Diversity and Differentiation in Catholic Education

Abstract

Just as there is diversity and differentiation in our experience of salvation, Christianity, theology and learning, so too there needs to be a diversity of ways of ‘reading the territory’ of Catholic education. If it is to be adequate to its object, any prolonged and serious attempt to understand the nature and workings of Catholic education calls for an awareness of and openness to multiple avenues of approach, investigation and interpretation. After some preliminary remarks which first, point to a growing recognition that diversity and differentiation are indeed integral to Catholicism and second, that, despite this, it remains the case that foundational principles for (and constitutive elements within) Catholic education can still be identified, this chapter has three parts. In part one I bring out the many different ways that one can approach Catholic education as a field of study. Part two gives attention to a representative sample of the many challenges facing Catholic education, acknowledges the contested nature of such religiously affiliated education and indicates a wide range of further studies required if this field of enquiry is to be explored in appropriate breadth and depth. Part three argues that, whatever other academic disciplines are deployed in an attempt to understand Catholic education, theology continues to offer an essential foundation for such understanding. I lay out some of the ways that theology offers illumination before briefly proposing several different possible theological starting points.