Reshaping Catholic Secondary School Curriculum Through Culminating Portfolios

What Are Catholic Schools Teaching to Make a Difference? A Literature Review of Curriculum Studies in Catholic Schools in the U.S. and the U.K. since 1993

“…Four program evaluations assessed curricular interventions using questionnaires and interviews (Proehl, Douglas, Elias, Johnson, & Westsmith, 2013;Ryan, 2004;Stanley, Jones, & Murphy, 2012;Starratt, 2000). Three of them assessed curriculum integration efforts.…”

“…Three of them assessed curriculum integration efforts. The first examined the process of a U.S. high school toward a universal end-of-high-school portfolio assessment (Ryan, 2004). The second examined the implementation of a curriculum integration project at a U.K. secondary school (Stanley et al, 2012).…”

“…Most teachers valued curriculum integration as well, except for some who expressed that it demanded too much effort (Stanley et al, 2012). The shift to portfolio assessment implied curricular integration because teachers had to agree on shared learning expectations and collaborate to achieve them (Ryan, 2004). Similarly, the liturgical initiative showed that, in Catholic schools, "liturgies can become…culminating expressions of disparate learnings developed in separate academic areas" (Starratt, 2000, p. 61).…”