An Alternative Model for Research on Catholic Education

Most of the research that has been done on Catholic education has utilized survey methods in the study of attitudes toward and effects of Catholic schools; individual Catholic laymen or schoolchildren have been the objects of analysis, and the orientation has been instrumentalist. An alternative model is suggested as a means of answering questions about the parochial school system itself; this orientation is more nomothetic than instrumentalist. The basic hypothesis, rooted in open-systems theory of organization, is that Catholic education arises out of a perception, on the part of the Roman Catholic church, of an environment threatening to itself. This hypothesis is elaborated in terms of four variables: minority position, ethnicity, hotility of environment, and modernization. Demographic and socioeconomic data are used to test the hypotheses, with states as units of analysis; correlation and regression are the analytic techniques. With some modifications, the results of the analysis support the organizational model.