David Down Under

David Tuohy SJ has just returned from a visit to Australia, where he was working with the Australian Council of Education Research (an institution somewhat comparable to the ESRI here) on a project commissioned by the Catholic Education Office of the Archdiocese of Brisbane. The project is entitled “Who is Coming to Our Schools?” and is the first phase of a major study of students, teachers and parents in Catholic schools in the archdiocese. Back home, David is currently working at the final stages of establishing the Le Chéile Schools Trust which establishes a new collaborative governance model for fourteen religious congregations.

While in Australia, David had a chance to meet with Martin Scroope in the Loyola Institute in Sydney (equivalent to the Jesuit Education Delegate, with other jobs) and to visit the Religious Education Office in the Lismore Diocese. The Loyola Institute and Lismore have been working on a programme of leadership development and support and have been using David’s book “Leading Life to the Full” as an introduction to the spirituality of leadership. With the help of Martin Scroope, they have developed this link to a programme centred on the Spiritual Exercises and are training principals and teachers as spiritual guides in schools. David had an opportunity to meet with the support team in Lismore for the day.