Edmund Rice Research Articles

Monitoring and Evaluation for Education and Accountability in Edmund Rice Foundation Australia Nairobi County

Purpose: This study examined the relationship between corporate governance attributes and performance of state-owned enterprises through review of literature. The study specifically sought to establish the relationship between corporate governance attributes of accountability, transparency, transformational leadership and stakeholder engagement; and performance of state-owned enterprises with government policy objective as the mediating variable. The study was anchored on Agency, Signalling, Transformational Leadership and Stakeholder Theories to narrow the literature gap.
 Methodology: The study adopted desk research design through reviewing of relevant literature relating to corporate governance attributes and performance of state-owned enterprises. The study also summarized major contributions of significant studies on the relationship between corporate governance and performance. In addition, the study discussed the theoretical and methodological gaps in the reviewed literature on corporate governance and performance for further research.
 Findings: Reviewed primary and secondary literature sources showed that, more transparency allows for greater accountability and contributes to better performance by state-owned enterprises. Further, countries that have been able to improve their corporate governance standards and practices have also been able to improve the business environment for and performance of both private and state-owned companies. In addition, SOEs’ performance is influenced by adoption and implementation of corporate governance practices. However, the difference in financial performance of SOEs may be due to several factors including set government policy objectives that constrain the performance of the SOEs. Moreover, countries with ineffective governance and low accountability continue to experience weak SOE performance, poor delivery of public services, stifled competitiveness and growth including through the crowding-out of private companies and increased opportunities for political patronage and corruption.
 Unique contribution to theory, practice and policy: The study recommended that the principal objective of SOE reforms should be to improve SOEs’ accountability and efficiency by establishing and enforcing adequate reporting of their performance while holding them accountable for reaching or their targets. In addition, the state ownership policy should fully recognize SOE’s responsibilities towards stakeholders and request that SOEs report on their relations with stakeholders. Further, it should make clear any expectations the state has in respect of responsible business conduct by SOE.

MONITORING AND EVALUATION FOR EDUCATION AND ACCOUNTABILITY IN EDMUND RICE FOUNDATION AUSTRALIA NAIROBI COUNTY

Purpose: The research examined the techniques used for accountability at Edmund Rice Foundation Australia Kenya (ARFA-K), in Lang’ata, Nairobi County Kenya. The study sought to establish if M&E system promotes accountability in education to management or performance. Therefore, to expound on the practicability of M&E process in management accountability especially at ERFA-K.
 Methodology: The research employed mixed research method. The theory of change and empowerment theory in this study conceivably showed the application of M&E in promoting accountability in education. The study adopted descriptive research method. This research adopted the descriptive survey design approach since it involved collecting primary data to test or answer questions concerning the current status of the subject under study. The confidence level in this research was 95% with confidence interval of 9.32 from the populations of 141 at ERFA-K with sample size of 120 participants. Purposive sampling was used to select the 120 respondents that comprise of 4 Directors, 6 Managers, 11 Project Managers, 4 Accountants, 78 Subordinates (lower employees), and 38 Volunteers (non-staff workers). The 141 of 120 computed to 85% for the researcher objective population through separated testing, which was identical to an example size of 120 participants. The research tools for the study were interview guide, structured questionnaires and observation check list. Qualitative data was analyzed and presented in a prose form while quantitative data was analyzed by use of Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 26 and presented in tables, pie chart and bar graphs.
 Findings: The study revealed that there was no accountability in the organization and it affected the implementation of activities appropriately. Majority 69.7% reported that the tools and techniques had challenges to use hence making organization to outsource experts. Lack of stakeholders’ involvement as result of failing to develop a sector that purely deals with M&E system such as M&E plans, indicators and tools hence lowering accountability and misappropriation of resources.
 Unique contributions to theory, practice and policy: The study concluded that application of M&E for education and accountability greatly affected the organization in the utilization of budgeted resources well which led to merging of projects since there were no funds. The study recommended that ERFA-K projects must clearly involve stakeholders adequately in M&E activities in all levels to enhance application of M&E system for accountability

A School on a Mission. 140 Years of CBC On Wakefield St by Lingard Goulding (review)

will take great thinkers, generous pragmatists, principled planners, with formidable powers of sensitivity capable of developing a credible model of real inclusion and true equality. There are existing wells of thinking to draw from and one of them was dug by Arthur Griffith. Is he truly ‘the father of us all’? That is a debate well worth having, but only after reading the book! Dr Mary McAleese was President of Ireland, 1997–2011. A School on a Mission. 140 Years of CBC On Wakefield St, Lingard Goulding (Adelaide: Christian Brothers College, 2018), xiv+338 pages. In the foreword to A School on a Mission, Giles Fitzherbert comments that ‘thereismoretothisbookthanisatfirsthandapparent.Readers,payattention’. What at first appears as a volume to celebrate the life and achievements of CBC on Wakefield Street – a Catholic school in the Christian Brother tradition – becomes in part a story of Catholic Ireland in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and an account of the extraordinary missionary activity of a band of brothers in faraway Australia. The story, told with great affection and good humour by Lingard Goulding, is all the more interesting in that it is by an ‘outsider’(‘I am not a practitioner of the Roman Catholic faith’), but who, as a distinguished educator himself, has a great understanding of school life and of the challenges that founding and sustaining a school over a period of 140 years presents. His story, therefore, is of Ireland and its missionary zeal in education, of resourceful and determined religious men who, against all the odds, gave an education to the sons ‘of labourers, squatters or small time farmers’in the young state of South Australia, and about the remarkable development of a school from humble beginnings to being an inclusive and innovative centre of learning in the heart of Adelaide. Lingard begins his account by looking at the life of Edmund Rice, the founder of the Christian Brothers, whose contribution to Irish education is unparalleled, if (currently) somewhat under-appreciated. He then looks at the life and work of Br Ambrose Treacy, by any assessment a remarkable person. A man of deep faith, true entrepreneurial spirit and steely determination, he led the first wave of Brothers to Australia and established ten schools in as many years, the last of which was CBC on Wakefield. Studies • volume 109 • number 434 240 Summer 2020: Book Reviews This feat is not to be casually passed over. Enjoying neither the financial support of the bishop for even a residence – ‘I have not a rap for you. Throw yourselves on the people and they will provide for you’ – and determined to cater for the poor (as Rice had done in Ireland) without any support from the State, the brothers literally had to beg not only for their subsistence but for the means to teach the children in their care. All the buildings, facilities, resources that we take so readily for granted had to be fund-raised for from a community of Catholics who were relatively poor and on the lower rungs of Australian society. The achievement is staggering and Lingard recites the various initiatives and developments taken by the different headmasters over the decades of the school’s life. The picture is one of a school moving into a place of educational prominence, whilst remaining faithful to its founding mission and of an emerging Catholic population that stands proudly with the other Christian traditions. The added appeal of the book lies in its humour and in the personality of its author, who cannot help but reveal himself. Two examples will illustrate. There is an amusing account of a faux pas by Br Hughes, who refused to allow the boys sing the national anthem on the occasion of a visit by the Governor of the Colony. Having listened to some of Moore’s melodies and religious hymns ‘sweetly sung by the school choir’, the Governor asked for a rendition of ‘God Save the Queen’. Br Hughes sullenly replied, ‘The boys are not taught to sing that anthem’. The issue reflected the latent anti-English feeling of the (predominantly Irish) community of Brothers. A related issue reared its head when it came to the order of toasts...

Educational Psychologists as advocates of children in out of home care: An innovative program model that empowers young people and the adults who support them

Life Without Barriers, a specialist foster care agency, are funding a Collaborative Education Program in partnership with Edmund Rice Education Australia Youth +. This paper aims to share some of the practice that gives a voice to the children and young people who have experienced trauma, abuse and neglect and have been placed in out of home care. Casework illustrations serve to reveal how the voice of the child is included in measures of participation, well-being and achievement that inform their Education Support Plans. Given the evidence of the impact of trauma on language development non-verbal methods of monitoring are used to explore the child’s perceptions of: what context is most likely to engage them using the Preferences for Activities for Children flashcards and pictorial Likert scales; how their attachment to the carer is developing using video recordings of structured play sessions with carers; sandtray and symbol work when creating trauma narratives; and iPad applications to scaffold emotional expression, social problem solving, transition planning and literacy and numeracy interventions. The program model is limited by recent government financial cutbacks in addition to the scarcity of educational and developmental psychologists in Queensland and its expansion to a national model requires a creative, facilitative model of leadership and strategic social investment in the local community.

An Examination of Servant-Leadership Characteristics Displayed by Edmund Rice Christian Brothers

An Examination of Servant-Leadership Characteristics Displayed by Edmund Rice Christian Brothers

Exploring ICT Integration as a Tool to Engage Young People at a Flexible Learning Centre

The Edmund Rice Education Australia (EREA) Flexible Learning Centres aim to provide a supportive learning environment for young people who find themselves outside of the mainstream secondary schooling system. Drawing on twenty first Century learning principles, the Centres aim to deliver a personalised learning experience with an emphasis on flexibility and individual choice. Provision of a comprehensive curriculum enables young people to make positive future life choices and successfully transition into employment and further training. The aim of this research project has been to work with teaching staff at a Flexible Learning Centre in North Queensland, Australia, to explore the value of integrating ICT in the form of Web 2.0 technologies to enhance young people’s engagement with the subject of science. The findings of this case study suggest that ICT integration is effective in revitalising science education interest for disengaged young people. This may have wider implications in relation to general concerns of declining student interest and participation in science in the secondary years of schooling.

Edmund Rice and the First Christian Brothers. By Dáire Keogh. Dublin: Four Courts, 2008. 316 pp. €50.00 cloth.

Edmund Rice and the First Christian Brothers. By Dáire Keogh. Dublin: Four Courts, 2008. 316 pp. €50.00 cloth.

Using Science to Re-engage Young People in an Australian Flexible Learning Centre

The Edmund Rice Flexible Learning Centre Network caters for the needs of young people in secondary education who have previously been disconnected from the conventional educational system and have already experienced varying degrees of social disenfranchisement as a result. The experience of many of these young people in science has been of embedded social-systematic biases that have translated initially as disengagement, and then as disability when their everyday life-worlds clash with mainstream science education. These young people's backgrounds are exceptionally diverse, and frequently involve both voluntary and involuntary extended absences from formal schooling. While this is often, but by no means universally, associated with academic concerns, the paramount concern of the school is to ensure that these young people feel a part of their society, and able to contribute to that society in a meaningful way. This paper illustrates the role science can play in the social re-engagement process. The ubiquitous 5E-inquiry model structures science engagement around discrepant events and discussion. Unfortunately the probing disclosure that underpins the use of these strategies in the 5E model further alienates these young people, and is culturally inappropriate for the indigenous class members. Therefore discrepant events and discussion were reformulated to remove the risk of personal exposure while fostering the necessary relationships needed by these young people for them to engage in meaningful learning. The four principles of the Edmund Rice Flexible Learning Centres: safe and legal, honesty, respect and participation, were adapted to create an environment of trust and interest where the young people are able to reinvent their identities. The paper utilises observations from two groups of young people during weekly science interventions over the course of a term to illustrate the changes observed in the young people. It also provides guidance for the creation of socially reflexive science.

The Importance of Being Earnest: An Inquiry into the Complex Role of a School-based Museum Curator

St Joseph’s Nudgee College, an Australian Catholic school for boys, has been operating since 1891 with a philosophy based on the Edmund Rice tradition. Recently there has been increased interest in the history of the college and the decision was made to establish a permanent museum and archives which could be actively used by the school community. Tensions became immediately evident in regards to what would be displayed and documented given that the older section of the school community nostalgically viewed the College’s Irish Catholic and outback traditions. The current demographic of the College, however, is representative of a much broader mix of nationalities and cultural backgrounds. The curriculum plan of the college seeks to educate students through a student centered curriculum that aims to develop critically aware and culturally sensitive world citizens by addressing political, philosophical, environmental and gender issues. The curator has endeavored to remain true to the traditions of the college whilst also creating exhibitions, site tours and classroom resources which interrogate contemporary issues using the established values of the college to create a spirit of inquiry. The purpose of this paper is to document the beginning stage of the journey that has been undertaken by the curator, in conjunction with the college community, to create a collection which aims to be inclusive, educative and relevant in a 21st century framework, whilst also respecting and acknowledging the college’s history.

Re-engaging Disadvantaged Youth through Science: Developing a Framework of Practice

Edmund Rice Education Australia Flexible Learning Centres (EREAFLCs) operate within a social inclusion framework to ‘walk with’ young people who have disengaged from the traditional schooling system. Students attending the centres face multiple stressors in their everyday life as well as significant barriers to achieving success in the classroom environment. Addressing the immediate literacy and numeracy concerns of students as they present at the centres has left little time to develop strategies for engaging students with traditionally ‘difficult’ subjects such as science. In addition, there is very little research material available to assist teachers in the development of teaching and learning strategies for science education that deal with the unique situation of the flexible learning context. The aim of this research is to build a framework for guiding scientific teaching practice in the context of working with students with complex needs and diverse backgrounds. The ‘Re-Engaging Disadvantaged Youth Through Science’ Project originated as a partnership between Edmund Rice Education Australia, James Cook University (Townsville) and the Australian Research Council, who provided funding for the three-year project.

The Irish Christian Brothers and the National Board of Education: Challenging the Myths

For close to 170 years the general consensus from historians has been that Edmund Rice, who founded the Irish Christian Brothers in 1802, was an unenthusiastic applicant to the National Board of Education in Ireland in 1832 and later withdrew his schools because he believed his education was incompatible with the philosophy underpinning the conduct of Board schools. Three myths were created and have circulated over many years to uphold and sustain a pretence that this was the situation which prevailed. These myths are that the Christian Brothers were reluctant participants with the Board; that the Board’s system of education was inimical to the Brothers; and that the Christian Brothers left the Board as a matter of principle. This paper contests these myths and argues that they made virtue of an internal rift that dramatically divided the Christian Brothers politically for over a century. This was a rift that sidelined Edmund Rice and those who supported him.

Authentic Expression of Edmund Rice Christian Brother Education

The Congregation of Christian Brothers (CFC), a religious community which continues to sponsor and staff Catholic high schools, began in Ireland with the vision of Edmund Rice. This article surveys biographical information about the founder and details ongoing discussions within the community directed toward preserving and growing Rice’s vision in contemporary Catholic schools.

The Congregation of Christian Brothers in Scotland, 1951-1983

Books which claim to give an account of either the Irish or the Catholic Church during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries hardly give mention of the Christian Brothers and their missions. J. A. Jackson, The Irish in Britain (London 1938), is recognised as an investigative study of a long neglected file of scholarly accomplishment, but the Christian Brothers are not even mentioned. David Mathew, Catholicism in England, 1535-1935 (London 1936), likewise gives no reference to the Brothers. Thomas Burke in his Catholic History of Liverpool gives transient references to the Christian Brothers,1 but peruse the pages of The English Catholics, 1850-1950, a series of academic papers edited by Bishop Beck, and you will discover only four passing references.2 I would argue, however, that the missions of the Christian Brothers in Britain have been an important influence in the life of the Church and education. In the early part of the nineteenth century three men made a substantial impact on the Irish scene: Daniel O'Connell, political agitator; Father Theobald Mathew, founder of the Temperance Movement; and Edmund Rice, founder of the Congregation of Brothers of the Christian Schools of Ireland, and founder of the Order of Presentation Brothers, who has been described by his biographer as 'an outstanding influence of the period, and most important'.3 Rice was born in 1762 at Westcourt, Co. Kilkenny. After giving up a successful business, in 1802 he entered into religious life by founding and opening a school for the poor and underprivileged Catholic boys in Waterford. By 1820 the order was established on sanction by a papal brief, and by 1826 several communities and schools were established in the towns and cities of Ireland. In 1825 and 1826 Rice sent communites to Preston and London respectively, and this was the foundation of the first Christian Brothers' mission to England. The Brothers withdrew in 1880 due to a variety of events and circumstances which slowly chipped away, eroding the expansion of the Institute's work in England in the

Edmund Rice: 1762-1844 by Dáire Keogh

Edmund Rice: 1762-1844 by Dáire Keogh

As One Sent. Peter Kenney S.J., 1779-1841. His Mission in Ireland and North America by Thomas Morrissey, S.J.

356book reviews enment theology. This Hooke attempted by a "revitalized theology of reUgion" that distinguished him both from the conservative apologists and the antichristian Deists or Atheists. His major importance and contribution lay therefore in the domain oftheological method, its problematics, its typology. In the author's eyes this approach deserves to be taken seriously, despite the fact that the "Modernizer ways" Hooke opened were not followed in the aftermath of the French Revolution that destroyed the world in which they were developed. An important study, therefore, that might have been more forceful in its original state with a scholarly apparatus. The first part, particularly, suffers from a number of approximations, minor errors, and lack of references that, at times, make it dUficult to grasp the nuances of an admittedly complex historical and intellectual context. Some of the judgments and Interpretations could be disputed , as they must have been during the defense of the dissertation. A few recent works have been overlooked, among them Philippe Lefebvre's important Les Pouvoirs de laparole. L'Église etRousseau 1762-1848 (Paris, 1992). Jacques M. Gres-Gayer The Catholic University ofAmerica Late Modem European As One Sent. Peter Kenney SJ., 1 779-1841. His Mission in Ireland and North America. By Thomas Morrissey, SJ. (Washington, D.C: The CathoUc University of America Press; Blackrock, Co. Dublin: Four Courts Press. 1997. Pp. xii, 529. $54.95.) In his foreword Emmet Larkin welcomes this biography as worthy of the historical importance of its subject as a maker of the modern Irish church. Peter Kenney was a key figure Ui the early nineteenth-century reorganization of the Society ofJesus Ln Ireland and the United States. He was an outstanding orator. Archbishop Murray of Dublin declared that "the only other orator whom I ever thought of comparing him to was Daniel O'ConneU." He moved easUy among the movers and shakers of Irish Catholicism. Murray, Archbishop MacHale of Tuam,"J.K.L." Games Doyle of Kildare and Leighlin), and other bishops were his friends. He was the trusted adviser of Blessed Edmund Rice in the foundation of the Irish Christian Brothers, of Teresa Ball with the Loreto sisters, and of Mary Aikenhead with the Irish Sisters of Charity. He served as superior of the Irish Jesuit mission and later as provincial of the Irish vice-province. He was twice the Jesuit general's official visitor to the missions of Maryland and Missouri and helped put both on a firm footing. He dealt successfully with conflicts between "nativist"American-bornJesuits and the Europeans who had joined them. In Ireland he had been vice-president of Maynooth and he opened Clongowes Wood College. In America he helped set Georgetown CoUege on a steady course and was involved with the problems of getting permission to charge tuition at St. book reviews357 Louis University, contrary to then-standard Jesuit practice. Other issues were Jesuit slave holding and the growing controversy between proponents of an urban apostolate and those who wished to retain the emphasis on rural ministry characteristic of the Maryland mission since its foundation. Kenney was party to the overaU startup of the restored Jesuit order as one of the first novices in England, as a scholastic in SicUy, and as a delegate of the Irish Jesuits to meetings in Rome, where he died. On one occasion during his SicUian sojourn he accompanied a British naval cruiser on an abortive mission to rescue Pope Pius VII from Napoleon. AU these tales Morrissey has told weU in a readable and valuable book. James Hennesey, SJ. Christ the King Seminary EastAurora, New York 'By WhoseAuthority?'Newman, Manning and the Magisterium. Edited by V Alan McCleUand. (Bath: Downside Abbey Press. 1996. Pp. x, 290. $44.00.) This collection consists of fourteen essays by eight weU-known scholars of nineteenth-century religious history in Great Britain. A couple of the essays are very similar to work previously published, and two of the essays are about lesser-known Tractarians, Robert Wilberforce and T. W AUies. Thus, the title of this volume is a bit misleading, especiaUy since the theme of magisterium is scarcely evident in several of the essays. Manning,WUberforce, andAUies came into the Church...