesus Christ. “The work of the Catholic school is seen as promoting a faith relationship with Christ in whom all values find fulfillment” The inter-relationships between these twenty identified Catholic values and the Foundational Statements is illustrated in Appendix 1. The values are interrelated and don’t exist on their own. They are integral to the lived experience of each person.While studying her book I came to the realisation that underpinning Hindmarsh’s text was a model that I believe assists us to conceptualise how a Catholic Curriculum might be conceptualised, recognised and nurtured in the Catholic schools of today.What Catholicity Looks LikeIn each ministry of the Church there are some key themes that can be identified as constituting a Catholic world view. These collectively constitute what Catholicity looks like regardless of whether the ministry is education, health care, aged care and so on. These understandings have been drawn from the work of Groome, Rohr and Martos.Sacramental consciousness which recognises and responds to the presence of God in the ordinary and everyday of life responding to God’s outreach to us.Sacredness of all Creation. All of creation is the result of God’s love and so all of God’s creation is sacred or graced or holy.Human Dignity. Each person is created in the image and likeness of an infinitely and unconditionally loving God and so is worthy of infinite respect and dignity. The Kingdom welcomes all, especially the poor, the downtrodden and munion with all. We are called to bring about God’s Kingdom of justice, love, compassion, peace, liberation, reconciliation and forgiveness now as part of God’s all-inclusive family.Cultural Transformation: We are called to challenge whatever is not life-giving in our culture and bring about God’s mission. We are also called to affirm what is life-giving and strengthen that within our culture.Reconciliation and Hope. In order to bring about God’s Kingdom as Resurrection people we live in the hope that a better future is always possible in the certain knowledge that God is all forgiving. Failure is always an opportunity to grow and to be better for us as individuals and for the world.Foundational Beliefs/Values/ActionsThere are also a set of foundations beliefs, values and actions that sit underneath and beside the themes of Catholic ministry.The spirit of the Gospel is to be embraced. The Catholic school because it exists in response to Jesus’ mission to bring the Good News to all people, is a place where Christ is at the centre of all aspects of community life. The message of life, love and hope is to be embraced and lived.Future oriented curriculum requires courageous leadership. The content of any curriculum must be limited since we do not know exactly what the future is we are preparing students for. This future will be shaped by both human action and the creative action of God in the world. The design and implementation of a future oriented curriculum requires an intelligent and courageous leadership.Continual recontextualization is necessary. It is vital that the Church continually seeks to renew and re-express the faith, while remaining faithful to the Gospel and its traditions. Given the continually evolving context of our times, recontextualization takes on an even higher priority. This is important in the secular, technological age in which we live so that Church, parish and school remain relevant.The seeds of the Gospel are seen in the positive aspects of secular culture. Through the lens of a Catholic view of the world, the work of charities, volunteers, champions of social justice and those who give to their communities in service are all examples of the Gospel in action through the work of the Spirit and can be viewed as the “seeds” from which the fruit of the Kingdom will come.Each culture has a shadow side. All cultures have elements that need to be critically identified, reviewed and changed for the better. Examples of this shadow side include the selfishness of excessive consumerism, the slavery that is the result of global economies, domestic violence, racism and discrimination in all its forms.Faith can enlighten student learning. As students “learn to recognise and value authentic love, justice, truth and human virtue”the Catholic school shines the light of the Gospel on student learning.Learning ExperiencesIn planning and designing learning experiences for their students the teacher in a Catholic school brings the foundational beliefs, values and actions described above to the task. As a result, the learning experiences designed will have the following characteristics or features.Teacher passion fires student imagination. Great teachers are passionate about their subjects as well as being experts in their subject areas. It is this passion of teachers which ignites student imagination and engagement. At the heart this is the teacher’s call to vocation which draws its inspiration from Jesus the passionate teacher who loved his disciples and his subject – the Kingdom of God.Subjects are gateways to culture. Students bring their own understanding of the world to school. This view has been formed by both the wider culture that they live in and especially their own families. The subjects they study at school are avenues to further formation of this worldview. Through the application of their learning about the mission of the Church and their own life of faith, the subjects studied become gateways to culture and so enlighten their learning.Engage students in DIALOG. In dialog student and teacher meet as equals. Here teacher and student come together seeking to understand one another and the positions they take. They work together on common goals and pray together.Assist students to make sense of their life and the world. Through accessing the Catholic tradition of faith in their everyday learning and participating in dialog with their teachers and other students, students raise questions and in seeking out the answers to these questions develop their own knowledge of their life and of the world.Forge links between faith, life and culture. “It’s task (the Catholic school) is fundamentally a synthesis of culture and faith, and a synthesis of faith and life.” In selecting and preparing learning experiences the teacher in a Catholic school makes explicit learning links between faith, life and culture.Developed by reflective practice. Pope Francis has called all Catholics to follow the process of discernment as a form of reflective thinking. Through a genuine dialogical approach that engages with how Jesus would approach the wide range of issues we face daily, students forge the links between faith, life and culture.Acquiring WISDOM through discernment. By using these processes of dialog and reflective thinking students grow in wisdom. Learning experiences need to be deliberately planned to develop this significant capability.See Judge Act provides a model for “doing theology”. When teachers pose spiritual questions as part of a reflective process, they are engaging in a form of discernment which is seen as “doing theology”. The process used by the Young Christian Students Movement (YCS) is a three-step process. First is seeing – the situation is described. Then by reflecting on Church teachings and readings deeper understanding is achieved – judging. Finally, there is a decision about what action will follow.Key OutcomesIf the teacher brings to the planned learning experiences a deep understanding of what Catholicity looks like and the foundational beliefs, values and actions described above, the teacher will look for evidence that the following key outcomes have occurred which in turn make the Catholicity of the school more explicit and visible. All of these elements are synthesised in Appendix 2.Deep, intelligent relationship with Jesus. Courageous futures-oriented leadership promotes “a deep, intelligent and meaningful relationship with Jesus, which becomes the axis on which all else turns.”A distributed blend of faith, life and culture. In consciously forging the links between faith, life and culture, each of the three elements is involved so that each contributes to the developing understanding by students. The understanding is distributed to all three elements.Students build their own world views from family under culture. Through dialog and discernment students will examine the own world views, understanding the importance of both family and culture and critically develop their own world views.Prepared for a reflective well-lived life. Participation in and engagement with this type of Catholic curriculum can be understood as a preparation for a reflective and well-lived life.Acquire WISDOM as a general capability from all disciplines and subjects. Teachers should be encouraged to regard ‘Acquiring Wisdom” as an additional general capability in the Australian Curriculum. It can potentially be developed through any subject across all disciplines.Critical thinking and mature moral values. “We are living in an information driven society which bombards us indiscriminately with data – all treated as being of equal importance – and which leads to a remarkable superficiality in moral discernment. In response we need to provide an education which teaches critical thinking and encourages the development of mature moral values.”APPENDIX 1: A Sense of the Sacred2976102-127635What Catholicity “looks like”Groom, Rohr and MartosSacramental consciousnessSacredness of creationHuman dignitycommunion with allcultural transformationreconcilliation and hope00What Catholicity “looks like”Groom, Rohr and MartosSacramental consciousnessSacredness of creationHuman dignitycommunion with allcultural transformationreconcilliation and hopeAPPENDIX 2Synthesis of Trish Hindmarsh“Educator’s Guide to Catholic Curriculum”39788763764692Deep, intelligent relationship with JesusA distributed blend of faith, life and cultureStudents build their own world views from family under culturePrepared for a reflective well-lived lifeAcquire WISDOM as a general capability from all disciplines and subjectsCritical thinking and mature moral valuesKey Outcomes00Deep, intelligent relationship with JesusA distributed blend of faith, life and cultureStudents build their own world views from family under culturePrepared for a reflective well-lived lifeAcquire WISDOM as a general capability from all disciplines and subjectsCritical thinking and mature moral valuesKey Outcomes59364722536190Learning ExperiencesTeacher passion fires student imaginationSubjects are gateways to cultureEngage students in DIALOGAssist students to make sense of their life and the worldForge links between faith, life and cultureDeveloped by reflective practiceAcquiring WISDOM through discernmentSee Judge Act provides a model for doing theology370000Learning ExperiencesTeacher passion fires student imaginationSubjects are gateways to cultureEngage students in DIALOGAssist students to make sense of their life and the worldForge links between faith, life and cultureDeveloped by reflective practiceAcquiring WISDOM through discernmentSee Judge Act provides a model for doing theology-3086102631440Foundational Beliefs/Values/ActionsThe spirit of the Gospel is to be embracedFuture oriented curriculum requires courageous leadershipContinual recontextualization is necessaryThe seeds of the Gospel are seen in the positive aspects of secular cultureEach culture has a shadow sideFaith can enlighten student learning00Foundational Beliefs/Values/ActionsThe spirit of the Gospel is to be embracedFuture oriented curriculum requires courageous leadershipContinual recontextualization is necessaryThe seeds of the Gospel are seen in the positive aspects of secular cultureEach culture has a shadow sideFaith can enlighten student learning59472505962660023679156489700067744934422928002767965178244500 ................
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