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National identification among young people and the issues about how national education should be conducted have been the significant topics when the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region was entering its third decade of the establishment. This paper was written based on data the authors obtained upon participation in a project organized by the Centre for Catholic Studies of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The project was carried out after the official curriculum, known as the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide, was shelved due to popular resentment. The project aimed at capturing the timely opportunity for substantial resources available for school-based operation of moral and national education and developing an alternative curriculum about teaching national issues and identification for Catholic Diocese and Convent primary schools to adopt. This paper aims to investigate the nature of this Catholic Project and examines the extent to which it is a counterhegemonic project or one for teaching to belong to a nation (Mathews, Ma and Lui, 2007). It assesses the project’s possible contribution to citizenship and national education in Hong Kong, since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide.

The authors of this paper worked in an education university of Hong Kong and were invited to be team members of this Catholic Project. The role comprised proposing topics for teacher training, conducting seminars, giving comments to teaching resources, observing and giving feedback to schools that tried out the teaching and designing/implementing an evaluative survey and conducting follow-up interviews with involved parties such as teachers and key officials of the Catholic Centre. Given this, the research involved can be perceived as action research. This paper was written up with both the qualitative and quantitative data the authors collected when working the project.

This paper reported a Catholic citizenship training project with the focus on a Catholic school project on preparing students to understand the nation by learning national issues analytically. The ultimate goal was to ensure teachers in Catholic primary schools could lead the students to examine national issues and other social issues from the perspective of Catholic social ethics. Though the project arose after the failure of the government to force through its controversial national education programme, this paper found that instead of being an alternative curriculum with resistance flavour, the project was basically a self-perfection programme for the Catholic. It was to fill a shortfall observed of Catholic schools, namely, not doing enough to let students examine social and national issues with Catholic social ethics, which, indeed, had a good interface with many cherished universal values. In the final analysis, the project is not a typical national education programme, which teaches students to belong to a nation but an innovative alternative curriculum transcending the hegemony-resistance ideological tensions as advanced by western literature (for example, Gramsci, 1971; Freire, 1970; and Apple, 1993).

The paper contributes to the literature of Hong Kong studies and citizenship education studies. The results of such an innovative endeavour, which captures and capitalizes the opportunity and resources for developing a national education curriculum in school-based manner. Attention was paid to the endeavour’s nature and its possible contribution to the knowledge, policies and practices of citizenship and national education in Hong Kong amidst deep social transformations. In particular, the paper can add to the specific literature about Hong Kong’s citizenship and national education development since the withdrawal of the Moral and National Education Curriculum Guide. Using an empirical example of Asian schooling and society, analysis of this paper illustrates the way in which development of an alternative curriculum is more innovative and interesting, transcending the hegemony-resistance ideological tensions.

The purpose of this paper is to present the understandings and administrative actions of six Catholic high school principals in relation to their administrative expectations of the admission of non‐Catholic students.

This paper involves interviews with six Catholic school principals from one Catholic school division in a Western Canadian province. The methodology chosen for this paper is grounded theory. Specific analytical processes are employed: open‐, axial‐, and selective‐codings.

The findings present four major themes with respect to the inclusion of non‐Catholic students in their schools: the school administrators' expectations; the significance of the preliminary interview; the ongoing relationship of the non‐Catholic student to the Catholic school; and points of confrontation with the Catholic school administration.

The paper provides some guidance with respect to the application and entrance procedures which non‐Catholic students should undergo before admission. It also points to the importance of providing information about the school's spiritual mission to non‐Catholic parents before their child is admitted to the school community.

The paper's originality lies in the findings offered in an area of education, which is not yet well researched.

This article draws on my doctoral research into the expansion of the Catholic educational mission in New Zealand in the years from 1945 to 1965. The project utilised archival and documentary sources and interviews with thirty three Catholic educators: twenty one female religious from the Sisters of Mercy, Dominican Sisters and the Religious of the Sacred Heart and twelve male religious from the Marist Brothers, Christian Brothers and the Society of Mary (Marist Priests) and two former diocesan directors of Catholic education.

There is growing evidence of a worldwide shortage of persons willing to apply for vacant principal positions in schools. Reports a study about why more persons are not applying for principal positions in Catholic schools in New South Wales, Australia. An analysis of the career aspirations of those eligible and likely to apply at some stage for a principal position revealed a high level of “unwilling” respondents. Ranks and discusses ten factors identified from a study of their perceptions of issues that would discourage or encourage them to apply. The most significant negative factor is the impact on family and personal life. Others include gender issues and the nature of the selection and interview process. The significant positive factor is that principals have the opportunity to make a difference in the lives of others. Reflections on the findings include addressing the changing nature of school culture, the implications for the principalship and the need to develop a culture of leadership in schools.

From the nine Quaker boarding schools to the 900 000 children in over 6700 aided or controlled Church of England schools, the religious bodies continue to play a large part in the provision of education at both primary and secondary level in the State system. Additionally, they control a significant number of the direct grant and independent schools as well as many colleges of education. With the exception of the 50 Jewish day schools, which take in over 11 000 Jewish children, religious education means Christian education.

This paper reports two related studies of relationships between organizational communication and occupational stress of staff members in Catholic primary schools.

Data from both studies were obtained using survey questionnaires. Participants were staff members of Catholic diocesan primary schools in New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory and Queensland, Australia. Research hypotheses were tested using correlation and multiple regression analyses.

Ten organizational communication factors and four occupational stress domains were identified. Several organizational communication variables were found to be predictors of occupational stress in four identified domains.

The findings provide implications for school administrators in relation to staff member access to formal communication channels, openness and approachability of principals, and support giving between school administration and staff, as well as among staff.

The studies used a conceptual framework of organizational communication that is unique and comprehensive. The paper contributes new knowledge in an area that has received little attention, namely, communication in schools.

A large sample (n = 437) of teachers in Catholic schools in New South Wales, Australia, completed a questionnaire on perceptions of job‐related stress. Six stress factors were isolated (namely poor school tone, pupil recalcitrance, curriculum demands, community antagonism, time demands and poor working environment). The pattern of responses was similar to that previously obtained from samples of teachers in state schools, but the levels of reported stress were generally lower. This was particularly obvious in the case of pupil recalcitrance, and the Catholic school teachers also reported lower absenteeism than their state school colleagues. As in the state schools, one in three teachers reported high levels of minor neurotic disturbance, and poor school tone contributed significantly both to this measure of well‐being and to the reported number of days absent. It was concluded that occupational stress is prevalent in both Catholic and state schools.

There is a persistent image of the Catholic Church as an authoritarian institution which is opposed to democratic practices. While it is true that the Church retains its right to be authoritarian in what pertains to faith and morals, it is not true that the Church believes it must or should be authoritarian in all matters. So long as the primary ends of administration are assured, the church is not necessarily concerned with the actual form of administration adopted. In recent times, although there has been no negation of the doctrine that all authority is granted by God, the Church has displayed an increasing sympathy for democratic ideals. Indeed, the Church's own institutions have for centuries followed democratic administrative procedures and the more wide‐spread adoption of such procedures in Catholic schools is to be highly commended.

This study investigates teacher receptivity to a proposal to relocate Year 7 primary classes to secondary schools in the Western Australia Catholic school system. The proposal has not yet either been formally promulgated to schools, parents and students or adopted by the Catholic Education Commission. A general model of teacher receptivity to a major planned change in a centralised education system, during the adoption stage, was used to guide the study. The dependent variable, receptivity, was measured in two aspects ‐ an evaluative attitude and behaviour intentions. Three independent variables, general beliefs about the secondary school and perceived readiness to leave primary school, perceived practicality of the change, and the perception that fears and concerns associated with the change will be alleviated, were measured. The environment in which teachers work was measured through the teacher (age, gender, experience, area of expertise and school size) and the school (primary or secondary, size and location), as situation variables, related to the independent variables. Receptivity was found to be strongly and positively related to the perceived practicality of the change and moderately, positively related to perceived readiness of Year 7 students for secondary school. The results are combined with other studies to provide advice to educational administrators about how to adopt and manage this proposed change.

Nobody concerned with political economy can neglect the history of economic doctrines. Structural changes in the economy and society influence economic thinking and, conversely, innovative thought structures and attitudes have almost always forced economic institutions and modes of behaviour to adjust. We learn from the history of economic doctrines how a particular theory emerged and whether, and in which environment, it could take root. We can see how a school evolves out of a common methodological perception and similar techniques of analysis, and how it has to establish itself. The interaction between unresolved problems on the one hand, and the search for better solutions or explanations on the other, leads to a change in paradigma and to the formation of new lines of reasoning. As long as the real world is subject to progress and change scientific search for explanation must out of necessity continue.