Education's Highest Aim: Teaching and Learning through a Spirituality of Communion

Since A Nation at Risk in 1983, the problem of education in the United States has occupied a prominent space in the media, in the halls of government, and in the lives of those most involved in schools. After twenty-five years of inquiry, experimentation, debate and legislation such as No Child Left Behind, the problems seem as insoluble now as then. Education's Highest Aim presents the thoughts and experiences of researchers, students, teachers, administrators, parents, and other stakeholders who have applied a theoretical and practical framework derived from Chiara Lubich's spirituality of communion to their various scenes of teaching and learning. Education's Highest Aim offers proven and effective ways of dealing with the problematic realities found in primary, elementary, secondary, and university education.

Education's Highest Aim includes chapters that present:
* tensions inherent in understanding moral identity in the field of education
* the principal features of an education of communion, and its relevance in the contemporary educational milieu
* the history of the Focolare Movement and education
* case studies that illustrate strategies for negotiating the basic tensions in the educational experience
* accounts of successful elementary, secondary, and post-secondary schools organized around the basic principles of an education of communion
* primary sources concerning an education of communion

Education's Highest Aim will be valuable for anyone interested in understanding and improving education: teachers' groups; school administrators; university courses in curriculum, instruction, or educational foundations; parents' organizations; developers of public policy.

Michael James earned his bachelor's degree in Theology and Psychology from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in Educational Policy Studies from Indiana University, Bloomington, IN. James also held a number of administrative, teaching and research positions at the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University. He was the senior student affairs and enrollment management officer at Mount Marty College, South Dakota before serving as Vice President for the Association of Catholic Colleges and Universities in Washington, DC. James is currently a Fellow in the Center for Catholic Education at Boston College where he directs the Institute for Administrators in Catholic Higher Education, teaches in the Higher Education program graduate concentration in Catholic University Leadership, conducts research and lectures on Catholic university leadership and mission, and is a co-editor of the journal, Catholic Education. James also serves on the boards of Ministering Together and the Conference for Mercy Higher Education.

Thomas M. Masters holds a bachelor's degree in English and Philosophy from Lewis University, a master's in English Literature from DePaul University, and a Ph.D. in Language, Literacy, and Rhetoric from the University of Illinois Chicago. He has taught English at the Leyden High Schools, Franklin Park, IL; humanities at Lewis University; rhetoric and composition at the University of Illinois Urbana and at the University of Illinois Chicago; and in DePaul University's Multicultural Urban Educator program. He has lectured and published widely concerning the history of writing pedagogy and has worked with a variety of educational reform initiatives through the Focolare Movement's Education and Unity. He is editorial director for New City Press.

Amy J. Uelmen holds a bachelor's degree in American Studies and a J.D. from Georgetown University, and an M.A. in Theology from Fordham University. She currently serves as the director of the Institute on Religion, Law & Lawyer's Work at Fordham Law School where she teaches and writes in the area of Catholic social thought and the law. She has lectured and published widely on how religious values might inform the practice of law and how principles of dialogue might inform debates about religion in the public square. She is a frequent contributor to the Focolare Movement's monthly magazine, Living City.