The Relationship between the Catholic Teacher’s Faith and Commitment in the Catholic High School

This study investigates the relationship between Catholic teachers ’ faith and their school commitment in Catholic high schools. A national sample of 751 teachers from 39 Catholic high schools in 15 archdioceses in the United States participated in a self-administered website survey. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and the Pearson correlation. The findings of this study show that there are signifi-cant relationships between the four dimensions of Catholic teachers ’ faith (belief, intimacy with God, action, and a living faith) and the four dimensions of school commitment (commitment to mission, commitment to the school, commitment to teaching, and commitment to students). Among the four dimensions of Catholic faith, a living faith was most influential in all the four dimensions of teacher com-mitment. Among the four dimensions of teacher commitment, commitment to mis-sion was most strongly connected with all four dimensions of faith. The findings of this study strongly suggest that Catholic teachers ’ living faith, placed in the center of intrinsic motivation for their school lives and activities, needs to be acknowledged as a critical predictor of teacher commitment within Catholic high schools. A teacher’s commitment to a school and its members is a very important subject in terms of a school’s success and students ’ academic achieve-ment (Dannetta, 2002; Day, Sammons, Stobart, Kington, & Gu, 2007; Firestone, 1996; Louis, 1998). Teacher commitment has been recognized as a crucial factor influencing the effectiveness of the Catholic high school (Bem