Identity in Dialogue

The Enhancing Catholic School Identity Project (ECSIP) is a research and implementation project aimed at assessing and enhancing the identity of Catholic schools.

Situated in increasingly pluralising cultural contexts, Catholic schools face the challenge of Recontextualising their identity in a culturally plausible and theologically legitimate way. To this end, ECSIP has developed a suite of empirical instruments that provide an in-depth analysis of a school's current, as well as desired, identity in a statistically reliable way. After describing and interpreting the results, the empirical insights lead to well-informed recommendations aimed at the identity development of Catholic schools, with a normative preference for the Recontextualising Dialogue School model as the way to enhance Catholic identity in a context of diversity. In this manner, ECSIP supports on-going processes of (self-) assessment that form the basis for continuing dynamics of (self-) improvement of the identity of Catholic educational institutions.

Prof. Dr. Didier Pollefeyt (1965) is a full professor at the Faculty of Theology and Religious Studies and Vice President for Education KU Leuven.

Drs. Jan Bouwens (1978) has studied philosophy in both Antwerp and Amsterdam, and theology in Leuven.